10 tips for creating an email template that works for you

Email is one of the most important digital marketing channels thanks to its impressive ability to facilitate both customer loyalty and high conversion rates at a negligible cost.

As a small business, having a template, or several templates that you alternate, is a good idea for consistency, and also to ease the amount of time it takes to send out an email campaign. Any automated emails you have, such as your welcome programme, should also align to the same template style in order to keep consistency.

You just need to make sure that your email template is working as hard as it should be. Here are my tips for creating a template that engages and converts:

1. Be mobile first. It sounds obvious in this day and age, but start out remembering to design for mobile and you won't have any problems with clunky or weighty design down the road.
   
   
2. Think about how your branding and what you stand for can be replicated into your email newsletters and make it flow throughout the template. This can be visually, through the language used, what is featured, and so on. Everything should be thought about including the practical information such as unsubscribe link. Also maintain the same font style and sizes as you use elsewhere, if possible.
   
   
3. Have a clear header with links back to your site. Much as you have menu options on your website, it is important to provide some key categories in your email to give customers the chance to quickly click through.
   
   
4. Remember that the first few words in your email will be used as preview text in many email inboxes, so think about what and where that sentence will be.
   
   
5. Make room for areas of content and also include plenty of images;  not just one or the other. The size and shape of these areas should be kept consistent across all templates to maintain your email style.
   
   
6. Create sections that will keep the way content and offers appear both consistent and fresh. These can be changed every time you send out an email campaign, or can be static if you're talking about bestsellers or core products. Just remember to freshen it up depending on your performance statistics after a few sends.
   
   
7. Remember to have alternative text describing your images for when the image does not load or the email is read out instead of read on screen.
   
   
8. Use obvious call to actions throughout the email and within every section. Make sure that all links are clear and that the language you use matches the journey someone will take. Buttons should always have the same look.
   
   
9. Remember your customer's journey, so make sure all links are directed at the relevant page of your website, and use tracking so that you can see what is and isn't working. 
   
   
10. Keep it simple enough to make it quick for you to edit, but with enough content to keep your customers engaged. I often recommend that a personalised welcome is a good way of doing this. Spend time working out how much you'll have to change every time and try to minimise this.

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Once you have a template you will see your time investment into your email programme decrease, but your results improve as customers respond to the consistency and clarity of what you are sending them. 

I have some great email examples over on my Pinterest page here.

Of course, if you have any questions on this or want some help with your email programme then please do get in touch. You can get hold of me via my contact form or @digitalmarketingmama.