No matter how compelling your messages are, a poor email newsletter design can sabotage your strategy.

The fact that email has a median ROI of 122% (which is over four times higher than social media, direct mail, and paid search), you can’t just ignore design. Only bulk SMS has better open rates, but that is not the topic for today.

An excellent newsletter design leads the eyes of customers to your desired path. It must provide focus on the elements that you want to emphasize like your CTA button. This helps increase the chances of them performing your goal action.

From time to time, visit your email newsletter design to assess if there are things you need to adjust for better results. When you do, be sure to keep these tips in mind.

Use email newsletter templates with a focused layout

There’s a perfect email newsletter template for every type of email. Using one template for all your emails is not just lazy, but it will make your emails boring.

When choosing your email newsletter template in your marketing automation software, make sure that the layout gives focus on your content. For instance, a single column newsletter layout is advisable for emails that encourage one action only. For promotional emails containing multiple products, you might want to use a multi-column layout to present your offers in an organized manner.

Use contrasting colors for emphasis

Color increases brand recognition by 80% and can influence the customer behavior. So, use it strategically.

For instance, red increases heart rate so using it for your CTA button creates a sense of urgency. Blue suggests security and trust while green is friendly to the eyes as it is relaxing.

Contrasting colors are also effective in highlighting the important elements in your email newsletter like your CTA button. This way, customers can immediately notice what you want them to see.

Reduce elements with concise content

Less is more, and this applies to both your design and copy. Too much design elements mean more noise, which can confuse customers. Meanwhile, trying to communicate to many messages can lead to a text-heavy email. Using a single CTA in emails can increase clicks by 371% and sales 1617%.

The more you populate your email newsletter, the harder it is to guide your customers. You only need a few things in there: a concise copy, an attractive image, a catchy and clickable CTA button, social media buttons, and a pleasing color scheme.

Place a visible CTA button

Aside from color, the placement of your CTA button is crucial. Because people read content from left to right, it is highly recommended that a CTA button is placed on the right. This enables customers to consume your messages first before they see your CTA. Placing your CTA on the left would require customers to move their eyes back to the left to perform your desired action, which is an additional effort to them.

A/B test your newsletter design

The best way to determine which email newsletter design works and which to forget is through A/B Split Email or A/B Testing. Here, you create two identical emails with slight differences (usually one element like CTA button design, layout, or color scheme). Both email versions must be sent to a significant portion of your recipients to ensure conclusive results.

Your marketing automation software will then analyze the data to send the better performing email to the rest of the contacts on your list.

Optimize for mobile

About 68% of email opens were done on a mobile device. If you are not optimizing your email newsletter design for mobile, you are making a big mistake.

Write short subject lines with up to 25 to 30 characters, so that mobile recipients can read your complete message. Since the mobile screen is smaller compared to desktop, be sure that your content is concise. Always test your email on mobile before blasting it to customers so you could correct mistakes if you find any.

You don’t need to be a graphic artist to boost your click rates with the right email newsletter design. A lot of marketing automation software today offer newsletter templates that even email marketers with no background in design can use without hassles. Be sure to choose the one that can provide a list of options to help you experiment, explore and switch templates.

March 12, 2018 by Deepasha Kakkar

4 Ways Videos Can Help You Sell More, On A Budget

Business

Being powerful persuasion tools, videos exhibit the potential to shorten sales cycle. With the sales cycle shortened, the touchpoints at which you meet your audience, are reduced and the efforts also minimised. Additionally, the need to rely on salesy techniques goes out of the picture.

Once you have created a video, its ability to sell more is largely dependant on the practices being followed.

Here we have listed 4 such ways in which videos can help you sell more, on a budget:

Incorporate videos in email marketing to attract leads

Video in email can increase CTR by 200-300% and also reduce the “unsubscribe” rate by 75%.

Email marketing, on its own, is a very effective marketing technique; when combined with video marketing, it becomes even more powerful because videos are more likely to engage the viewer quickly as compared to other forms of content.

When it comes to using videos in emails, the options are many. You can use anything from customer testimonials to product description videos.

In terms of ROI, it is important to note that email marketing outperforms all other marketing channels. The average return is $44 for every dollar that is spent.

Additionally, adding a video to your email comes at zero extra cost. You can either embed your video directly or use video link to take the viewer to the website where he can watch the video.

The combination of video and email yields great marketing results.

NotifyFox, for example, used this explainer video in their cold email marketing to achieve an open rate of 40%.

Key Takeaway:

When taking the video route in your email campaigns, be sure to first lay down your objective. For your video to sell more, the embedding option is not the best idea since it doesn’t take user to the website.

Put an explainer video on your landing page to boost conversions

A video placed on the landing page has the potential to increase conversions by as much as 80% which means that they create space for more sales.

Since your website’s landing page is the first element of user experience, it makes sense to use videos to optimise the landing page for better engagement.

By eliminating the dependence on text for brand introduction and bringing a more appealing content format (video) into the picture, you can shorten the sales cycle and thereby trigger more purchases.

The effectiveness of videos on landing pages is largely governed by two things: design aesthetics and video content. In terms of design, the size of video and the thumbnail take a key role. Video content optimisation, on the other hand, depends on a number of things: video quality, audio etc.

Key Takeaway:

Video can sell more when placed directly on the website where user interaction is of utmost significance. So optimise this opportunity by focusing on design details as well as content.

Use live video on social platforms to positively influence the purchase decision

Live videos not only create the space for online sales, they are also effective in boosting offline conversions.

Various businesses are relying more and more on live formats to showcase their product launch, events, conferences; allowing their audience to take part, virtually. This drives sales because it helps create trust through visual demonstrations.

In fact, live videos can be used simply to celebrate the holiday mood or simple monthly themes. Like Dunkin Donuts creates the right mood for Valentine’s in this live video:

Additionally, these live videos inform users about specific business events that they might not be aware of. This is quite beneficial for brands that operate in the B2B sector.

Key Takeaway:

Social video consumption is on the rise. In such a scenario, it is best to make your video strategy social proof to increase sales. Go live, take your audience behind the stage, give them live footage of special events.

Use video calling to solve customer queries

When you create a product/service to address a particular pain point, it makes sense that your customer will have queries. And sometimes these queries may demand more attention than a FAQ space on your site.

Like in a scenario where user gets stuck at a point while navigating your app, video calling be a great way to help your customer find a way. Again, this is extremely useful for B2B sphere; SaaS companies often rely on these techniques to guide their users. And it can be extremely helpful during product trials. Skype can be a good option here.

Key Takeaway:

Video calling improves user experience and helps in building trust which creates a positive purchase effect. Such strategies pave way for great feedback which, in return, creates space for more sales.

Conclusion

Video is one such content format which isn’t restricted to a specific stage of the buyer’s journey. You can use it to attract leads (explainer videos), move them to the evaluation stage (tutorials, how-to’s) and then to create delight (video calling) after the purchase has been made.

Strategies like social video, landing page videos boost purchases without requiring huge investment. Shareable social videos increase your reach, landing page videos reduce the brand introduction time, video calling that addresses user queries creates trust; together, all these things help videos sell more.

Tag: ctr

How to Tweak Your Email Newsletter Design to Boost Click Rates

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