As one of the most integral tools to a large portion of email marketing campaigns, templates hold a unique position in the overarching content creation process. On one hand, slapping together a reusable template feels mundane or small in comparison to the rest of your outreach operations and procedures. However, failing to give this asset its due often leads to plenty of headaches and roadblocks as you begin to fire off messages. With this viewpoint guiding the way, let’s take a moment to talk about how to efficiently and effectively create the perfect template for your upcoming email marketing campaign.
Get to Know the Three Pillars of Template Design
In terms of template development, Small Business Trend’s Chaitra Vedullapalli points out that there’s no better place to kick off the conversation than with the “three pillars” of modern message design. Essentially, these ideals build upon two basic truths pertaining to most audiences – 66 percent of all messages are opened on mobile devices, and your inbox offerings generally only have about three seconds of viewing before the person on the other side of the screen decides to toss this digital message into the garbage.So now that we know why the three pillars exist, let’s delve into the concepts that make up this trifecta. Vedullapalli lists these attributes as appropriate text size, tap functionality, and proper visual ratios. Most templates should fall into the 400×300 pixel range, with headline and body fonts clocking in at 22 and 14 point sizes, respectively. Tap functionality equates to templates that play well on touch-oriented mobile devices.Naturally, firing on all of these points can be a little tricky, especially with an audience split between traditional desktops and mobile devices. However, with the advent of responsive coding and technology among templates, there’s nothing stopping your brand from relying on a template that fits the needs of every segment within your inbox viewership.
Concise and Precise Goes a Long Way
Additionally, Vedullapalli goes on to explain that great templates don’t leave room for long-winded body content, headings, or subheadings. The name of the game when it comes to effective email marketing content is to be as concise and precise with your writing as possible, so it makes sense to utilize a template that embodies this approach.By getting ahead of the curve with a tight and streamlined template, you’ll intuitively enhance the quality of your content. Whether you’re a seasoned member of the community or just trying to get your foot in the door, it doesn’t take much to see that winning on both of these fronts is great for the health of your campaign.
Great Templates Are Visually Appealing
Outside of setting yourself up to develop meaningful content, Olivier Choron of Business 2 Community offers up the notion that your template also needs to have a flair for the visual in order to maximize its impact with viewers. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to jam photos and images into every email. In fact, using the same content this way doesn’t exactly fit into the template approach at all.Instead, try to find minimal visuals and borders that don’t clog up bandwidth and screen space. This way, your viewers can enjoy an aesthetically pleasing and consistent experience that translates from one marketed message to the next. The best part about incorporating this take on visuals is that as you conduct more and more campaigns, you’ll have a greater number of templates and images to reuse and alter; thus saving you time and money during the development process.
Find a Spot for Personalization in Your Template
As one final piece of advice for creating the perfect template for your upcoming email marketing operations, Choron suggests finding a spot for personalization in your inbox content. Whether you start off the message with a friendly salutation, or delve a little deeper via working audience data into the body content of your email, letting these readers know that you’re offering more than just a thinly-veiled sales pitch is a great addition to your template strategy.Obviously, working on this extra layer of personalization requires a strong email marketing system, or a team of experts who understand what it takes to integrate such connections between the base template and the product. However, if you’re able to excel with this process, in addition to the rest of what you’ve learned here, there’s no reason why your next campaign can’t utilize a strong template to win over the people that matter most to your brand.
