If you haven't spruced up your email in the past couple of years, you're way overdue for a check-up. Here's why your design needs to be retooled.
The success of your email program depends on many factors working together well: a strong mailing list, good budget resources and list software, and the know-how to make it all work. Email design usually places dead last, with people thinking, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
But the truth is, your email design could be broken without your realizing it because the symptoms will show up somewhere else -- in more spam complaints, more general complaints, fewer conversions or more inactivity.
How your email is put together -- with regard to the use of images, text, format and trouble-making extras like forms, video and rich text -- can make it easy or impossible for readers to view your messages. A well-designed message can slide through spam filters, while a poor design can get your email trashed, either by filters or readers themselves.
If you haven't redesigned your email in the last two or three years, you're way overdue for a check-up. You must be sure your email design not only complies with new ISP standards and reader expectations, but also continues to serve your company and its marketing goals well.
Ask yourself: Is it time for an extreme email makeover? These considerations can help you decide whether your design needs to be retooled:
1. When you redesign your website
Obviously, your email should reflect your basic web design. It reinforces your marketing mission. It's also another way readers can be sure the messages that go out under your brand or company name really do come from you and not some rogue affiliate or spammer hitching a ride on your reputation.
Has your company gone through a name or ownership change or logo update? Have there been major changes in your website's appearance or navigation? Your email must reflect those changes, especially if any of those elements are prominent in your email.
If you change or rearrange your site navigation, double-check to ensure you haven't inadvertently broken anything in your email's various paths to your site. After all, that's your email's primary job -- moving readers to your website.
2. When you change the type of content you're presenting
Has your email content evolved over the years? Maybe in the past, you sent out long sales letters or complete articles in a single message. Or perhaps you sent out a mix of articles and offers, but now you have narrowed your focus to a single topic or offer.
If you put your email content on a diet, you should streamline your design as well. A deep vertical well in the center of the email body served you well when you were more copy-intensive. A shorter, snappier style and format would be a horizontal layout that shows more copy higher up in the message body.
3. When you find yourself fielding more complaints from people who can't find what they need
This could actually be the result of an earlier redesign that you didn't road-test enough before you launched it. Long-time readers might miss seeing key elements, like an offer or support information, because you hid them behind images that don't render unless the reader actively downloads them. Or, readers may be getting frustrated because they're viewing your email in their preview panes and not scrolling down far enough to find the information they want before giving up.
What, exactly, are people complaining they can't find anymore? It better not be your unsubscribe link because when people find unsubscribing dicey in any way, they click the report-spam button instead.
Also, you should track which links got clicked the most often in your last five to 10 email messages, and see if you can move them around to make them more prominent.
4. When your email messages stop driving action
This includes any kind of action. The biggest warning sign is when people stop clicking on the call to action in your offer, or your open rate falls several percentage points each month.
A tired old design that you haven't updated once in this decade makes every message look like the one that came before it. Worse, you become invisible in the inbox, overwhelmed by spam and passed over for better email from your competitors.
Your design could be helping to put your readers to sleep. Wake them up with a fresh new look that puts information where they want to see it and a campaign that calls attention to the changes.
5. When you see your message on an email client or mobile device and you can't believe it's yours
Or maybe you don't even recognize it as yours because it's on a Blackberry and all you see is line after line of URLs. Maybe that's the blast of cold water you need to see how worn out your email design has become. You're so busy working on the production end of your email that you don't really look to see how it appears on the publishing end.
Reviving your email design doesn't have to mean a top-to-bottom overhaul. Make a few changes here and there -- trade out a single large image for smaller product photos, move the call to action up higher in the message body, swap a hot-linked image for a text link that will show up even with images blocked -- and then test over several messages to see if you notice a change.
Don't be afraid to push for change if you have the numbers to show your email program isn't bringing in the returns it used to. Especially in this grim economy, you need to make your email dollars work harder for you.
In my next column, I'll share a list of quick fixes you can make in your email to boost performance if you don't have the budget for a top-to-bottom overhaul.
Wendy Roth is the senior manager of training services for Lyris Technologies.