You might want all the bells and whistles when you’re crafting the best email designs for your marketing campaigns. Yet, the best way to go about this project is to step back and think about your audience.

If you’re opting for a packing your email campaign with a lot of information, consider whether that’s the ideal way to communicate to an older audience that might have trouble navigating between different messages or focusing on the one you want to emphasize the most. It would be information overflow.

Similarly, if your email design is going to an e-commerce subscriber list of customers, you may want to focus on information such as different products. However, now you’re facing an additional issue. Your content isn’t text, but the product, and so your email design needs to highlight and beautify each product.

Making this process a lot easier for you, we’ve tallied the best tips across the web.

Best Email Design Tip #1: Forget the Big Picture

Eduardo Kobra reinterpits Alfred Eisenstaedt
Even though you might want a big beautiful design, email design size matters.

Studies show that the more a reader has to keep their eye movement along the same line before a line break, the longer it takes them to process the information. The longer it takes someone to read or process something, the sooner they’re disinterested and walk away.

That stat has a lot to do with why content skyrocketed once mobile technology developed. People go through content more on their mobile devices. The same goes for your newsletter. You want your desktop version to be at 600px and you want to also check and see how that converts to mobile. In most cases, this means keeping design simple and focusing on one or two key images versus flooding your email campaign with images.

You want your desktop version to be at 600px and you want to also check and see how that converts to mobile. In most cases, this means keeping design simple and focusing on one or two key images versus flooding your email campaign with images.

If you do have a lot of images to share, focus on one or two for the email campaign and include a link to a landing page that hosts more. Because size matters, you’re going to want to be very selective about what type of content you include. This also applies to the level of text you have. Sure people are scanning for information, but they don’t want to keep scanning. Keep the text brief with a link to a landing page. If you absolutely feel the need to add in a lot of text, then have breakers and subheadings with bullet points. These markers will help draw the eye to key information, helping your reader get through it faster.

Best Email Design Tip #2: Think About the Big Picture

Times Square (NYC)
So while we’re forgetting about the literal big picture, we do want to keep in mind the figurative big picture. When there’s so much going on in the world of your subscriber – or even just in your email campaign – how do you draw their eye to what matters?

An email campaign isn’t just about saying hello and letting people know you exist. In other words, it’s not enough to just send the campaign. Best email design practices mean that you need to drive home a point. Each email campaign MUST have a call to action. The most powerful way to set up your call to action is in your design. Your email design needs to highlight the call to action but also clearly frame and identify it. The call to action could be a key point or message; it could be a donate button; it could be a ‘buy now’ button, etc.

The truth is most email campaign readers don’t scroll all the way through your email campaign. Instead, they make a snap decision. This means that you’re best email design practice includes keeping your call to action at the top. For content-driven campaigns, that means using the major headlines as the key point you want to drive home so that if that’s all your reader read, they’ve walked away with the bit of info you want. For e-commerce, it’s about capturing someone’s attention with the sale teaser, such as the percentage off, the coupon or the window of time – all these things. From there you want to keep the buy now button not at the end of the campaign, but in the middle of the frame or picture so it’s still easy to access.

Author Bio:

by Shireen Qudosi

Shireen Qudosi is Benchmark Email's Online Marketing Specialist and Small Business Advocate. An Orange County based writer, Shireen specializes in online marketing and public relations. She has written for over 75 publications and has launched nine successful new media campaigns to date. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Denver Post, the Oklahoman and Green Air Radio, among others.