HTML Email Template Design: Three Prosperous Tips for Retailers

Email marketing has proven to be a powerful tool for businesses in many different sectors. This includes those in the burgeoning retail sector. Several organizations and entrepreneurs have found that it is an effective way to establish brand awareness, boost traffic and increase sales during the most crucial periods of the year. For most, a successful campaign begins with creating a great design with an HTML email template. The economy may be down, but these three tips can help any retailer thrive with email marketing during the recession.

An HTML email template lets you do a lot of things that cannot be accomplished with text, and one of them is the ability to incorporate beautiful graphics and images into your message.  At the same time, you should know that there is such a thing as overdoing it, so finding an optimal balance between text and content is key.  Discovering this harmonious balance will benefit your campaign in a number of ways.  First and foremost, it will help increase both your delivery and open rates by allowing your message to slide through, past pesky spam filters.  It will also guarantee a better performance and reading experience for your customers.  With competition in the retail market being so fierce today, you cannot afford to compromise overall quality for the sake of presentation. 

Making a simple adjustment to your HTML email template can result in dramatic improvements for your marketing campaign.  A perfect example is keeping image blocking in mind when designing the template.  Most email readers today have images disabled by default while others block them entirely.  You can avoid this common problem by designing the template so your message looks good whether the recipient has their images  turned on or off.  Several retailers have made tremendous strides and achieved success by converting navigation bars to text links, making sure ALT text is set for images, and adding pre-header messages among other simple, but effective tactics.  These are just a few of many basic ways to assure your message looks good whether your images show up in the customer’s email reader or not. 

When it comes to designing HTML email templates, there are actually a number of methods that can be considered best practices.  Some of them involve implementing consistent navigation across the layout, making sure your logos are placed in the most effective position, and including detailed unsubscribe information at the bottom of every email.  One of the best practices you can follow is creating a headline driven template with minimal copy.  Even email campaigns that market multiple products have very little copy, yet maintain their effectiveness in other ways.  You can garner excellent results by putting a special focus on headlines and complimenting them with high quality images.  Do it right and these two elements could be the heroes of your campaign.