12 Game-Changing Email Design Best Practices for Boosting Conversion Rates

Guest Author - August 25, 2021 - Leave your thoughts.

No matter how much time you invest in crafting the perfect marketing strategy, the consumer will form an opinion at first glance. The first impression or click is a make-or-break shot. You can either have a winning goal or a missed hit.  

Before delving into the process and practices of email designs, let us first understand the term conversion. Customer conversion is a process that begins with the first click and excites your customer to dig deeper into your brand. The conversion process starts with grabbing the prospective customer’s attention and leads up to the final purchase. 

That’s where email marketing comes in. It comes in with a promise of high conversion rates. Email offers easy access into the personal space of your potential customers - their email ID. It has a 40% higher chance of attracting consumers than other social media platforms. 

An average consumer receives 122 emails per day. For your email to be most remembered you must consider the following practices for boosting your conversion rates. 

Despite the advancement in email technology, the average open rate is only 21%.

Imagine spending hours designing an email, and zero people end up opening it.

How would you feel? 

So, it is always wise to plan ahead and avoid this sour situation. Plan before designing your email and sending it out to your subscribers. If you have customer data, you should not have a problem developing the email based on their likes and dislikes. 

Studying your consumer, their buying behavior, their history of purchases, and their clicks should give you an insight into their personal interests. Based on the available data, you can plan and execute your email marketing strategy.  

Emails are an excellent medium to trigger the emotions of your consumer. You can evoke feelings of belonging, love, happiness, and trust through the content of your email and further amplify the effect using different colors.

Show your reader how much you care for them through phrases like “You matter, Your well-being is our preference, and It’s all about you.” Use soft colors like pink for these phrases, which show care and love. 

The color theory or color psychology in email marketing directly impacts the conversion process. Colors can excite the consumers and spark interest in your messages. For example, red grabs attention and holds the focus, whereas the blue color has a calming feeling.

According to a color test, the red CTA button had 21% times more impact on customers than the blue CTA. Did you know warm tones propagate happiness whereas darker colors show the intensity and loudness of a message?

You could create wonders by carefully designing your emails with different colors. 

Studies suggest that color plays an integral role in acceptance or rejection of a brand to almost 60%. Since most conversions occur in the first 90 seconds, colors are usually the first thing the customer sees. 

Source: metrilo.com

Fonts come in various weights and styles, giving you a lot of room to experiment. Fonts carry a lot of weight in list of email design best practices. They communicate the brand attributes to the readers. You are not bound to follow just one type; instead, play around with different styles like big, bold, small, or big. You can pair up different fonts to your liking. However, keep in mind not to use many fonts together as it takes away attention from your actual message and could serve as a distraction rather than an addition to your design.

Font size and style have an impact on the readability of the emails. According to research, choosing sans serif and monospaced improves the readability of differently-abled people, accounting for 10% of your audience.

Source: mailpoet.com

Studies suggest that images amplify the impact on recipients by 28%. Correct visual aids and image hierarchy increase the conversion rate. Image hierarchy means the intelligent placement of texts and images. Strategically place your pictures to add more meaning to your emails. Did you know you could also personalize the pictures in your emails? For example, add profile pictures of your subscribers who choose to share their information with you. 

Try incorporating personalized images into your emails to give your audience a sense of connection with the brand. It leaves a good impact on your subscriber.

Do you know what puts off your subscriber the most? A plain wordy email. So avoid that because your reader might mistake it for spam. Also, avoid bulk imaging. Even if there are a few images, they should grab attention and deliver the message effectively.

The “Call to Action” button is crucial for a better user experience. CTA buttons often take you to a landing page, or social media, website, or getting a lead to become a customer. It is therefore essential to have a CTA button that provokes a response from the reader.

Create the need for the user to press that CTA button. And how do we do that? We emphasize the CTA button by making it more visible by using bold color schemes. You can add catchy phrases and taglines, underline them to make your consumer curious to open the link or landing page. 

Source: unbounce.com

According to surveys, CTA increases clicks by 371%. While doing so, refrain from adding clickbait content and simple one-liners like “Click here,” etc. Make sure your CTA announcements and lines have persuasive words to motivate a click, for example, “Now is the time” Start the trial run now” Now or Never.” 

Yes, you heard it right. Add the unsubscribe button or option to your emails. Do not hesitate to do that. It is okay that some users will unsubscribe from your emails. This should not disappoint you; instead, it should motivate you to do better. Your emails or content is not always relevant to everyone you send. It is necessary that they leave you on a positive note. Make their lives simple and easy by giving them an option to unsubscribe whenever they want. 

Do you know why the concept of minimalist houses is catching on nowadays? Most celebrities in Hollywood believe in the idea of minimal houses; for instance, Kim Kardashian is a strong advocate of minimalism. And why do you think that is? That’s because you get a wholesome and modern experience with limited resources. You do not have to have everything to hold your stuff or make your house look presentable. 

Minimalist emails have the same idea. Companies can now convey their message without clutter and a plethora of information. How would you like it if you received an extremely wordy email? Would you read it? Subscribers do not appreciate lengthy emails. 

So let’s just keep it short, crisp, and to the point. The theory “less is more” works like magic. Below you can find a picture of a minimalist email sent from Grammarly. As you can see, with the limited number of words and a few photos, they have given the message. Not only is this short and crisp, but it is wholesome too.

Source: ecommercetips.org

Customer data is beneficial when it comes to email marketing. Since emails are your way into your customer’s inbox, wouldn't it be more personal to address your consumer with their name rather than a robotic hello? 

Instead of saying dear subscriber or reader, you can add their name and even personalize the email based on their interests and preferences. And guess what? You can automate your emails using automation flows and set all of this personalization on autopilot too. For example, Hello Linda is more meaningful than a simple hello. You can segment your audience based on their demographics or interests. Send out emails they can relate to. For example, if you have launched a new baby product, you might want to send it based on gender and age. Some brands send birthday wishes, and that adds a very personalized touch to your emails. 

Source:journeys.autopilotapp.com

How do you open your emails? Through PCs, mobile phones, or wearables? Everyone has a different preference. Your email should be friendly to android, windows, and iOS systems. The smartphone industry experienced massive growth in the year 2019 by reaching 2.65 million users. It should be mobile-friendly since a lot of people carry mobile devices nowadays.

The market for wearable technology is reaching new scores. Almost everyone you see is wearing a smartwatch. Looking at your mobile phone is even becoming too daunting of a task. According to studies in 2019, wearable technology is growing at an annual rate of 35%.

Responsive designs also include making strategic decisions to design emails that are friendly to smartwatches. When the browser is not present in wearable devices, specific changes will be made to the links by greying out the text. So it is necessary to make such amendments in your design to suit every kind of format or operating system.  

For a better and enhanced user experience (UX), design your emails according to different devices. It should have a responsive design, which means your email should support other formats or operating systems. Change the layout, pixels, resolutions, and sizes accordingly. It should be supported across all fronts. A responsive design ensures a high email retention rate.

Your subscriber should know why your brand is the best at what they do. You must have come across companies branding themselves by adding phrases like “Top of the game,” “Purveyors of finest fabrics,” “certified dealers.” These phrases highlight your brand and its accomplishments.

Your audience must know what you have achieved. This enables trust in your audience when they follow and buy your brand. Subscribers come from brand goodwill, image, and credibility. When you highlight your achievements, you grow your audience by establishing your credibility and a name for yourself. Customer retention is a byproduct of this process. 

Source: jamieoliverspizzeria.com

While it is essential for the brands to highlight their achievements, making your customers feel special is more important. When the subscriber feels loved and cared for, they are automatically driven towards your brand. Customer-centric design means designing your services according to the needs and wants of your customers. 

When you focus on your customers, they tend to reciprocate it through sales, referrals, positive word of mouth, and subscriptions and referrals received due to building a referral program that incentivizes them. Our goal is to make the subscriber click on that CTA button. This is possible when emails also have customer-centric branding. Have you heard of this famous saying, “Give Respect, Have Respect”? This becomes a reality when you give respect and appreciation to your customers; they return that respect. 

According to KPMG, companies that focus more on customer-centricity make 38% more profits than usual. It is hard to engage subscribers, but conversion rates will be high when the customer is fully engaged through the experience you enable. Customer-centricity reduces email bounce rates as well and increases click rates.

We live in a real world. Our efforts may go wasted. It is possible that the subscriber may totally reject our proposals and offers. We can quickly fail while executing our marketing and promotional strategies.

Despite all your efforts, you will still witness some bounces and unsubscribes. It does not mean that you, as a company have failed to deliver. It just means that we need to review our work, design, and efforts. We need to look for the bottlenecks in the system and learn from them. Adapting is the new cool; it is the new normal. Analyze your situation and change accordingly. 

In a nutshell, be mindful of your consumer. Keep an eye on your customer journey and understand how they navigate through each step. Today’s consumer is very smart and confident about their preference. Do not lag behind in your efforts to retain your customers.

Remember that other companies and brands also target your potential customers; they are as much after them as you are. Keep things short and easy. Your email draft should seem like an elevator pitch, delivering meaning, content, benefit, and value. Consumers seek a meaningful experience. You will stand out only when you shine brighter than the rest.

Author Bio

Sania Khan is a content creator at Mailmunch who has been writing for the past seven years. A content marketer by day and a poet by night, she previously worked for a large multinational and left it to pursue her passion for writing. She enjoys a witty read starts her day start with tea.