Designing for Destruction: Some E-mail Creative Basics

Is there a direct-marketing channel that is crueler to graphic designers than e-mail? It’s the only medium that forces marketers to create messages with the understanding that their design will be mangled beyond recognition when it hits most recipients’ inboxes.

Most e-mail inbox providers suppress images by default in incoming e-mail to protect people from spam, malware and viruses. As a result, unless recipients physically take the act of turn a mailer’s images on, they don’t appear. And the vast majority don’t take that action.

Need proof? Average open rates for commercial e-mail generally fall between 15% and 20%. An “open” is registered when the receiving computer calls for graphics from the sending machine. This means that between 80% and 85% of recipients of even commercial e-mail they signed up for are not turning images on.

Obviously, e-mail calls for different design tactics than direct mail.

“There are so many parameters and things you can’t do, it is a challenge to get something that’s going to work,” said Jim Hutchinson, Creative Director for marketing services provider Epsilon. “The way we look at it is, yes, we want to make it in brand and we want to make it look pretty and we want it to be a great concept, but at the end of the day, if it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, it’s not an effective communication.”

But too many marketers are simply repurposing their direct mail collateral for e-mail. Even worse, many employ one big image in their messages.

Eric Stablow, principal consultant for e-mail service provider Silverpop said: “Often when we work with agencies, we have to put their designers through a sort of e-mail boot camp.”

And the process sometimes isn’t all that harmonious, he added. “I’ve had designers say: ‘I just can’t do that,’” said Stablow. However, the disconnect isn’t all designers’ fault, he said. For one thing, most designers aren’t informed on a regular basis as to how their creative performs.

As a result, one of Stablow’s most important recommendations on commercial e-mail design isn’t really a design tip at all.

“One of the biggest disconnects is that the results are never communicated back to the designer and the designer doesn’t have a stake in the results,” he said. “And that’s a big problem. A lot of marketing departments are resources constrained and as soon as they get one e-mail out the door they’re on to the next one. They’re not looking back to see what worked.”

To overcome this problem, Stablow recommended tying designers’ compensation to how well their creative performs.

“If you’re working with an agency, you can really hold their feet to the fire,” he said.

As for how to overcome the broken-graphics problem, Stablow recommended finding a balance between text and images so the marketer’s main message and call-to-action will be seen even with images turned off. The way to ensure this has been done is to send the e-mail to a test account where images are turned off and view it there, he added.

“The calls to action need to be something that will work even in an images-off situation,” he said. “I’ve seen this myself. If the call to action is a link in the form of text, it will always produce more than the image will. It’s been proven over and over again.”

However, he added, in e-mails where the images have been turned on, a graphic button will out pull a text link, so it is important to include a mix of both.

Hutchinson added: “The more links the better. You never know exactly what’s going to get someone to click at any given moment, so—even redundant links—if you’ve got something that you really want them to do, you might include more than one link to that place.”

Stablow also pointed out it’s important to include the company’s brand in either the “from” line, the subject line, or both. It’s especially important to make sure the from line doesn’t change from mailing to mailing. Studies have shown that people tend to base their decisions on whether to open an e-mail on who is in the from line and what their previous experience has been with them.

Another important design consideration is that many people, possibly most, read their messages in their preview pains. As a result, the portion of the message they see if they don’t scroll down is drastically reduced.

“Sometimes marketers put this gigantic image on top with the logo and some lifestyle shot and they lose all the real estate that’s in the preview pane,” said Stablow. “The top part of the e-mail should be something that is visual without the images on. It’s not always the most beautiful thing.”

The rule of thumb for preview pane design is that important elements of the message should be high and to the left.

“As long as it’s above the fold you should be OK,” said Stablow.

Hutchinson recommends designing e-mail in postcard like “chunks” that can be read in the preview pane.

“A lot of people will scroll through the e-mail in their preview pane to see if anything piques their interest,” he said.

Lastly, Stablow recommended designing e-mails with the various social networks in mind so recipients can share the message via Facebook, Digg, MySpace or LinkedIn.

“If it’s a great sale, someone might want to share it on their Facebook or MySpace page,” he added.