If you’re anything like me, a sizable chunk of the dozens of emails you get sent every day sit unread in your inbox and - despite your best intentions - soon get forgotten about in favour of those pinging through above them.  

As consumers, it can feel overwhelming to see a number of unread emails in our inboxes, but as marketers the challenge of ensuring your emails are opened - and read - has never been bigger.

But why is it that some emails get read while others are cast aside to the unread pile?

Sadly there is no magic formula to guarantee your brand’s emails get opened. However, all is not lost as there are some golden rules to follow which will maximise your emails’ chances of success and set you on the path to becoming an expert at creating the right branding and messaging for them.

Ensure your strategy is rooted in your brand values

Before you embark on sending your first branded emails you need to ask yourself a few questions, such as: Why am I sending emails as opposed to engaging on other platforms? What am I hoping to achieve? And - most importantly - what does success look like?

Here are five key things to consider when you are outlining your strategy:

1. Your email goals: Think about what you want to achieve from the emails you are sending. Is email really the right channel to help you reach those goals?
2. Consider your audience(s) and subscribers: What email clients do they use? What’s the support for these devices/web clients?
3. The CTA: What is the one thing you want your reader to do after opening your email? This is another key opportunity to question whether email is the right channel to use.
4. Timing is key: don’t just guess when the best time to send your email will be. Look back at previous send data and make an informed decision.
5. Success measures: tracking things like downloads, clicks, opens, and revenue is great, but consider setting up A/B testing for different copy or segments, and set this up well in advance of your email send.

By detailing the above into an overarching strategy before you start sending your emails, you will be able to keep the email purpose front of mind whilst also being able to make them creative, in sync and recognisable to your subscriber base.

Speak the right language

When writing copy for your emails, the wording needs to be authentic whilst reflecting your brand. For example, if you work for a B2B company whose target audience are senior executives, you should write in a tone of voice appropriate for that audience. Authenticity is essential for building trust and ensuring that people know that what you are saying is legitimate.

Being able to personalise email content could also help build up authenticity and trust further. Is there a way you can address an individual that takes into consideration the data you already have on them, for instance?

Optimising your email by making it relevant to specific audience groups will also help. Think about geographical regions, types of customers, customer preferences, etc. That way you can deliver relevant messages to either audience as opposed to one blanket email.

Don’t forget what the primary role of your email is. Do you want it to be informative and supportive in building a relationship between you and your customer, or are you more focused on seeking instant clicks through to your website?

Design is key

Creating an email strategy also involves working to design guidelines. These can be a huge time saver and enable you to produce high-quality emails without having to go back and forth with your design team unnecessarily. 

You will need to consider brand elements like fonts, colours, spacing and dimensions to ensure your emails stay recognisable to your readers. Try creating something that is both beautiful and functional, that will entice your recipients into reading to the end. You may also want to create  a design that reflects your existing brand values, which are then consistent across every communication you send.

The best way to do this is to use an email design system (EDS), where you can set up structured templates that empower your designers creatively, but at the same time enable them to work quickly and efficiently within set boundaries.

Once the structure is agreed you can then get to work on the design elements and start to bring in other elements of your brand, such as bespoke imagery or illustrations, GIFs and embedded videos.

Remain consistent

No matter who is making and sending your branded emails, they should always be consistent - even if you work with teams on opposite sides of the earth. 

Unless it is the first email you have sent, it won’t be seen by your reader in isolation; they will have seen and interacted with your branding on other platforms. Therefore, in order to strengthen your brand’s perception, your email design needs to be consistent with those.

Creating a library of assets your team can use to speed up email creation whilst adhering to consistency will help. If you have a core EDS for all parts of the business, updating brand assets will be much more manageable and spotting anomalies will be far easier.

You could also look into building a set of sub-templates for each product or service within the brand, with altered footers, contact details and logos, so anyone creating an email will have the elements they need to create something aligned with the brand.

 Catering for dark mode and accessibility

One of the biggest challenges for email designers is to create striking emails that also work in dark mode - theextension that helps you quickly turn the screen (browser) dark at night-time.

To make sure your emails adapt to recipients using dark mode, you should consider using transparent PNGs and add a white outline around elements in your EDS.

You will want to think about designing your default images, such as social icons, logos, link colours etc., for dark mode and consider how they’re going to contrast with the dark background.

You will need to think about accessibility, too. While smaller text and thin fonts might enable you to pack more into your email, if short-sighted readers can't see what you have written, for example, then you’ll have wasted your time.

It is also imperative to avoid walls of text. If the copy looks too cluttered, try to split it into a few paragraphs.

Preparation, strategy and messaging are everything to an email marketer, as they help to ensure customers receive a consistent experience of your brand no matter where they see it. And if you can construct creative yet stringent guidelines, you will save yourself and your design team so much time.

Email isn’t a website, but it is a good opportunity to replicate key website aspects such as navigation and CTA style. The chances are, if someone has seen your website you will be retargeting them at multiple touchpoints - and email needs to sit within the brand framework to provide recipients with the consistency they would expect.