Five questions you need to ask yourself about your email template
Using a template for your email marketing is a clever choice. It means that you can quickly and easily compose and send a professional-looking message. You also don’t need to worry about the conformity of branding and style. We’ve composed 5 question today that you need to ask yourself. The only goal? Making sure your template is still the right choice!
1. Does our template get a regular check-up and update?
A template is often created with the first email campaign. Years later, a lot of companies are still using the same template. It’s getting a bid boring, to say the least. If you want to stay fresh, you need to update your template at least once a year. Maybe you can even make some changes every season to mix things up. That doesn’t mean that you need to create an entirely new template every time, but a new header image and a new CTA style can do wonders. You can keep your contacts from dozing in and you’ll also stay up to date with new graphical trends.
2. Is our template responsive?
More than half of all emails isn’t read on desktop computers. Tablets and smartphones make everything more mobile. These screens will display your message differently than you intended with your original design. Your template should be able to detect the width of the screens and respond to the different needs with an adapted representation. If your template is recent, then chances are it is responsive. But you can’t just assume, check your message! If your template is a few years old (see question 1) you can be sure that you need to take it to the HTML doctor. With some specific adjustments your template can be transformed into a responsive one. But use that opportunity to take a critical look at your template. Not every element in a template – even when it it responsive – will look great on a smaller screen. Take the time to examine every single element of your template. Do you really need two or three columns for that?
3. Has our template been tested?
Of course your template has been tested, but when was the last time? Even email clients – both desktop, webbased and mobile – evolve. They launch new versions that can dramatically influence your tested template. Animated gifs can work perfectly in an older version of Outlook, and all of a sudden they no longer do in newer versions. That means you should test your templates regularly. That’s the price we pay for digital revolution.
4. Are the design of our website and our template related?
It’s important that your email template has the same style as your website. We’re not saying it should be totally the same. But if your CTA are pointing to a page on your website, you need to have some kind of recognition. You don’t want to cause confusion, causing the reader to close your website. Websites are often adjusted in time, but people usually forget about their email template. A new CSS for you website should be translated into a functioning (adapted for all email clients) email design. But it also works the other way around. If you are using a promotion or discount in your email message, you visitors should see the same promotion when they click through to your website. If they can’t find a connection, they lose trust.
5. Is our logo still correct?
Your company logo should be clearly present in your email template for recognition and branding. So the first question: is your logo still on top? The second question: is your logo still correct? Every company changes details of their logo or their entire logo at some point. The big cola brands do it, and recently even Google did. Make sure you don’t forget to adapt the logo in your template as well. Even more so for automated messages, which we tend to forget about. Make sure you check everything. And while you’re at it, take a look at the quality of your logo. Years ago, the file size – and the quality – were kept as little as possible. Today with recent technologies, this isn’t as important as it used to be. Don’t go for a gigabyte per image, but a little better is no problem at all!