I have many years of experience in email marketing, starting back in early 2005 when a large part of my job involved conceiving creative ideas for various offers and promotions and then building them into a tangible e-shot design. At the time I was inexperienced but I soon learnt what was required of me from both a technical and marketing point of view.

Let us begin by outlining the objectives and requirements of an email marketing campaign:

• It must pass spam filters
• It must be cross-browser and cross-client compatible
• It should be visually attractive
• It should promote a clear call to action

Let’s break these down into bite-sized pieces piece of information.

It must pass spam filters

This is a tough one because spam filters are getting harder to pass through. I am going to assume that you are only mailing out to opt-in members, and NOT spamming people. Sending unsolicited messages is the biggest reason for emails to end up in the spam filter. Also it’s illegal and morally wrong, you WILL go to the very bowels of hell for committing this crime.

Avoid usage of spam words in both the subject and the body – words like “FREE” and “win” are often associated with spam so it’s a good idea - where possible - to use other synonymous terms that appear more friendly and subtle.

It must be cross-browser and cross-client compatible

This is another tough one because; where designers find it difficult to make their websites work across all browsers you now have to accommodate various email clients as well, from Gmail to Outlook.

If using CSS ensure you use inline styling. That’s right  - forget what you have learnt about web design – external stylesheets and even styles in the document head can be stripped out or overwritten by the email client CSS (did somebody say Hotmail?).

So if you want to make a link appear white, use:

<a href=”” style=”color:#ffffff;”>link</a>

This should cover you for any email client that your recipient may be using.

Also forget about using divs and other modern markup techniques; when creating an email design you must build it using tables. This is, again, because many email clients are archaic in their approach to rendering html pages and simply will not display CSS layouts correctly. Microsoft is one culprit promoting negligence within web and email standards and some people are not happy about it.

If your email design is relatively small without a significant amount of copy, you might consider breaking it down into images for maximum compatibility. This obviously has an impact on accessibility, so it remains a judgement call.

It should be visually attractive

When I began creating e-shot designs it was to promote, for the main part, ink cartridges. Now I don’t know about you but I find it quite difficult to get excited about this subject so creating interesting visuals around these promotions was not easy.

However, we worked with what we had. For example, one campaign was to promote recyclable ink so we placed our cartridges in a lush, green environment surrounded by trees and fields. This makes the visual appearance of the end product far more interesting than simply a picture of a boring old ink cartridge. Creativity is important, particularly in email marketing where everybody is doing it.

It should promote a clear call to action (CTA)

This is probably the most important piece of the email design. The CTA will decide whether the email works or not, and should be very clear upon immediate viewing.

It might sound obvious but I’ve seen it overlooked time and time again – make your CTA stand out! Whether this is by using unique colours or a larger font doesn’t really matter, it just needs to catch the eye in the most effective way possible.

Sometimes however, this CTA rule can be debunked. For example, if you simply want to showcase some products, which would mean multiple CTA’s, you do not need to create a huge illuminated button for each product. Users are comfortable in selecting the product that interests them, and probably possesses the knowledge that it will direct them to a website. In effect, the product block is the CTA.

Take note of the next email you receive

Next time you get a marketing email, take note of how it comes across. Does it suit its purpose? Does it convey its message well? Spend some time assessing it as a marketing piece and then use this intelligence in your email marketing campaigns.