More email guidelines
So you've read my list of guidelines for creating a perfect email. Let's talk about why these guidelines are what they are...
Reminder: mobile first
About half of the people opening our email are on a mobile device. Some brands report that way more than half of their email opens are on moble; the highest I've heard from a client was 80%!
Attention span is shorter on mobile — it's critical we create an email that loads quickly, is easily scannable, and has a very clear CTA. A single-column, mobile-first approach is the way to achieve this.
Reminder: don't rely on images
About half of the people opening our email will not see images when they open it. Various articles I've seen report that it's anywhere from 45% to 55%.
It's important we design an email that's still engaging without images displayed.
Reminder: accessibility is paramount
If you're in the pharma world like I am, calibrate your brain to think about accessibility like this: we should take ADA compliance as seriously as we take FDA compliance. We would never, ever cut corners on FDA compliance; we wouldn't even consider it, and of course our clients wouldn't either. We simply can't do it for ADA compliance either.
ADA compliance is a legal requirement and our ethical responsibility. For emails, this means always ensuring that font sizes and color contrast adhere to WCAG guidelines. And don't forget there are additional considerations for developers, regarding alt text, code formatting, etc.
Focusing on best practices means focusing on success
Each of the specs I've outlined for a perfect email exists for a reason. When we don't adhere to these guidelines, there are always problems. For each of these specs, I can tell you a story of a project where the spec wasn't followed it and caused serious issues. Don't become one of those stories!
"We've always done it this way" does not necessarily mean we should continue doing it that way. Specs and best practices change as email apps, webmail platforms, and web browsers change.
"Another vendor we worked with was fine with doing it this way" usually does not mean we should do it that way. A lot of emails that I've worked on that came from other vendors on were simply done wrong; maybe they were never QA'ed and no one noticed.
In my career I've seen dozens, probably hundreds of emails that were not designed and programmed to best practice. Emails like these may get approved by the client's med-legal team, but they will not perform well for all users on all devices, and they may not engage recipients as desired.
We should always focus on what will make the email successful — get 'em to open, get 'em to tap/click. That's what our clients are paying for.
Focusing on efficiency
Any good digital agency will make it a priority to keep emails (and banner ads, as both are short-lived digital tactics) streamlined and inexpensive for our clients. They should also be explaining this to their clients — partly to brag that we're focusing on keeping costs down for them, but also to educate them about what that means for email design; how overdesigning an email would hurt not just the budget, but also quite possibly the success of the piece.
Making an email that's overly complicated generally doesn't benefit our users/clients, and could make our clients start to ask why they're spending so much on emails. When we adhere to best practices we keep our email projects streamlined.
If the team wishes to implement something that goes against best practice, we should ask ourselves these questions:
1. Is there any benefit to the user?
2. Will this help the email be more successful for our client?
In my experience the answer to these questions is generally no. Actually, I'm being too generous; in all my years of doing this, the answer has always been no.
Going against best practice to make something look cooler or more branded generally means making the email more expensive for our client while providing no additional value to them. In some cases, making something cooler or more branded actually hurts the likelihood of the piece being successful.
Remember, digital best practices are the rules for successful digital design. Not just suggestions.
Simple is always much, much better
We should help our clients understand that a simple email is better for them:
A simple, shorter email is faster/cheaper to program, faster/cheaper to QA, and requires less routing.
A simple email layout will display perfectly across all platforms.
Less content is often better for engagement — hook the user and get them to tap/click!
A very long, heavily graphical email is often not good for users, and not good for our clients.
A long, heavily graphical, overdesigned email is likely to download slowly and cause users to bounce.
Too much content may be less engaging, and will bury your CTA. (Plus, all your content is already on your website — hook the user and drive them there!)
Tons of content = more rounds of edits, more tweaking, arguably for little or no value.
Whew! I know I'm a broken record with some of these principles. I'm fine with that. It's our responsibility as digital professionals to embrace these guidelines and make sure we're producing emails for our clients that are 100% focused on providing the results they want. The above is the tool kit for that.
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.