Designing Your eMail

I purposely titled this blog “designing your eMails” as I have a firm belief that each eMail has a unique purpose and each purpose should be designed differently. For example, you might have an eMail specifically designed as a newsletter, or as an order confirmation, promotion, or even as an advertisement. However, before I write about some of those unique purposes, you must remember this: designing and writing your eMail must be done with your customer and his/her interests in mind. Make it personal, make it concise, design it based on its purpose, and remember that this eMail has a unique purpose … to drive the reader to an action (either to a website, social media site, make a contact, etc.).

Creating a Template from the Top Down

Let’s begin with simple layout. The header immediately gets the attention of the reader and tells them who you are and what is the purpose of this eMail communication. I personally am bothered when I open eMails in my Outlook viewing pain and the header takes up more than 15% of my preview pane. Why would you want to hide the content of your eMail, so try to remember to keep it short and sweet. In addition, the header is easily forgotten for important link placement, so make sure that you include links on your icons, select graphics and even eMail navigation. Finally, don’t abuse this space with too many links, but remember the “keep it simple stupid” methodology.

Tabs or sub-headers are a great way to promote your website and drive traffic to it without having to use your valuable real estate in the body of your eMail. Make sure that you don’t use fonts that are larger than the body font. Some people differ with me on this comment and some companies have guidelines that are just the opposite; however, I believe that most people will scan an eMail in just a second (I also believe that most of them just scan a preview) and if 1/3 of your screen is wasted with a header and a sub-header or tab navigation, you will have lost that valuable moment to capture the reader’s interest in your eMail topics.

The Juice, Spark and Selling Point … The eMail Body

The next part of the eMail is the body. The body will change in design and appearance based on the purpose of the eMail. For example, if you are designing an advertisement or a promotional eMail, you want to use large images and limited text placed in specific areas. Another example would be a newsletter. A newsletter would need to divide the body into multiple areas with text, images and be designed in a common format and layout for consistency. As most newsletters have multiple topics/articles the design clearly separate each article and the text should be written in a short format designed to grab the attention of the reader and drive them to a website for more information.

Summary

I’ll focus more on different eMail purposes and designs in the future and will write more in my Twitter account this week, but I can’t stress that if you don’t pay attention to your design at the beginning the reader will become confused by the multiple designs that you send, your eMail build time will be significantly long and will become extremely difficult to analyze for future enhancement. Finally, the next blog will focus on writing your eMails, but until then, don’t forget to send me your comments or questions and remember to follow my Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/ebizlessons or by searching for the fanpage "eBizlessons" on FaceBook for daily updates to complement this blog.

Choosing How to Send Your eMails

Welcome to the first blog for eBizlessons. As I’m still working on the design of this blog, Twitter and FaceBook, I’m going to focus this week’s topic on eMail and will start writing about websites in a few weeks.

Choosing How to Send Your eMails

So, you’re ready to start sending professional eMails. You’ve been receiving eMails for years and have several ideas and hopefully good examples of the styles of eMails that you want to send, but now what do you do?

Document Your Needs

This is a very common mistake. Most people don’t take the time to review what are their requirements. They’ll simply say, I want to send an eMail and that’s it, when in a reality, they need to know:

• Who are your eMail recipients?
• How will the recipients view their eMail (i.e. AOL, BlackBerry, iPhone, Yahoo, MSN or Hotmail, Outlook, etc.)?
• What eMail styles do you want to send (i.e. announcement, invitation, newsletter, etc.)?
• Does the eMail need to be sent in multiple languages, currencies, country specific characters and layout, etc.
• Will the content need to change based on the recipient (i.e. is it dynamic so that text, images, links are different for each recipient)?
• Do you need to know analytics about each eMail send?
• Will you need to integrate your eMail system with other systems and what are those systems?

Review Your eMail Service Providers (ESP)

While building your eMails in Outlook or another eMail program is simple for basic eMails, you’ll find that there are serious limitations. This is where an eMail Service Providers (ESP) can help. ESPs typically provide the tools you need to meet your requirements, send to thousands of recipients at the same time, have releationships with Internet Service Providers (ISP) and have developed more advanced features and functionalities. Some examples of ESPs include ExactTarget, YesMail, StrongMail, and CheetahMail. While I currently use ExactTarget and most of my blog will reference ExactTarget, the selection of your ESP should be made based on your needs … which is why I said the first step is to document your needs.

Choosing the right ESP is like choosing your car. Every car can drive, the differences are the options, style, features and price. The same applies to ESPs. In fact, if you listed your requirements from 1 to 100, I would say that 95% of the ESPs will meet them. The difference is their individual cost model and the features and functionalities that they can provide that you may not need now or ever. The best recommendation is to limit the ESPs by their ability to meet your requirements, document and compare the “extra benefits that separate each ESP,” request a trial period, talk to references and make your decision based on needs, benefits, usability and costs.

Summary

As a wrap-up, the decision for the ESP is up to you and should be based on your needs.  Hopefully you've found this blog to help you with your ESP decision, but feel free to contact me with any comments or questions and remember to follow my Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/ebizlessons or by searching for the fanpage "eBizlessons" on FaceBook for daily updates to complement this blog.