Overview
You want to create the kind of message guests will be excited to open (and keep opening) -- the kind that gets them away from their screen, and into your locations. After partnering with marketing professionals for almost two decades, we have a few pro tips to share.
Before You Start
We pride ourselves on working diligently to understand the marketing landscape as it grows and evolves; we strive to be an engaged, invested partner. That said, no one knows your brand quite like you.If some of the tips here don't mesh well with your strategy, that's OK.As always, if you have any questions, or want to talk about how to optimize emails for your specific brand, don't hesitate to contact Paytronix Support at support@paytronix.com.
Basics
Subject Lines
Subject lines can have a major impact on whether or not a guest decides to open the email you worked so hard to create. They can also affect how your email is delivered. Here's what we know about making them compelling:
Be concise! You're limited to a certain number of characters. Depending on the device, a guest will see only 30-70 characters when deciding whether or not to open the email.
Preheader? What's that? Preheader text is like a secondary subject line. It appears immediately under the subject line. Not everyone will have their email client configured to show it, but many will -- don't miss out on another opportunity to grab a guest's attention.
This is what preheader text looks like in an inbox:
Get personal! Paytronix tools, allow you to use dynamic parameters in the subject line. You can use a guest's name, points accrued, reward info, etc. in the subject line. The less generic, the more likely a guest will open the email.
Once more, with feeling! Did you know that there's some research that shows that using an emoji in a subject line can generate higher open rates? You will need to consider your guest demographics, and your brand when deciding to try emojis, but they can be an effective if used well.
Mix it up! Paytronix tools allow for A/B testing on recurring emails. Don't be afraid to try out some of the different strategies to see which ones work best for your brand, and your guests.
Get inboxed! Subject lines are important when trying to avoid spam filters. Bad ones can keep your email out of guests' inboxes. Check out the CAN-SPAM Compliance section for more information.
Design
Certain design elements will make guests more likely to read your whole email, engage, or more likely to open future emails from you. Here's what we know:
Keep it personal! Start with a personalized subject line and keep up the good work once a guest opens your email. Personalized messages have higher open rates, and more importantly, higher click-through rates. Paytronix tools allow you to insert dynamic parameters - anything you track about guests can probably be used in an email to engage with guests.
Keep it simple! One-column layouts are the easiest emails to create, and least likely to break. Images and text can more easily change size in line with the device's screen. As a bonus, one-column designs are more easy for guests to read and process than more complicated designs.
All creative assets for use in an email should be measured in pixels (as opposed to inches or centimeters). "Pixel perfection" is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve; always leave a little wiggle room in your designs.
Embrace white space! We know you have lots to say but you don't need to fill every pixel with content -- and you shouldn't. Try to stick to one main point per email, and center everything around it. Too much content in an email will likely feel overwhelming. With an overload of content, there's a good chance that the guest won't remember anything at all. Worse, they might be less likely to open future emails from you if they think it'll be "too much."
For optimal visual impact, an email layout should not exceed 600 pixels in width. You don't want guests to have to keep scrolling back and forth just to read your email.
Avoid using one large image that's sliced into multiple components. It can be a compelling aesthetic choice, but emails that include them often perform poorly on deliverability.
Need free some inspiration, or fresh ideas? Reallygoodemails.com has a great database of different emails sorted by email type, and industry.
Engagement/Click-Through
How do you want guests to engage with your message? Do you want them to do something specific? Include a call to action.Without a call to action, a guest is likely to read, delete, and forget.The easiest way to encourage guests to do more than just read your email is to include a button. Make sure your button is at least 50 pixels wide and 50 pixels high, and includes text that is a call to action, e.g. "Redeem Now," or "View Your Account."
Interactivity/Extras
It can be tempting to put lots of bells and whistles in your emails, but these features often cause more frustration than fun. Here's what we know:
Animated GIFs - Not all email clients can read the animation in a GIF (or guests have adjusted their settings to not load the animation). If the animation doesn't come through, the guest will see a static image of the first frame of the animation. Make sure you're not relying on the animation aspect to deliver your message.
Video - Videos are not well-supported by most email clients. We recommend not embedding videos in your email design.
Forms - Forms are also not well-supported by most email clients. In some cases, forms can trigger spam filters, or return inaccurate data.
JavaScript/Flash - We recommend not using any JavaScript or Flash elements in your emails. They don't always load and are almost sure to route your email to a spam folder.
Testing
We test your emails for compatibility, but you'll want to run your email through our preview tool. For any emails involving a campaign, you will want to send a test campaign and ensure the email looks as intended.
Think Mobile First
You're opening a non-work email, what are you looking at? A laptop screen? Your phone? Most personal emails are opened on phones or mobile devices. Plan with the following in mind:
Most users will open personal emails on a mobile device first (even if they ultimately click through on a desktop).
When using a phone, conditions aren't always the most ideal. Low-lighting, lots of background noise/distractions, people who need reading glasses who never seem to have them when looking at their phones, older phones with smaller screen sizes, etc. Design your email for the smallest screen, to be viewed under non-ideal conditions.
Design for mobile first. It's much easier to adapt a design for mobile to work on a desktop than the other way around.
Avoid tiny links and/or buttons. Ever accidentally click on the wrong link or button because there were multiple ones, and they were all small or too close to each other? Annoying, right? Make it easy for guests to click on the correct button or link.
Each email can be previewed in Mobile App form on Email Builder
Text
Text is one of the main ways guests will get your message.Here's what we know:
Whenever possible, text should be hard-coded (not included as part of an image). Some HTML experts say you should have two lines of text per image. That's not a strict rule but it's a good goal.
General body text of the email should be at least 14 pixels in size.
Line-height should always be set to 1.5x the font size. This ratio is ideal for scanability and spatial density on the page.
Custom font options are very limited in emails; standard fonts will always be your best bet. These standard fonts are the most reliable:
Arial
Arial Black
Tahoma
Trebuchet MS
Verdana
Century Gothic
Geneva
Lucida
Lucida Sans
Lucida Grande
Courier
Courier New
Georgia
Times
Times New Roman
MS Serif
New York
Palatino
Palatino Linotype
If you really need to use a custom font, remember not all guests will be able to view text in custom fonts. Use them sparingly. Provide a web-safe fallback.
Design your email so that if images break or don't display, a guest can still understand your message. If a guest can't see an image, how will you still engage them? Make sure the text in your email is clear and catchy, and doesn't rely on images for impact.
Images
Images are the other main way guests will get your message.Here's what we know:
Set image sizes as they will actually appear in the email. For example, do not insert an image 700px x 600px. It may look fine in your design tool, but it may break the layout when it's delivered to guests.
Images should never be larger than 600px wide, or 1728px tall/high. Images that are too tall will be cropped when delivered. At best, it looks sloppy to guests. At worst, guests will miss important information that was cropped out.
Design your email so that if images break or don't display, a guest can still understand your message. There are a number of reasons an image might not display. Do not rely on them to deliver your message; they should be secondary, rather than core to the message. Never send an image-only email.
Accessibility
You want 100% of your guests to be able to get your message.Here's what we know about making sure everyone can get your message:
Use appropriate color contrast. Need help? A contrast checker can help you check color contrast ratios.
Avoid center alignment for large blocks of text. This arrangement of text is difficult for guests with dyslexia, or other cognitive disorders.
Avoid using "click here" as the text that appears on buttons or links. Guests using screen readers will have trouble determining where "here" is.
Where possible, keep a logical reading order. In most languages this is top to bottom, left to right. This is useful for anyone using a screen reader (as screen readers attempt to read text in the order of the language they are reading), and guests with cognitive disorders.
Always add Alt Text to images, describing the image. It's helpful for guests with visual impairments, and for all guests (if the image fails to load).
CAN-SPAM Act Compliance
The CAN-SPAM Act defines the legal requirements for all commercial emails.All spam filters use the rules set forth in the CAN-SPAM Act as a starting point.For deliverability, your emails should, at a minimum, comply with CAN-SPAM. In addition to the CAN-SPAM rules,most email clients have supplemental rules to identify spam and keep it out of inboxes.Each email client has slightly different rules, and the rules continually change as spammers adapt their tactics to skirt the rules. Here are some rules that seem to always be relevant:
For CAN-SPAM compliance, all emails must include:
A physical mailing address
An unsubscribe link - the link must be plain text; it cannot be an image, or an image with text
Be careful with subject lines.
Don't overuse exclamation points (!), e.g. "New! Just for you!"
Don't use both an exclamation point (!) and question mark (?) in the same subject line, e.g. "Are you so excited? We are!"
Don't use a percentage greater than 100, e.g. "We're giving you 110%"
Avoid certain trigger words that can sometimes affect deliverability. There's no way to avoid all of them but you should familiarize yourself with the ones most common to your brand and make a habit of avoiding them when possible.
Check your image-to-text ratio. Emails with too many images in relation to text might skip the inbox.
Don't be overly formal. Emails containing greetings like "Dear Sir" or "Dear Ma'am" are more likely to be flagged.
Make sure to include accurate plain-text versions of your email.