Email Debrief: 2023 Email Marketing and Design Trends - Litmus

• Updated on: 2023-04-03
• Read original article here

Welcome to our new monthly blog series where I, your humble Senior Community Evangelist, recap our latest Litmus Talks and note key takeaways (and offer a few thoughts of my own) to occupy your precious brain space.

This month, I’m sharing my thoughts on ourLive Email Optimizationvirtual event, where Litmus’ Director of Email Marketing,Jaina Mistryalong with our Email Marketing SpecialistCarin Slaterand Email Design and Production SpecialistHannah Tinerreview five submitted emails by our courageous audience and offer feedback and praise.

Consumer Reportssends a twice-weekly ShopSmartnewslettersent with the goal of driving clicks to affiliate shopping links and driving digital all-access subscriptions.

Text links:Text links don’t always do a good job of creating visual friction to compel readers to pause, and “read more” as the text doesn’t offer the reader any context for what to expect. Plus, using the same text over and over causes the reader to file those elements away as known and familiar—great for logos and brand recognition, but bad forcalls-to-action (CTAs)where we want the reader to stop and engage.

Buttons are better at being visually differentiated—they use clearer, uniquely phrased CTA text to drive more of a response.

The goal of thisStandard Lifenewsletter is to drive traffic to the blog section of their website, which is focused on providing relevant information to encourage customer retention.

Imagery:In the same vein of setting clear expectations, if you’re quoting a person in an email—as they do in this one for a testimonial—it’s best to use an actual photo of them when at all possible instead of using a graphic. This helps establish credibility and gives our brains the little push needed to connect with the content emotionally. Something else that helps create credibility is using consistent styles of illustration and photography so that the email reads as visually consistent.

The goal ofFeed 365’s newsletter is to express gratitude and share updates with members of their monthly giving program.

CTAs:One of the ways you can show respect for your email audience is being straightforward as to what you are asking of them. This is why having clearly distinguished CTAs are important—it alleviates any confusion as to what the subscriber is expected to do. 

Of course, CTAs are also central to measuring engagement and tied to most email programs’ success metrics, so they are also very important in a crunchy numbers sense. But I’d argue the primary reason to include them is to provide a clear next step for the reader to further the relationship you have with them.

This monthly newsletter fromAAAis intended to share news and updates with their members and  help them make the most of their membership.

Numbers: While we absolutely need an emotional connection to content to make it memorable, we also crave numbers to keep our comprehension of that content digestible. Strong statements without any quantification stimulate our brains but don’t let them rest. Numbers, statistics, percentages—these all work to contain what the reader is taking in so that it feels less amorphous and all-consuming. 

ThisJetBrainsemail is aimed at driving registrations to an upcoming webinar.

Content length:While offering more detail after a concise hero section can be helpful, multiple paragraphs of undifferentiated text is difficult to parse visually. As we know that most people skim emails, brevity is almost always going to be the correct approach, along with styling the content so that there are breaks and negative space to allow for easier comprehension.

Including a secondary CTA at the bottom of the email linking to a landing page allows you to capture those who found it worth their while to read that far. It’s also good to keep in mind which content is right for which channel—extended detail is probaby better served on a landing page, anyways.

Don’t want to wait for my recaps? You can sign up for our next Litmus Event right here.