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These are common obstacles that people encounter when they are trying to spice up their e-mail. It's important to create a design that balances a catchy look with engaging text and which doesn't require too much time to put together. After all, the point of using a template is to avoid too many formatting changes. Here are four sure tips that will make sure you newsletter looks appealing but is also conveying the message that you are trying to spread.
Tip 1: Avoid clutter! White space is an undervalued and important element to design. It's easy to get carried away in filling up a message with lots of images or text. Keep the space around your text proportionately free so that the readers' eyes naturally focus on the text rather than the things surrounding it. Keep in mind that your audience's attention span is limited – the denser your gray blocks of text are, the faster you will lose their interest.
Tip 2: Make sure the first part of your message is text! Don't use the top space of your e-mail for images or some type of header. Many e-mail services block the loading of images, and hence the only thing the viewer will see is a message stating that the image could not be loaded. It will be a waste of your effort and your message will not be conveyed. Design your e-mail such that the beginning contains the crux of text that captures the essence of your message. This can be followed by images, but never preceded by images.
Tip 3: Keep links for the middle or end of your e-mail! Avoid including a series of links at the beginning of your e-mail. Particularly in our modern day in which many people check their e-mail on their cell phones; these links will appear as long and unending lines to scroll across. This is sure to turn off your customer, and it is likely that they won't read further.
Tip 4: Avoid excessive formatting! Be careful of using too much formatting – many times it does not get carried over in various e-mail services. Many designers use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to create their templates, but services such as Outlook 2007 no longer show formatting unless it is coded in “inline CSS,” which is a much more detailed coding process. It is good to convey this to your designer if he or she is using CSS.
Finally, while design is key to a first glance, text is still the essential core of your message. Don't let design misguide your audience – without text to back it up; your readers will not know why the message was sent. Images, videos and other features may not always come through in an e-mail, so make sure you have text to back up your design!
Free HTML email templates are a great way to start off your bulk email marketing campaign or your newsletters, especially if you are a start-up business that is looking for some low cost solutions to the problem of email communication with customers and employees. Email templates are a good way to streamline operations just as the use of any template in any area of business. The basic concept at work here is standardization, which has resultant effects on the cost of production. However, this can be a tough call. While most organizations will gravitate towards the free option, this is a decision that can have disastrous consequences if you choose a service provider with no range of products to cater to your business needs. Therefore, the moral to learn here is that if you have the resources, evaluate the need to go free instead of very carefully.
Email templates are only as effective as their designs and a great part of how you use these templates is in the way you use images in templates. A rider must be mentioned here about the way you use templates. You must try and understand your audience's specific needs. It is a rule of thumb that the more erudite your audience, the less the impetus of using imagery. The three tips that you should remember are:
1. Appropriate ratio of text to images depending on purpose. Bulk email marketing material usually requires a lower proportion of images to text. This is because there is a need to highlight and detail product benefits and sometimes some informative material. The imagery can be limited to just the product or some supportive images to the informative piece. When it comes to newsletters, the opposite applies with a 70 per cent weighing in on the imagery side. This is because of the impact that newsy images have on people reading newsletters.
2. Remember your user: Free HTML email templates may come with a lot of area for the use of imagery but you must remember that not every recipient is alike and you have to accommodate for the fact that perhaps some of your clients do not have high bandwidth connections to the internet and some email clients block out images until the user intervenes. Therefore, use images but don't let them overshadow the main message.
3. The next important tip for using free HTML email templates and the use of images is to ensure the appropriateness of the image itself. If necessary use illustrations. Remember that imagery is a summation of the text; therefore, always try to aim for appropriateness and not some kind of image symmetry in your emails.
As a final thought, remember that the content that you put into the template must be robust, crisp, and clear. Also, understand how spam filters work and how you can try and avoid coming under the scanner of this thorough software. This is a rule that apples to the color coding of the site itself, which can also trigger a spam alarm.