Here at display block we often receive the response, cool name, what do you do? We immediately know from that response whether we are talking to a geek or a marketer. Geeks get the name. If you look at the raw source code of any HTML email it’s likely to be littered with, display:block; and you can see the colon, semicolon in our logo. We thought it pretty clever and likened it to an Easter egg, the gift that you unwrap and then when you get into it, holds another little surprise for you. However, in the interests of full disclosure, this is what’s in a name…
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Top 10 things to consider when building responsive email.
Your users Having a good understanding of who your subscribers are and knowing what types of devices they use is obviously the most important thing. You should not only understand who your users are but consider whether they have the latest devices or possibly only read emails on the desktop. Most email broadcasting platforms these days give a device breakdown. This is important but it is also worth remembering that most people use more than one device to check their emails. What are you trying to achieve? This is a question that relates to all email but is especially relevant when it comes to responsive email. Some marketing managers are too keen to hide vast swathes of the email, wrongly…
Calls-to-action. What are they and how can I use them effectively?
What is a call-to-action? In email marketing a call-to-action (usually abbreviated as CTA) is a button, banner or some type of graphic or text meant to encourage a user to click. The action you want people to take could be anything: purchasing items to booking hotels and attending events. Calls-to-action are common place not only in email marketing but on websites, ebooks and even at the end of blog posts. Email newsletters should have some sort of call-to-action, a response you want readers to complete. But how do you encourage users to act? How do you create an effective call-to-action? Here are a few quick, essential tips for creating a quality CTA. Striking design For a reader to click on…
Responsive email workshop
Thanks to everyone who attended the responsive email workshop last week at High Road House in Chiswick. The night was very enjoyable and the food for those that stayed afterwards was excellent. We have been asked for the slides from the talk and I have hosted them here. download presentation
We deserve a better user experience
More than half of all email opens we see are now on mobile devices, not just for the cool young peoples brands but for pretty much everyone – mobile has overtaken the desktop and the trend is continuing. Every retail and travel client we work with see over 50% of their emails opened on mobile devices, so why do so many businesses continue to send emails which, on a phone don’t render properly, with text too small to read and images that aren’t optimised? Why do they make it difficult to tap links, make their customers do the finger and thumb wave to read their message, pixelate their images and get lost in their copy? In essence why are they…
Necessary elements of a great email design.
You can usually tell if an email has been well designed as it lands in your inbox. If the designer and coder has done their job well you will immediately be aware of a few things. The email is legible without the use of images. The text content is actual text and not hidden within an image. This is good for a number of reasons but mainly it allows the user to engage with the email immediately. The email will also employ colour in the spaces where images should be. This type of image-off optimisation encourages readers to enable images, see the email in all of its glory and continue reading. If the email is well designed the alt text…
Seconds out – how do people read email these days?
The obvious answer is “mainly on a smartphone” and the second answer is “very quickly and often not at all” and this presents a range of challenges. The good news is that, if you get it right, it also presents opportunities. First impressions have always been important, we all make initial judgments on things we see. What is changing is the sheer number of things presented to us and nowhere is this more prevalent than in the online World. We have become skilled at filtering and used to receiving and sending information in snippets via social media. The result of this is that we are taking less time to formulate an opinion about what we see online and for marketers,…