When your subscribers check their email, they immediately start picking apart their inboxes. They harvest useful details, respond where necessary and trash junk mail (anything they’re not in the mood for).

It’s a heartless process. And it goes fast. If your message isn’t compelling and recognizable, “click” goes the delete button.

Your logo could prevent that delete. Logos remind subscribers of the brand behind the email – a brand they expect value from. With that value in mind, they may be more likely to read your entire message.

Outfitting your emails with your logo is as easy as inserting one quick link. The question is, how should you use it? Read on to find out how to create the effect you’re looking for.

First Things First: the Top Left

This common placement means the logo is the first thing readers encounter in a top-to-bottom, left-to-right world.

Here, Groupon’s logo identifies the sender for readers who didn’t pay attention to the “from” line – for example, those scanning through emails in a preview pane. It’s easily findable, but the subtle colors and modest size let the main content command attention.

Even better, Groupon presents its logo alongside the email’s main benefit. When readers see the combination, they’re reminded of the message’s value and excited to scroll down.

Snapfish’s logo is also inconspicuous but available, blending in with the email design. Like the Groupon logo, it’s strategically placed to trigger memories of past experiences on the way into this new one.

Incorporated Into the Header

Memorial Hospital includes their logo in a subtle way. They used the color of the logo to influence the rest of the header’s design. This keeps their design appealing and their branding consistent.

With the Call to Action

The Marketing Experiments logo follows the call to action in this email generated for an ME online clinic by Go2Webinar.

Since this email was sent only to registrants for the event, it was most likely expected. The logo doesn’t need to come first as a reminder of trust, but it’s still available as an identifier.

Another consideration is design. The logo’s bright colors keep it highly visible against the low-key text. This logo doesn’t need top placement to capture the eye.

Throughout the Design

Vosges’ logo borders the email at the top and bottom and extends into the rest of the design. For Vosges, the logo is part of the brand experience. Elegant and feminine, it denotes the luxury of gourmet chocolate.

The task of this email is selling customers on a high-end candy experience. The delicate glamour of the logo is part of the experience, so the design makes the most of it.

This full-design overhaul goes further than simply inserting a logo. Think about ways you could incorporate elements of your logo into the rest of your creative with colors, fonts and other images.

Invoking your website

The goal of Body Central’s email is to encourage shopping on the web site. Accordingly, the logo here is arranged as a full banner across the top just like the banner on the site pages.

The email body shows an example of a current deal on the site, but by the time subscribers view it, the logo itself has already done much of the work by evoking the shopping experience.

Tip – No matter where you position your logo, make sure to include alt text in case images aren’t displayed.

Creating a consistent brand

Your logo can help you create consistent branding. That’s a lot of impact from the few easy clicks it takes to insert it.

Does your logo fit with your email campaign? Could using it in any of these ways help your email accomplish its purpose? How do you use your logo in your emails?

Tweet This

HTML and plain text each have their place as email formats.

Plain text has a no-nonsense, businesslike air, and is simple to create. HTML grabs attention with colors and images. It lets companies incorporate logos and display data with graphics.

Sometimes, though, plain text is used by marketers who would prefer the gloss of HTML, but aren’t sure how to create it. The good news is, many email marketing services provide pre-designed HTML email templates that make the switch practically painless.

Of course, there are still a few things to learn. If you’re new to HTML email, follow these tips for polished, professional messages.

Getting Started With HTML Email

If you are using a template, make sure to take out any dummy text. This text is usually meaningless, included only to suggest how you may want to lay out your content.

Dummy text in your emails is likely to confuse subscribers, so make sure to replace or delete it!

HTML email lets your readers simply click on links to open new pages instead of copying URLs into new windows. Take advantage of this benefit by making sure to create the links properly.

If you use AWeber, just highlight the text you want to become clickable, click the link button and paste in the URL of your destination page.

Tip: If you’re tracking clicks, don’t use the actual URL as the text of the link, or your message could be mistaken for email phishing.

Good: AWeber’s blog Bad: http://www.aweber.com/blog/

A link to the web version of your email can help readers who have trouble viewing your messages. If an email appears incorrectly or subscribers are too wary to let images display in their inboxes, all is not lost.

Put a link at the top of your email, where distressed openers will see it right away. In AWeber accounts, use the “Direct Link” from the broadcast archive.

Otherwise, just save the image as a page on your web site and use the resulting URL.

Make sure your message is comprehensible without images.

Many email clients don’t display images by default. Subscribers who don’t change these settings won’t see your pictures and graphics, so make sure you:

• don’t display important information as an image
• don’t rely on a background picture to make text readable.
• do include ALT text. This is alternative text that describes images when they aren’t displayed.

When you’re finished editing, send yourself test copies of the message in different email accounts.

Each ISP renders email a little differently. Make sure they are at least consistently readable.

To do this, create test accounts in the most popular webmail providers and desktop email clients.

Although creating your messages in HTML opens up all sorts of creative, organizational and branding possibilities, it’s not a good idea to abandon plain text altogether.

Always include a plain text version. Your email service provider should provide the option or, if you are coding your own emails, follow these instructions.

Then if an ISP can’t display your HTML email, it will revert to the plain text version and your message will still be delivered.

Your Plain Text-to-HTML Concerns

Have you made the switch from plain text to HTML?

If so, what were the trickiest bits for you to learn?

If you want to switch but haven’t yet, what concerns are holding you back?

Tweet This

Looking into an odd problem this morning for a client, I discovered that some email clients are better at handling malformed HTML links than others.

The client had a link in their HTML message that was missing quotes around the URL.

Incorrect:

Correct:

Both links worked find when tested in popular webmail clients like Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail. Unfortunately less popular email clients like Eudora Mail will break the link.

Technically a link without quotes is improper HTML usage, but most email clients do handle it just fine which can cause the error to go unnoticed.

Tweet This

You have 51 seconds to get to the point.

That’s all the average email gets, according to the Nielsen Norman Group. In those seconds, readers determine the email’s value and decide whether to act.

Clear presentation makes this decision easier. As Dr. Flint McLaughlin of MECLABS says, “Clarity trumps persuasion.”

Don’t try to convince your subscribers – instead, clearly present them with an appealing offer. These four techniques show you how the structure of your email newsletters can provide that clarity and take your readers to the next step.

Make Your Text Scannable

Only 19% of newsletters are read, according to the Nielsen study – the rest are scanned. Introductions are skipped and headlines get the most attention.

In an age of 30- second commercials and short Twitter posts, don’t bog readers down with one giant paragraph. Instead, try these techniques:

• divide your text into sections by subject
• if your content lends itself to list format, use bullet points
• for multiple articles, include only the first paragraph of each – link to the rest

There are many more ways to make HTML messages scannable. Plain text can be made scannable by tweaking both design and content.

Position Each Part Properly

Arrange your best enticements above the fold.

“Above the fold” is the part of a newspaper you see before unfolding it. In email, the “fold” is the point where readers have to scroll down. The job of above-the-fold content is to prompt that scroll-down.

Biggiantcrayon.com‘s tips on how web sites can sell themselves above the fold easily translate to email. See how they might work for you.

Include Links For Credibility

If you cite statistics, link back to a reputable source. If you mention a company or public figure, link to their web site.

Web developer Jennifer Kyrnin explains how to use links properly in web writing. Larry Masinter puts her ideas into play with some clearly explained examples.

Linking when appropriate has several benefits:

• your emails earn an extra layer of authority
• your readers get the extended value of the linked content
• most important of all – it’s polite

Use a Single Call to Action

The most effective emails offer only one call to action:

• Redeem your coupon
• Buy this product
• Take our survey
• Come get this information

The Erickson Barnett blog explains why this is. That 51-second scan is fast. Readers need to encounter one simple choice: to act or not. Until then additional calls to action clutter and confuse.

Other choices should stay on the landing page. Then readers can encounter them after they’ve decided to click through.

Why Should You Use These Techniques?

When an email has a messy structure and no clear objective, “I have to look at and make sense of this, and that is far too much unsupervised thinking,” says McLaughlin.

These techniques give your reader guidance and make it easy for them to engage. You may also want to use them on your landing page – according to McGlaughlin, after your reader clicks through, you only have about seven seconds to convince them to stay.

How do you use structure to make your emails easy to interact with?

Tweet This

2009 was the year of social network integration, testing send windows and organic list growth. While 2010 will bring its own trends, these changes aren’t going away.

Here’s a quick refresher of things that went down in email marketing last year.

These posts highlight some new AWeber features, a few colorful examples and the soundest advice we can offer.

2009: The Year of Posts in Brief

Using Email to Grow a Community: AWeber Talks to User Ramit Sethi
On his personal finance site, Sethi teaches his readers to be rich. Here, he gives a bonus lesson in email marketing success. His tips on building an email community are as valuable as gold.

How To Add an Opt-In Form to Your Facebook Page
Adopting social media techniques was a major move that many email marketers made in 2009. This post teaches you how to add an opt-in form to your Facebook profile, directing new contacts straight to your email list.

And since Facebook has more than 350 million active users, and over 700,000 local business accounts, it may be just the place to expand your online presence.

Design Inspiration From Fellow AWeber Customers
Three cameos of customer newsletters show what’s possible for small-time email marketers. Their clean design and quality content offer inspiration far into the future.

Have a Look At the New Web Form Generator
By far our biggest release of the year, the new web form generator was welcomed with open arms! Gone are the days of manually editing HTML; our web form tool helps you create professional and aesthetically pleasing web forms with absolutely zero HTML knowledge.

Test Results: How Long Should Your From Line Be?
“From” line length can largely impact the open rate of an email, yet it’s easy to overlook in the design process. Review what lengths are ideal in the major email clients.
This type of analysis should also be applied to subject line length. Make sure your subscribers can read the reason they should open each email!

{!firstname}, Think Before You Personalize
Personalization can be powerfully effective when used in the right ways. It can also be easily misused. Learn how to avoid the mistake of assuming that a string variable makes a message personalized, targeted or relevant.

“Do Not Reply” Address? Don’t Bother.
This post examines the trend of using an an unattended email address that discourages replies to emails, and explains why you should never do that with your own campaigns.

Deliver Smarter Autoresponders With Send Windows
Sometimes, certain days or times are ideal for subscribers to receive your emails. Find out why, and then learn how to increase your follow-up messages’ effectiveness by setting up send windows.

2010: Use It Wisely

Email marketing, with the biggest ROI of any marketing channel, is a path that can lead you to success. We hope these posts serve as stepping stones on your journey.

For more inspiration, read through the other email marketing tips that 2009 brought.

What would you like us to talk about in 2010? What steps are you planning to take in the new year? Let us know!

Tweet This

Most of us glance into the mirror before stepping out the door each morning. What if there is food in our hair or our clothes are on backwards? The mirror-test saves us from potentially horrifying embarrassment.

Our emails deserve that same opportunity. Since they can’t check the mirror themselves (due to their unfortunate lack of eyeballs), we must do it for them through testing. Trust me, this is a step you do not want to skip.

You and your email marketing campaign will both be relieved if your test turns up a mistake that would have resulted in mismatched e-shoes.

Why To Test

You’ve probably had this experience: you open an email, you get interested, you click on a link, and:

You’re done. You can’t go any further, so you delete the email and move on to other important things, like checking the mirror for smudged mascara.

And you do not want that to happen with your emails.

So. Two or three minutes of clicking about in exchange for peace of mind? Good, I’m glad you agree!

Let’s look at how to keep your reputation as a flawless and stunning emailer.

Where To Test

Different email clients render HTML in different ways, so you’ll need to check for design flaws.

You want to test in at least the top few webmail providers, since you are most likely to have subscribers using them. (You may need to set up accounts if you don’t already have them, but it’s free to do so.)

• Yahoo
• Windows Live Hotmail
• Gmail
• AOL

If you can, you’ll also want to test in Outlook (there are several versions of Outlook – if you have Outlook 2007, test in that one first) and possibly Mac Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird.

What To Test

• In HTML messages, double check the design. Do your images display in all accounts? Do special effects show up as jargon? Do the fonts look right? Now you can see if your style is universally acceptable.
• Scan for typos. You may see mistakes you missed before while working in your account.
• Check your from line and subject line. Each email provider limits to a different number of characters, so make sure enough information is visible in the inbox.
• Click your links – every one. Our Link Checker will make sure the page is found and exists, but it’s up to you to make sure that each link actually goes to the right page where you want your readers to journey.

How To Test

After creating a message and before you queue it up, you’ll see the option to test it. Click on that “Test” link and fill out the form. If you’re using personalization in your message, this will test those fields as well.

Go through the process for every email service you’re testing in. If you see a problem, do your best to tweak until it’s fixed.

When you are assured your message is presentable, you can send it out to deliver your words far and wide.

Tell Your Story

Have you ever stopped a flawed email just in the nick of time by testing it?

Have you ever skipped testing only to regret it later?

Share your stories below!

Tweet This

Ever since we made the move to our new office, I’ve found myself really cherishing each morning — not only because our office literally feels like home (Eric and I are quite the decorators), but because as part of my morning routine, I get to check out what’s going on in the design community and what our customers are doing with their email designs.

To start my day, I:

1. Water the flowers outside my office.
2. Grab a hot cup of coffee.
3. Catch up on my RSS feeds.
4. Surf Twitter to see what cool stuff AWeber customers have been sending out.

Today, I’d like to give a subtle nod to some customers who put together awesomely designed newsletters:

Let’s See What AWeber Customers Are Tweeting!

Club Caitlin Newsletter – Cooking With Caitlin

I really like the way this newsletter was done. The contrast between the reds and the greens really makes it fun and interesting and its all tied together nicely with the gray background.

Whoever designed this email also spent time laying out the footer of the email (seen below)… something that can often be overlooked and neglected.

FB Gathering

This newsletter design feels fresh. The pastel greens are very inviting and the imagery works well to balance out the newsletter.

Eye Spy Spain Magazine

Not only do the colors work very well but check out the exceptional detail they put into the text header above where the newsletter starts. That sort of detail makes an email look very clean, crisp and extremely professional. Bravo!

Inspiration Is Everywhere!

Now that I’ve shared a few examples of newsletters I’ve found inspiring, take some time to reassess the design of your emails.

Create a separate email address and start collecting newsletter subscriptions. Maybe you’ll stumble across something that will inspire you to take your newsletter design to a whole new level! Maybe your email newsletter will end up catching my eye…

Tweet This

Sometimes it’s good to step back from discussions like what’s new at Gmail and how to add an opt-in form to Facebook and just talk email marketing basics for a bit.

Today, let’s talk about email design. Specifically, plain text email design.

While creating plain text emails seems easy (and it is) there are things you can do to make your plain text emails more reader-friendly.

A recent email I received illustrates this well:

Evernote’s Plain Text Update

Here’s an email I received from the makers of software program Evernote:

(Click image to see full-size)

Now, we could take the easy way out and say that Evernote should be sending HTML emails instead of plain text – so they could more easily present this information in the excellent way they do on their website and blog.

Instead, let’s focus instead on how Evernote could make it easier for subscribers to get the information they want out of this email.

For the record, I don’t think this is a bad email overall. It has a great tone and a lot of good content in it. I just think that the format makes it hard for subscribers to use and appreciate that content.

Making This Plain Text Email Usable

While this email isn’t just one big continuous block of text, it does leave a few things to be desired…

No Maximum Character Width

Notice how long the lines are in this email?

(Click to see full-size)

Those are being cut off by my Gmail account when it runs out of room at around 133 characters – about twice what we recommend as a maximum line length. And if Gmail had let the, the lines would have run even longer than that!

Keeping the lines shorter would mean subscribers don’t have to move their eyes so far across the page and back to read the email, making scanning faster and easier.

Headers Aren’t Easily Visible and Scannable

If you’re going to have an email with separate topics/sections, it’s best to use headers (just like you would on a web page) to make those sections easy to find as subscribers scan your email.

This email has headers, but fails to separate them from the corresponding paragraphs.

At the very least there should be another line break between the header and paragraph; I’d probably also try making the header stand out a little more with some hyphens or asterisks.

No Separation of Content Within Paragraphs

Each section of this email has a header and then a single large paragraph of text.

Even at the long line lengths shown here, each paragraph is several lines long. If you were to shorten the lines to 60-70 characters, these would be really long.

This email could be far more readable if you broke the paragraphs apart, maybe used some bulleted lists… you don’t have to follow the old “5-sentence paragraph” structure when writing an email!

No Conclusion or Signoff

This email just abruptly ends after the last content section:

What’s strange about this is that the rest of the email actually has a great friendly, personal tone to it… so a signature or conclusion of some sort seems like a no-brainer.

Leaving the signature off makes it feel less like an email you’re receiving from an actual person at Evernote, and more like a machine-written news summary.

Your conclusion and/or signature need not be elaborate (for example, look at the one in Kayak’s email newsletters) but it should be there to bring everything else in your emails back together.

Just For Fun: My Rewrite Of This Email

Here’s that same email content, with ~3 minutes’ work to format it differently:

(Click image for full-size)

It’s longer since I shortened the lines and broke up the text a bit, but I think it reads a lot more smoothly than the previous version.

I’m of course biased since this rewrite is my creation, so I’ll ask you:

Would you agree that the simple layout changes in this version make the email much easier to scan and read?

I hope so.

Plain Text Doesn’t Have to Be Plain-Jane

It’s perfectly fine to send plain text emails; they might work better for you than HTML.

But if you do go the plain text route, don’t assume that means there’s zero design involved!

How do YOU lay out your plain text emails to make them easy to read?

Share your ideas and thoughts in the comments!

Tweet This

A preheader is a small section that appears at the top of your email, above your message content.

For example, here’s the top portion of an email I received from Wells Fargo:

See the two lines above the logo? That’s the preheader. It’s called a “preheader” because the part just below it – the logo and navigation – are typically called the “header” of the email.

Many businesses use preheaders in their email marketing campaigns to get more subscribers to open and read their emails – and to ensure that their campaigns are as deliverable as possible.

How Can a Preheader Improve Response Rates and Deliverability?

In the uses I’ve seen, preheaders typically aim to do one or more of the following:

• Link to an online version of the email and/or remind subscribers to turn on images.

  Why: Many people view emails with images turned off. If your email relies on images to drive clicks or get a point across, you want those subscribers to be able to see them.

  Here’s an example from MarketingProfs.com:

  

• Ask subscribers to add the sender’s address to his/her address book.

  Why: As we’ve discussed before, getting in subscribers’ address books increases the likelihood that your email will (a) end up in their inbox and (b) actually get opened/read/clicked.

  Here’s an example from REI.com:

  

• Deliver a compelling one-line summary of the email to get subscribers to keep reading.

  Why: People are busy. Many of them scan emails rather than read them top-to-bottom, and many use Gmail-style text snippets or their email program’s preview pane to determine which emails to bother reading.

  Giving people an overview of why they should read your email can increase the odds that they’ll actually do so.

  Here’s an example from Backcountry.com:

  

• Provide an unsubscribe link.

  Why: People who want off your list will get off your list one way or another. If you make it hard to unsubscribe, they’ll click “Spam” – and they’ll keep doing so until they stop seeing emails from you in their inbox.

  Here’s an example from Viddler.com:

  

• Remind subscribers why they’re getting the email.

  Why: Again, people are busy. They may forget that they ever signed up to your list. And if they forget they signed up, they’re probably going to want off your list (see above).

  Reminding them why they’re getting your emails can help you re-engage subscribers and minimize spam complaints.

  Here’s an an example from LaQuinta.com:

  

How Do You Use Preheaders?

You’ll notice that in the examples above, not everyone uses their preheader the same way.

Doing every one of the things that you could do in a preheader could make it unnecessarily long; you have to pick out what works best for your email marketing campaigns.

Do you use preheaders in your emails? If so, what do you put in them?

Share your ideas in the comments!

Tweet This

If you could send a “silent video email” to subscribers, would you?

In a previous discussion of how to send video emails, we noted that Flash and JavaScript (which video programs typically rely on) are blocked by pretty much major every email provider out there.

Our suggestion, then, was to put a picture of the video in your email and encourage subscribers to click on it to play the video.

This is a useful way to drive traffic to your video, but it’s not quite a video email – after all, there’s no movement to grab the reader’s attention. It uses a static image just like other HTML emails do.

Recently, someone took the idea of video email a step further and created a campaign that used video in a way that I hadn’t thought feasible – and it displayed properly in nearly all major email programs!

Here’s how she did it…

“Silent Video Email” Uses Animated GIF

Take a look at this email created for the movie “Twilight” (link opens in new window).

That video trailer playing on the left-hand side? It not only works on the web page, but it works in all major email clients except Outlook 2007 (which only displays the first frame of the trailer).

In other words, it works in:

• AOL
• Yahoo
• Hotmail
• Gmail
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• And More

Pretty cool, no?

How’d They Do That?

The email uses an animated GIF to simulate video.

GIFs have been used before in numerous email campaigns, but I’ve never seen one used on this kind of scale – most tend to be just a couple of frames and are often used to create small moving icons.

Anna was kind enough to post a detailed write-up of how she made the GIF. I’ve included my “Cliffs Notes” version below, but her write-up includes a lot of useful suggestions on frame rates, dimensions, colors, and other technical details that can help you create a high-quality animation.

1. Record or capture video
2. Convert video file to GIF
3. Upload GIF to your website
4. Put GIF into your email just like any other image
5. Add remaining email content
6. Test and send your email!

A Few Things to Consider When Using This Tactic

1. This tactic can be useful not only for “normal” videos, but for any situation where animation might be helpful.

   Two quick examples of this: a 360-degree rotating view of a product and a “slideshow” of different rooms in a house for sale.

2. You don’t get any sound in the email with this method.

   So if your original video has sound, and that sound adds meaning/value to the video, link the image to a page of your website where your subscribers can go watch the video with sound.

3. If someone has images turned off, they’re not going to see the animation.

   Encourage subscribers to turn on images. Also, provide a text link to an online version of the video.

4. Keep the video short and the file size small. The image in Anna’s example was over 2MB, which is pretty big, especially for subscribers on slow Internet connections.

   You want your image to load quickly, right?

Tools That Can Help You Create Animated GIFs

Note: I have not used any of these solutions yet to create animated GIFs from video. Neither I nor AWeber endorse any of these solutions in particular. I Googled most of them. Please use your best judgment in deciding whether any of these are a good fit for you.

• Pro Motion – the software Anna used to create her GIF. Software download for Windows. Cost: $78.
• VidGIF – software download for Windows. Cost: $29.95.
• GIF Ninja – web-based video to GIF converter. Free. (But remember that when you use an online converter, you’re uploading your video to someone else’s site. If you’re not comfortable with that, don’t do it.)
• VTubeTools – web-based video to GIF converter. Free.

I’m sure there are other tools out there that can do this as well, but hopefully that’s a good starting point.

Other Discussions of Using Animation as Video

You can read a couple other discussions about this email, and about video email in general, at:

• No man is an iland
• Email Karma

What Do You Think?

Will you be trying animation in your own email marketing campaigns? Why/why not?

What pros/cons do you see to using animation as a “silent video” like this? What tips might you offer to make it as effective a tactic as possible?

Know someone who would benefit from this? Share it with them!