Many professionals would tell you that quality copy will always be the best design. This works well in most cases: your ads, log articles, press releases and cases where words are your main weapons of choice.
But when it comes to email marketing, things are slightly different.
As a graphic designer and writer at Akubo, I had my share of experience in composing e-newsletters for our projects. Granted, I’m no digital marketing expert, but I’m still learning, and so far I learned that good copy alone won’t be enough. An effective e-newsletter calls for both content and design to work together.
Email design is not just art — it’s how you present information.
Email newsletters tend to not have the luxury of big spaces like in websites, so you have to design while observing a width limit. Think about who your main readers are. Do you write for older people? Set the font size bigger than just 11px. Twenty-something men? You wouldn’t choose a pink color scheme.
You can go fancy with images. You can go simple with a plain white background. The bottom line is, a newsletter shouldn’t look like big, tight chunks of text. A well-designed newsletter is readable: you want your readers to know clearly what the topic is, to digest the information smoothly from the first sentence to the last link.
It’s a piece of your brand puzzle
How you design your email newsletters conveys the persona of your organization, and so it has to complement the designs of your logo, website, flyers, packaging, and even your Facebook Page cover banners.
Consistency is key to developing your brand, whether you’re a new startup or not, and even more so if you’re a nonprofit. A strong brand helps you acquire resources and form relationships with more partners or donors. So if you’re sending out e-newsletters for your organization, you might as well design (and yes, write) it to reflect your organization’s style.
Design is emotional
It happens every day. When a new song plays, what catches our attention is its melody. When we look at a menu, we linger on the mouthwatering photos of food.
Humans — or our brains, specifically — are naturally made for what they call visual processing. The colors you choose, the tone you set, and even the pictures you use will affect how your donors or customers respond to your message. You’d want them to be curious or motivated enough to read everything down to the last sentence.
There you go. Simply think of design as the melody to your newsletter content’s lyrics. Design will always be the first thing readers see when they open your email, so put in some extra effort and make a good impression (or better) with your next issue!
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This article was written by Joy Martir, a graphic designer/writer of the Akubo team.