3 Tips to Spice up Boring Emails

When you’re responsible for managing hundreds or thousands of emails each week, it’s easy to rely on the same old templates, colors and messages. But a savvy marketer doesn’t just rest on his laurels. As we always say on this blog, email success is all about dynamic engagement marketing.

Retooling your email marketing can be overwhelming. That’s why we’ve put together a few easy, yet effective tips to make your emails more engaging and blow your conversion rates through the roof.

Video

This may come as no surprise, but video is hot, hot, hot right now. In fact, it’s on pace to account for nearly half of all internet traffic in 2014 according to a recent report from Experian. This boom in popularity has huge implications for email. Simply including the word “video” in an email subject line can increase open rates as much as 13 percent. What’s more, conversion rates increase by 21 percent, boosting order values 24 percent higher than emails that only use static images.

According to best practices for video in email:

• Keep the videos shorter than three minutes.
• Remember that some email clients block images, so make sure your call-to-action is clearly stated in text form, too.
• Use a still shot from your video to counteract email clients that only allow static images. Then include a clickable button to a landing page that automatically plays the video.

Animated GIFs

A GIF (or Graphics Interchange Format) is a series of photos strung together and looped in order to look like they are animated. Wildly successful online, GIFs can add new life to your email messages.

That being said, it’s important to keep some things in mind when using GIFs. For example, not all email clients support them, most notably Outlook 2007 (or later) and Windows Mobile 7. In these programs, only the first frame of the GIF will be displayed. To avoid this, make sure the first image is the most important one. If your call-to-action is in the last frame, the viewer might never see it!

Additionally, keep the file small, preferably under 40KB. Large GIFs may not load properly, particularly if viewed on a mobile device so keep it simple. Less can often be more, and a subtle animation can add life to your emails in a more tasteful, non-disruptive way.

Color and Style

If you’re sending HTML emails, you’ve probably already worked your brand colors into your emails. But is there a way to step this up a notch?

In a recent Mashable article, Jared Christopherson of Yellowhammer made an interesting suggestion: Follow the 60-30-10 Rule. Choose three different colors and use them in a ratio of sixty percent, thirty percent and ten percent. This provides a simple yet professional color scheme for your emails.

It’s also important to keep the end goal in mind. Are you trying to attract attention? Go for high-contrast color combinations like black-yellow or red-white. Do you want to evoke a sense of peace or serenity? Calm color combos like blue-purple-green work wonders. One great resource for email color inspiration is COLOURlovers.com, a creative online community for sharing colors, palettes and patterns.

Engaging your subscribers doesn’t have to be an overwrought, over-thought process. Spice things up with a video, a GIF or a pop of color, and you’ll be seeing better conversion rates faster than you can say Graphics Interchange Format!

Want to learn more ways to grow an engaged email list? Click here!

Photo Credit: doozzle