Eliciting Effective Enewsletters

Email newsletter (enewsletter) design is constantly updating. To have the greatest impact with your enewsletter, you’ll want to keep up with the latest trends, especially since email marketing has a great success rate. In 2015, 44% of all email recipients made a purchase because of a promotional email. The new enewsletter design styles focus on technical format, aesthetic design and innovative content.

Technical Format

Before working on surface design or writing content copy, the technical format of your email newsletter must be finalized. Although the capabilities in formatting your email newsletter depend on the style chosen, many options exist when it comes to formatting your enewsletter.

Responsive layouts in newsletter design are trending in response to the number of consumers who view email on channels other than desktop computers. This includes everything from mobile phones to tablets and even smart TVs. Fifty-four percent of emails are opened on a mobile device. Responsive design allows your enewsletter to be viewed in the best format no matter what size of screen you audience uses, which is important because 42% of mobile users will delete an email that doesn’t display correctly on their devices.

Buttons, icons and hyperlinks with clear and enticing calls-to-action are necessary to promote consumer engagement, link to further news and increase shareability with a larger audience. And although it’s not a new trend, don’t forget to include a link to view the email in a browser in case the email channel isn’t supported.

Aesthetic Design

Once your technical format is sorted, it’s time to work on aesthetic design. The new trends for email newsletter design are all about minimalism. Minimalist design is characterized by clean lines, solid colors and abstract patterns. The reason behind minimalism’s popularity goes back, once again, to the growing number of people viewing email on technology other than desktop computers. Many people read in a hurry and with an average attention span of 8 seconds your newsletter has to be clear in order to be read. Implementing a modular template design such as the one used in our own newsletter, Juicy News, allows the material to be easily seen. In conjunction with a modular template design, white space is often used to further emphasize the necessary material and allow easy viewing.

Innovative Content

Delivering valuable material is what consumers want most and in order to do that, your newsletter needs to include innovative content. New trends in enewsletter design focus on short and sweet copy that’s written at an 8^th grade reading level to allow the maximum amount of people to understand your content. This applies to subject lines, as well.

Subject lines with 35 characters or less have open rates of more than 52% and click-through rates of more than 69%. The key is to hone your copy and emphasize important information so that your newsletter works in a two-fold manner—ready for skimming, but also equipped for in-depth reading.

82% of consumers open emails from companies and businesses. This means that the critical part in creating an enewsletter is knowing your audience. Choose the most relevant and engaging topics for your audience so they continue to subscribe and promote your enewsletters to other people.

Compelling calls-to-action (CTAs) are essential in any form of digital marketing so that consumers engage with your content to access more information. For more on CTAs, read our article on Calls-to-Action that Work for Your Website.

Create an enewsletter that gets people talking. Appleton Creative is an award-winning, full-service digital marketing agency located in Orlando, Florida. Appleton works with local, national and international clients to deliver custom content, persuasive online ads and expertly crafted campaigns. By implementing valuable and shareable digital content strategies, Appleton can create the perfect social and online marketing experience for your brand and audience. Your Internet advertising goals are worth a conversation: contact us at 407-246-0092 or info@appletoncreative.com

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