Email Marketing India: email design

Showing posts with label email design. Show all posts

Friday, June 29, 2012

Email Marketing Best Practices: Use of Buttons, Charts & Other Supporting Images in Email Newsletter

Buttons, charts, and other supporting images should use the colors of your design elements to pull the reader’s eye to the images. Make sure the text color used on your images stands out and is readable. Most importantly, make sure the recipient understands the action with the corresponding text or icons in the Buttons.

See the examples below:

Shop Now button

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Email Marketing Best Practices: Use of Colours in HTML Emails

In everything from images to fonts, colors play an important role in the email design process but can also create problems. For example, don’t choose a font color such as a muted gray on a gray background that makes your headlines and calls-to-action difficult to read. And don’t run the risk of hiding valuable information in your emails by blending the content into the background. Men and women react differently to colors, but several polls on color preferences by gender and age yield interesting results:

Target Audience	Favorite Colors	Least Favorite Colors
Females	Blue, Purple, Green (all "cool" colors)	Orange, Brown, Gray ("warm" and "neutral" colors)
Males	Blue, Green, Black (two "cool" and one "neutral" color)	Brown, Orange, Purple ("neutral", "warm" and "mixed" colors)
All Genders	Preferences for Green decrease with age; Preferences for purple increase with age	Dislike of Orange increases with age

For more information on color preferences and perceptions, check out these resources:

http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/color/a/symbolism.htm

http://desktoppub.about.com/od/howcolorworks/l/aa_colorsee.htm

For Background Color, Use a white or very light-colored background with a dark to medium font color to make it easy for recipients to read your email message. Also, if you use background colors in sidebar boxes contain them within tables and avoid using a body background color, because Web-based clients remove the body tag and typically place its attributes within a table. Email clients such as Microsoft Outlook might retain the specified background color when replying to or forwarding the email, but other clients use their colors, making message text difficult to read in some instances.

Friday, May 18, 2012

24 Dos and 8 Don'ts for a better HTML based Email Newsletters

Ever wondered if you had a quick guide of Dos and Don'ts for an HTML based email newsletter. Here we have compiled one that serves as a ready reckoner.

HTML Coding Do’s

Code HTML emails as a single Web page with the basic <HTML>, <HEAD>, <TITLE>, and <BODY> tags.
Code emails by hand where possible, as WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors typically add extra code that creates havoc with certain email clients. If you must use an editor, use Dreamweaver or Homesite, which do not add extra code to the design process.
Use HTML tables for the design layout.
Keep emails at a fixed width of between 500-620 pixels wide.
Instead of defining percentage widths use fixed widths. While this is not optimal, because people can and do resize their email windows when reading, sometimes using a fixed width is the only way for a layout to display properly in multiple email software.
Use only the ASCII character set. More advanced word-processing software often inserts odd characters, such as the trailing dot characters or smart quotes (curly instead of straight), which can hamper display or create delivery problems in some email software.
If you use CSS, include inline styles. Do not link to an external style sheet nor use embedded styles, as this code is often stripped out by email clients, creating display problems.
Make sure all tags have supporting closing tags. The most common HTML errors come from not having a closing </FONT> tag or having open <TD> or <TR> tags in the HTML. While your HTML might render properly in a browser, these errors can cause problems with many email clients.
Use the HTML table attributes within the TABLE and TD tags.
For example: to set the table border=0, valign=top, align=left (or center, if that is the design), cellpadding=0, cellspacing=0, and so on. This primarily helps older email readers to display the html email in a minimally-acceptable way.
Put general font style information in the table TD or DIV or P tags closest to the content. This can mean repetitive style declarations in multiple TD cells or DIV’s or P tag. Put font style definitions into heading (e.g. H1, H2), P, or A tags only when necessary.
Use DIVs sparingly to float small boxes of content and links to the right or left inside a table TD cell. Google Mail appears to ignore the CSS Float property but Yahoo! and Hotmail work fine. Outlook 2007 ignores floats.
Sometimes it is better to code a more complex table layout than rely on the Float property. Since email is easy to clutter, ask that the design put the floated content in the narrow side column. Floats are the one part of an email design that might require the design be reworked.
Animated GIF files are acceptable, but use them sparingly.
Use of images maps is acceptable.
If there is a spacing issue with the columns in the email design, first tweak the cellpadding and cellspacing attributes of the HTML tables. If that does not work, use CSS margin and padding attributes. HTML spacing works better with older email software than spacing with CSS.
If an image is cut up and spread across several HTML table cells, test the email with many test accounts. Sometimes it looks great in Outlook but shifts by 1 pixel or more in Hotmail and other services. Also consider putting the image as a background image on a new html table that encases all the table rows and columns that would display parts of your background image. sometimes this achieves the same effect as cutting an image up but with less code and better results.

Note that Outlook 2007 does not display background images. Be sure to test your email code with your target email client software.

If you use background images, use the HTML table attribute background= instead of CSS. It works more consistently across email software except Outlook. Define appropriate bgcolor for the TD’s so that the color is displayed when the images are blocked.
Be sure all your images use the alt tags, height, and width parameters. This helps with Google Mail as well as when a reader has their images turned off. However, Outlook 2007 does not recognize the alt= parameter.
Use the target=”_blank” attribute for the HTML A tags so that people reading with a webmail service don’t have the requested page appear within their webmail interface.
Avoid a big image above the fold in the email. This is another classic spammer practice and can increase the likelihood an email will be tagged as spam.
Make sure your email content displays fine without images.

For example: if you use a background image to provide a background color with white font color over it, make sure the default background color for that part of the HTML table is dark, not white. Also be sure your alt=, height=, and width= parameters are set for images so they can help readers understand your content without images. Turning off your images will help you catch these issues and ensure the HTML email will display effectively if people see your email with images off.

Test your HTML code. Make sure your code conforms to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML standards
When sending a multi-part message, remember to create the text version. Most email clients send HTML as a multi-part alternative by default. Failing to include the text part of the message can cause some filters to treat your email as spam.

HTML Coding don’ts

HTML should not contain any JavaScript or any other script embedded in it. Some email clients do not support JavaScript, and others view it as a security risk.
Avoid using CSS for positioning. The support is very limited and will, more than likely, result in a broken layout for most of your recipients.
Avoid nested tables if possible. Some email clients, especially Lotus Notes and Netscape Messenger, might not render them correctly.
Do not use canvas background images. Most email clients do not display canvas background images. Background images for individual table cells are generally acceptable but might not appear in some clients such as Lotus Notes.
Do not apply attributes to the <BODY> tag. Attributes placed in the <BODY> tag are often flagged by spam filters and increase the likelihood of your message getting bulked or blocked.
With multiple embedded images, which also might cause the email to be blocked
Do not use EMBED tags.
Avoid embedding forms, such as surveys, into emails. Some email clients such as Hotmail might not pass the data through to the collection point. Instead, link to a Web form through which the recipient can complete the survey.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Guide to a Better HTML Email Design

Email marketing is one of the most powerful and effective forms of marketing today. It is quick to deploy, offers immediate and highly-measurable results, enables advanced segmentation and personalization, and delivers a high return on investment.

However, achieving maximum results from your HTML email requires experience and expertise. Simple mistakes in the implementation of HTML emails can seriously affect delivery or usability and cripple your ROI.

To help marketers optimize results from their email marketing efforts, Kenscio has created this complete guide to create effective HTML email. These technical and design best practices give marketers the ability to improve their own email marketing campaigns. This guide is best shared amongst email marketers and the HTML coding staff that supports your email development efforts.

In this guide we will cover:

Email Layout
HTML coding do’s and don’ts
Validate HTML content and avoid using scripts
Using forms in HTML emails
Font and font size
Color
Background colors
Font colors
Buttons, charts & other supporting images
Style sheets
Images
Image alt tags
Creating a Web version of your email newsletter
Preview panes and blocked images
Number of hyperlinks
Phishing and HTML Links
Message file size
Length of email messages
Personalization
Individualization
Navigation of email messages
Search capability in email
Email format/Versions
Add to Address Book
Forward-to-a-friend functionality
Rich Media/Flash
Video email
Tips Email Deliverability to Inbox
Five common flaws that you can avoid in Email Marketing Campaigns

Everyday we will cover the above topics in details.

Your feedback and comments are most welcome!

Happy Reading!

@Kenscio Email Design Team

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