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Your approach to e-mail design must be fundamentally different from print, direct marketing or even Web page design. The reason is simple: Your customers’ experience with e-mail is fundamentally different than with those other media.
E-mail design is not about the overall graphical impact but about scrolling, making it easy for the reader to skim and best utilizing a small space. This is why e-mail demands a completely different approach and involves more effort than simply cutting and pasting material from a web site or converting your direct-mail campaign into HTML.
E-mail presents greater challenges for two reasons: first, because there is a need to design for the preview window as well as the entire message; and second, because people interact with e-mail in fundamentally different ways and in different contexts than they do with other media. In fact, because readers scroll through e-mail, it is important to think of the design as a series of modules. In addition, you have less control over the final rendering, because the software and hardware on the user’s desktop (the various software programs or web browsers your customers use to view your message) will influence the final look and user experience.
Just as with any type of communication, if the design does not grab the attention of the reader or fails to present your message in an appealing way, you’ll lose your audience. Therefore, e-mail design plays a significant role in determining if the e-mail will be read. In addition, readers will make split-second judgments as to whether or not to delete each e-mail, so you must make sure that subscribers instantly recognize that the e-mail is coming from you. An e-mail that is well designed will ensure this.
Once that’s accomplished, the design of your e-mail must not only be appealing and make the recipient want to read it, but it must also allow the reader to skim the content and glean the key information.
Sound daunting? It can be. But it’s easier when you break the process down into several key steps. In much the same way that your content strategy is about more than great writing, your e-mail layout is about more than great design (although that is, of course, important too). It’s about having the right elements in the right places to maximize the performance of every e-mail you send.
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