Ideas to spice up your email marketing!

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Here are 9 ideas to add to your visual designs for a drastic facelift to your campaigns: design trends that rejuvenate good old email solicitation techniques and that’ll make you stand out in inboxes.

ADNETIS has been working in email marketing for almost 20 years! During all these years, our specialists have had to adapt to changes in the industry and remain on the lookout for trends. They’ll tell you: the creation of newsletters is now overflowing with possibilities! We’re a long way from the days when they were wondering whether recipients will see the HTML version of the email or just a text version.

Technological advances are not just about the mobility of email, but about the creation of dynamic emails in its entirety. It can therefore be difficult to stay on track with all the innovations that keep coming around.

Here are 9 ideas of trendy visual elements that you should try out in your email marketing campaigns and that’ll spark up your creativity.

Aesthetics: organization is key

Your newsletters must be attractive in order to appeal to your recipients and achieve your campaign’s objectives: it’s only logical!

The look of your newsletters depends first and foremost on the flawless organization of your creative process. This is what’s called the general aesthetics of a newsletter, which resides in global work methods aimed at creating a harmonized visual between each of the textual and visual elements.

This is done by separating the main tasks into 4 steps:

At the end of the 4 steps of creation, your whole newsletter will be aesthetically harmonized. Your header and footer will make a perfect match, while your texts will be laid out perfectly with the visual design of the email.

You may have the best ideas in the world, but the aesthetics of your newsletters will never live up to expectations without organization. In short, put the effort into every step of the creative process!

2. Originality: look for something new

We could sum up originality in email marketing through one sentence: you should never feel like you know enough about it! The field of marketing and communications is constantly evolving and changing.

Our advice: stay abreast of trends by reading about design trends, subscribing to newsletters or magazines specializing in graphic design, reading blogs on the subject or even attending conferences. Do some research, there are plenty of resources. But beware! It’s common to get lost when consuming information for inspiration. Each time you make a discovery, always adapt what you learn to your situation, because your business is unique.

To be original in your newsletters, you must first identify the essence of your communication (why do you send emails?) and refocus your creation process with that one marketing objective in mind. Have fun creating original concepts and discovering new horizons!

3. Personalization: adapt your content

Email personalization is nothing new. This principle was integrated into marketing campaigns, even spam campaigns, from the very beginning of the email. Each email address is unique, which allows you to personalize your newsletters to your subscribers.

Still in 2020, most campaigns stop at mentioning the name of the subscriber. However, we can now personalize content with regards to the needs of a clientele or even consumer habits. Of course, the creation of your newsletters will be more complex, but your campaign results will be significantly better if you personalize your emails.

It all starts with knowing your subscribers and segmenting your mailing lists. By properly segmenting your database, you’ll be able to customize the content according to your subscribers’ interests. For example, let’s look at the following example:

There’s a wide range of personalized content strategies that can be adapted to your newsletters depending on your business sector and the products/services you offer! By accumulating the statistical results of your mailings, by properly integrating your subscribers with relevant information and by doing both things while keeping in mind your communication strategies, you’ll know exactly which ones to use for all your types of customers.

4. Monochrome: trendy and effective

A black and white newsletter, why not? Monochrome allows you to get straight to the point, in a clean and modern email. Using a single shade of color is the most trending visual design right now.

The use of monochrome also allows you to bring a crucial element of your newsletter to the forefront. For example, imagine yellow tulips in a black and white field. Using color contrast allows you to highlight your product while capturing the eye of the subscriber with retro modern graphics.

Try monochrome in your next newsletter. You’ll surprise your regular subscribers!

5. The dark mode: watch out

Welcome to the dark world of email! But rest assured, there’s nothing scary about it. Well… except for email marketers. Sending newsletters? Then you’re unfortunately concerned!

Introduced at the end of 2019 in the Apple (iOS) and Android operating systems, the dark mode is now available for most mobile users and even in some desktop systems. This display mode allows users to opt for blackened screens that would have benefits on health, battery economy and visual aesthetics.

What’s the dark mode? Nothing more than a black background instead of white, which reduces the brightness. However, if your email contains black writing, it’ll turn white because the background is black. Thus, the dark mode reverses the colors displayed, which can be quite a puzzle when creating your newsletters.

Indeed, if you ignore the dark mode, there will be unreadable text in your newsletter, missing images or unwanted outlines around visual elements. In short, you must now adapt your emails for the dark mode by opting for images on a transparent background.

To help you find all the information you need to adapt to the advent of the dark mode, we’ll soon release a complete report on the subject…

6. Opt for 3D images

Add a third dimension to your images to make your campaign stand out from the crowd! Not only is the result aesthetic, eye-catching and trendy, but this visual technique can also be used for practical purposes. It allows you to highlight the relief and depth of certain objects, a feature that only 3D design can provide.

That’s right, no need to take amateur photos if you don’t own professional equipment. You only need to do a little research in the royalty-free image banks to find the desired picture or ask for the services of an illustrator that’ll be able to create 3D perspectives of the desired object.

For example, developers of residential projects make extensive use of 3D images to put buildings into perspective before they are even built. 3D therefore highlights the advantages of a product.

7. Cartoon characters: you should try them

Cartoons in newsletters? That’s right!

Fictional characters aren’t only presented to children! They’ve been part of adult advertising campaigns since the very first cartoons were created. They have the potential to be much more expressive, colorful and action-packed than any real image. In short, they replace simple photographs and add originality to the message to be sent in order to sell a product/service.

The creation and use of eye-catching fictional characters quickly became the essence of many campaigns in Quebec. They’re used on television, in newspapers and more recently in email marketing campaigns. In the same way that intelligent robots are used in businesses, your cartoons could become a primary piece of your marketing strategies.

To sum up, cartoons are simply funny, and you’ll benefit from adding a touch of humor to your newsletters.

8. Typography: be original

You’re a graphic designer? Then you must have favorite fonts or spend a lot of time finding the perfect typography for the slogans of the ads you’re visually designing. We all know that typography is of great importance in communication so that a message gets across and its selection is often long and sometimes painful. With email, we’ll make it easy for you!

When it comes to email, it’s not as easy to play with typography as it is with your graphic design or word processing tools. Unfortunately, email inboxes do not interpret all fonts, which greatly limits the possibilities!

Only 5 typographies are recognized as bullet proof fonts:

Fortunately, there are new multimedia integration features allowing us to use more typographies safely! It’s now possible to use a variety of fonts in newsletters as long as you follow certain rules:

Original typography display is relatively new in email marketing and is increasingly used to make newsletters on par with websites. Moreover, it makes newsletters more attractive like any good traditional advertisement. All you need to do is refer to a multimedia integration professional with a good knowledge of email marketing.

9. Videos: exceed the limits

Youtube is crushing the competition for the new generation! A new audience now regularly consults videos on the web and expects your newsletters to evolve in the same direction.

Whether you’re ready to use videos to promote your products or simply to provide your customers with tutorials, including videos in your emails is a great way to engage your subscribers on a regular basis.

Try a video in a newsletter, you’ll be stunned by your click-through rate!

To conclude, keep in mind that before you even consider improving the design of your newsletters, you need to evaluate what email challenges can compromise your campaign. Consulting our list of email marketing mistakes to avoid will ensure that the professionalism of your newsletters is on point. Then, creating original designs will be the icing on the cake!

Francis Sauvé

Directeur marketing

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C : fsauve@adnetis.com
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