Avoiding Common Blunders in Newsletter Design: Recognize and Eliminate These 5 Errors
In the digital age, crafting an effective email newsletter is crucial for engaging your audience and driving clicks. Here are some essential tips to improve visual hierarchy in your email newsletters, ensuring a seamless experience across devices.
Firstly, it's vital to maintain a thumb-friendly design for CTAs, with dimensions of at least 44 x 44 pixels. Align these CTAs with body text for better readability, and label them clearly for increased engagement.
Maintaining uniform padding for every content block in the newsletter is also crucial for a clean, organised layout. By doing so, you help focus attention without overwhelming the reader.
A single-column layout is recommended for clarity and mobile optimisation, helping to focus attention without overwhelming the reader. Keep text concise and skimmable with short paragraphs and bullet points to make it easy for readers to digest your content.
Employ colour and contrast strategically to make headlines and calls to action stand out. The minimum contrast ratio for text and images of text should be 4.5:1, according to WCAG guidelines.
Balancing text and images at roughly 60:40 can help avoid deliverability issues while keeping engagement high. Incorporate relevant visuals or icons to break up text and enhance engagement, while keeping the overall layout consistent and mobile-friendly.
Adding a visible divider between major sections in the newsletter can help guide readers smoothly through your message. Adopting an F-pattern layout, using a 30/24/16 font scale, can further improve visual hierarchy.
Picking one hero story, applying the 80/20 rule, grouping by theme, and cutting or linking secondary items can also improve email engagement. Overloading email newsletters without prioritization can dilute messages, impact content readability, and reduce reader engagement.
Testing emails before sending by opening them on actual phones is essential to ensure consistency across devices. Newsletter design is a skill that can be built over time. Always check both previews in design tools like Mailchimp.
Lastly, always run visuals for newsletter designs through an Accessibility Checker to ensure accessibility. Use semantic HTML, add meaningful alt text, and double-check with the Color Simulator for accessible email newsletter design.
Responsive email designs, which can adapt to different devices and screen sizes, get higher click rates. By following these tips, you can create email newsletters that reduce cognitive load, guide the reader’s eye, boost engagement rates, and clarify your message.
[1] Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-guide/ [2] Litmus: https://litmus.com/blog/email-design-guidelines [3] Campaign Monitor: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/guides/email-marketing/design/ [4] Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI): https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/ [5] Canva Design School: https://www.canva.com/learn/email-design/
- To make your headlines and calls to action stand out, consider the use of strategic color contrast, ensuring a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for text and images of text.
- For a better reading experience, balance the ratio of text and images in your newsletters, aiming for roughly 60% text and 40% images.
- To optimize your email newsletters for both mobile devices and accessibility, incorporate semantic HTML, add meaningful alt text to images, and run your designs through an Accessibility Checker.
- To maintain a clear layout, consider a single-column design, employing an F-pattern layout with a font scale of 30/24/16 for improved visual hierarchy.
- To engage your audience and drive clicks, test your emails using actual phones before sending, prioritize your content, and make sure to include relevant visuals or icons to break up the text.
