Email Marketing 2010 – New Basics of Email Marketing Campaigns. Part 1.

Creating impression is the cornerstone of success in everyone's life. The same is true for your e-mail marketing campaigns – no matter what business you are in. The placement of elements on the page, the font choice, even the colors you use all create an impression before your prospect reads a single word of text. So you want to be sure the impression you’re creating is a good one. Here are few tips that are so important to impress your clients with your email marketing campaign. That's what you need to convert leads into subscribers and subscribers into customers! 1. Forget the background image. While having a beautiful photo or drawing ghosted in the background may make a printed piece look appealing, most e-mail clients, such as Outlook, won’t show it. Instead, design your e-mails to look good against a plain background, and use an image (if appropriate) as a standard graphic. 2. Make sure your most important message is seen in a preview pane. Many people use a preview pane to scan the contents of an e-mail quickly before opening it. That makes the upper left corner of your e-mail the most important “real estate” in your message. Place your main message – including the title and call to action – in that area. Start your e-mail with the title in text, not as part of a graphic. In addition, avoid using a large graphic or logo in the upper left corner. Many people have their images turned off, so all they’ll see is a big, blank area. Instead, use that spot to engage them and encourage them that there’s a good reason to open the e-mail. 3. Skip the navigation links at the top. A common practice is to include Web-like navigation links, such as those you’d find on a website, at the top of the e-mail. While that may work on a PC or laptop, more and more people are opening their e-mail on their mobile devices, which are not very HTML-friendly when it comes to formatting and linking. Keep navigation simple. 4. Avoid white type on a black background. White type on a black (or other very dark) background is even harder to read online than it is in print – and the smaller the type, the more challenging it becomes. Keep body copy against a white or very light color background so the type is easy to read and doesn’t cause eyestrain. 5. Use colors that complement your logo and/or website. You want everything you do, including your e-mail campaigns, to help you build your brand in the eyes of customers and prospects. Staying consistent with the look of your company’s other marketing materials will help you in that effort.