Category: Design & Layout

Artificial Intelligence, Deliverability, Design & Layout, Email marketing

A round-up of my favorite reads of the past week

Posted on by Tamara Gielen

Updates to Gmail & Yahoo’s Sender Guidelines
Yahoo posted a blog about the upcoming Send Requirements and an FAQ with more information and Google provided more information as well. In this article you’ll find some of the key information and the author promises to update it as more information is shared.

Bonus Webinar: A Crash Course on List Unsubscribe
Deliverability expert Al Iverson posted a short video on his blog in which he explains what the List Unsubscribe header is, how it works and how ESPs need to implement it so that you are compliant with the latest Gmail & Yahoo requirements

#TimTalk – Generative AI – What keeps me awake at night with Chad S. White
In the below video Chad S. White discusses potential impact Generative AI may have on job roles, particularly junior positions, and its use in content creation, raising concerns about authenticity and transparency, as well as how corporations might define low-value work, the future of art and craft in an AI-dominated landscape, data privacy issues, and the effect of AI on social interactions and marketing. I found it very interesting!

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Artificial Intelligence, Deliverability, Design & Layout, Email marketing

A round-up of my favorite reads of the past week

Posted on by Tamara Gielen

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Copywriting, Design & Layout, Email Tactics, Integrated Marketing, Messaging, Multi-Channel Marketing, Strategy, Testing

3 keys to improving your customers checkout experience

Posted on by Tamara Gielen

How often have you abandoned a checkout due to a confusing and difficult experience? Unfortunately this is more common than it should be and we lose customer's during the checkout process. In fact you're average abandon rate is around 80%!

Plan to Engage recently  hosted a webinar with conversion expert James Critchley of cloud.IQ and provided 3 keys to leverage in order to prevent abandonment of the shopping cart process. 

 The 3 Keys discussed are based on BJ Fogg's Behavioural Model which shows that 3 elements must converge at the same moment for a behaviour to occur: Motivation, Ability, and Trigger.

Fogg Theory

 

In this webinar we detailed each of these elements and look to see how we can apply this model to our customer's checkout process  in order to refine and optimise the experience, resulting in increased conversions. 

Interested in seeing more? The please view the slides of the presentation below, alternatively you can watch the actual webinar here. 

 
 
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Design & Layout

A cool tool to help you design for the new Gmail Grid View

Posted on by Tamara Gielen

So – Gmail has in beta mode a new feature in the Gmail Promotions tab, which picks out images from your emails and presents them in a visual tile layout. This is the next step from having recently made images visible by default (and now we can begin to see why they did so).

Gmail_grid_view

If you haven't yet received this feature – you can apply for it here and be part of the trial.

The good news is that our friend Justin Khoo over at Freshinbox has created a cool new tool to be able to test what your emails may look like to ensure you're now leveraging this fresh and potentially valuable way of presenting your email. So – if you're wanting to tweak your emails so they benefit from this – then shoot over there now!

Gmail_grid_view_tool

A comprehensive coverage of all blogs and related information about this new feature was very kindly putting together by our good friend Jordie van Rijn over at emailMonday – so check we recommend that you check this out.

 

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Copywriting, Design & Layout, Email Tactics, Messaging

Blending personas and personalities to optimise conversions in email marketing [Part 2]

Posted on by Tamara Gielen

Making your emails more relevant by appealing to different reader personalities

In Part 1 we introduced using Personas for Email marketing based upon motivation, in Part 2 I’m going to review the 4 main different personality traits that are common to everyone and show how to apply them to email creative. Aristotle was one of the first to identify them and named them: Melancholic, Phlegmatic, Choleric and Sanguine, however we will be using more descriptive names for these personalities in this post.

By leveraging both personas and personalities, you not only know where to place content, images and set tasks but also know how to speak to them (TOV), what offers to deliver and help them to accomplish their task the way they feel comfortable doing so – thus enabling higher and potentially quicker, conversions.

Read the full article

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Copywriting, Design & Layout, Email Tactics, Strategy, Targeting

Blending personas and personalities to increase conversions in email marketing [Part 1]

Posted on by Tamara Gielen

It’s a well-known fact that some of the greatest results can be gained by combining personalisation and persuasive architecture to deliver what the customer wants.

In this 2 part post I will look at approaches to leverage 2 types of buyer personas to use to increase conversions within your email marketing programme.

When combining both of these buyer persona styles we’re ensuring that we deliver not only the copy, TOV, and offers/merchandise that our buyer wants and expects from us but we’re also delivering the experience that will enable them to convert according to their temperament.

So let’s look at the two different types of Buyer Personas. For clarity’s sake, I’m labelling them differently to how they’re labelled elsewhere:

  • Persona: This addresses the motivation (i.e. what the buyer needs, what are their challenges and goals, what motivates them  etc)
  • Personality: This addresses their temperament (i.e what triggers they respond to, how they navigate, read and perform tasks etc)

In this post [Part 1] of this series, I’ll be addressing the Persona based upon motivation.

Read the full article

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Design & Layout

Designing for Mobile Email

Posted on by Tamara Gielen

Neil Berman lists these 8 Steps To Good Mobile Email Design in his recent Email Insider column:

  1. Send your emails in MIME Multipart Format so they are readable on mobile devices that can display only the text version of your email.  
  2. Keep subject lines to 15 or fewer characters or front-load it so your key message is in the first 15 characters.  
  3. Make the most of pre-header text. iPhones allow about 140 characters in vertical view, so keep the text short and persuasive. 
  4. For the best display on both mobile devices and the desktop, code your emails between 480 and 600 pixels.  
  5. Keep the layout simple and stack information in one column. 
  6. Take it easy on the images. 
  7. Code all links and buttons with a target area of at least 44 x 44 pixels.  
  8. Test your design regularly on various devices to make sure your emails continue to render as you intended.

Source: Mediapost

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Design & Layout, Mobile

Email Marketing Design Guidelines for Mobile Devices

Posted on by Tamara Gielen

In her article "Email Marketing Design for Mobile Devices" Kristin Hersant shares somes tips and guidelines for designing email campaigns and newsletters that render well on a mobile device.

Conventional wisdom says that the standard layout width for an email is 600 pixels wide. In order for your email creative to render properly on a smart phone, you will need to design your layouts at approximately 480 pixels wide, or 80% of your original layout size. In order to be readable on a regular cell phone screen, your email will need to scale down to 50% of its original size, which is a tall order. According to the panel, 85% of the email delivered today is not readable when it’s scaled down to 50% of its size.

 

Here are some of the tips she shares:

  1. Make sure that you’re designing your emails using a grid system. This means that you need to layout your content in vertically and horizontally aligned blocks, with “streets and alleyways” in-between them. This will enable your design to shrink down without losing its integrity. 
  2. Make sure that your text is readable on a mobile device. Think about larger headlines and body size copy and use short, direct calls to action. A
  3. Consider a Single Column Layout.
  4. Always test rendering on mobile devices when creating master templates to ensure they accomplish your readability goals. 
  5. use background colors to visually separate topics instead of horizontal rule
  6. Instead of designing at 600 pixels wide, try reducing your layout to 450, 500 or 525 pixels. 
  7. Make sure your point is conveyed with or without images enabled.
  8. Use a Viewport Meta Tag. Using this piece of code will make email render properly on the iPhone, rather than shrinking the full email. It also makes the email render more quickly. View a code example here.

Source: StrongMail

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