Study after study confirms the potential of email marketing, but what's less clear is the creative path you should follow to achieve your goals.
If you're looking for information on how to create the best email marketing campaign, you'll find plenty of articles recommending and extolling the use of plain text as the secret to a successful newsletter. However, if you check your inbox, you'll see that commercial emails sent by well-known brands usually have various design elements, such as colors, fonts, images, and even video.
So what's the answer? Does email design really matter? Should you really kuwait phone number data invest in hiring an email designer (or start studying design) or would it be better to hone your writing skills and stick to plain text for your next email marketing campaign?
In this article, we'll examine the impact design has on conversions and explain when it matters and when it doesn't.
1 What the pros are using now
2 When should you work with HTML emails?
3 When plain text is better
3.0.1 Translated by Micheli
3.0.1.1 Joydeep Bhattacharya is a digital marketing evangelist and the author of SEOsandwitch.com. He has helped numerous brands improve their online presence. His articles have been published on sites like Search Engine Watch, SEMrush, Smartinsights, Hubspot and several others. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
What the pros are using now
Before we examine the pros and cons of plain design and text, let's establish an understanding of what marketers are actually doing these days.
It's easy to think that richly designed HTML emails are the most commonly used. After all, we probably see a lot more of them in our inbox than plain text emails. (Unless you're subscribed to multiple B2B email lists.)
But perception doesn’t always translate into reality. A Databox survey found that 62% of marketers use a combination of plain text messages and HTML emails.
This data highlights an important fact: you don’t have to take a binary approach to email design. You don’t have to work with just HTML or just plain text. There’s probably a place in your strategy for both.
With that in mind, we can examine HTML emails versus plain text through a slightly more focused lens.
When should you work with HTML emails?
As I write this post, many marketers are working on advanced newsletter designs.
Major brands like Nike adorn their offerings with outdoor creativity . Boutique agencies blast their emails with color schemes and imagery . Airbnb is elevating tourism photography to an art form . But does it make a difference? Do these beautifully designed marketing pieces perform better because of their aesthetics?
Ultimately, and what usually matters to a small business
Do these strategies get sales?
Unless we ask Nike for data on its email marketing campaigns, it's impossible to be sure. But it seems the answer is yes, under the right circumstances.
