Email Marketing RulesThe Many Uses (and 2 Drawbacks) of Animated Gifs
While there are a growing number of video in email options, each with their own limitations, the animated gif is still the predominant way to add motion into an email design. Since the eye is immediately drawn to motion, animated gifs are a wonderful tool that can be used to accomplish a…
The Trends Guiding Great Email Design
We recently released The Best of the Email Swipe File, which identifies five trends affecting email design and highlights 20 examples that best exemplify those trends. The Mobile-Friendly trend addresses the shift from wide screens and mice to narrow screens and fat fingers, which includes mobile aware design, responsive design, text-heavy emails…
Check Out the Curves on These Emails!
Earlier this week I discussed 9 Ways to Get Subscribers to Scroll, one of which is to use S-curves. This design tactic takes advantage of saccades, the fact that the human eye jumps around as it scans things. So rather than designing things in a linear fashion, try arranging content in an…
9 Ways to Get Subscribers to Scroll
While there’s a trend toward shorter emails—even very short emails—don’t be fooled into thinking that subscribers won’t scroll. They will. Consistently delivering great email content is one way to get your subscribers to scroll, but there are also some design tactics you can use to encourage scrolling: 1. Ask them to scroll….
The 1, 2, 3 of Defensive Design
Despite Outlook.com and Yahoo Mail recently moving to enable images by default, there are still many email clients that block images by default. Upwards of one-third of your emails are likely opened with images disabled. That makes “defensive design” techniques like HTML text and alt text a must. I have a three-pronged…
JCPenney’s Mobile Aware Email Makeover
While responsive design is getting all the buzz, there are many gradations of email design between the old desktop-centric designs and full-fledged responsive designs. For marketers with smaller budgets or ones looking to take gradual steps toward being mobile-friendly, there are options. Many brands have taken the first step and adopted what…
Get Inspired by ‘The Best of the Email Swipe File’
A swipe file is a record of your top-performing campaigns that you return to for learnings and ideas. It was this concept that inspired us to create the Email Swipe File on Pinterest, where we share the emails and landing pages that excite and impress us. We’ve already shared nearly 150 examples…
The Many Gradations of Mobile Email Design
With mobile email reading now beyond the critical mass stage for nearly every brand, marketers are finally making creating mobile-friendly emails a priority. According to a MarketingSherpa survey, it’s an even greater priority than integrating email and social, which I think is very appropriate and overdue. My design colleagues here at ExactTarget…
Welcome! Email Marketing Rules is your guide to understanding the best practices of this complex, often misunderstood channel as you craft the best executions for your brand. Every week, we’ll explore strategies and tactics, discuss tips and inspiration, and dig into industry news and trends.
Chad S. White
Head of Research
Oracle Digital Experience Agency
Author of Email Marketing Rules and nearly 4,000 articles about digital and email marketing
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