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…

Watch ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Best’ Webinar

If you missed my webinar, “The Good, the Bad, and the Best: Practices for a Post-Wild West Email Marketing World” earlier this week, the slides (with notes) and a recording of the hour-long webinar are now available. View the slides on SlideShare >> Watch the webinar recording (registration required) >> Adopting email…

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…

Promoting Sister Brands without Violating Permission

If you operate more than one brand, it can be tempting to abuse an email opt-in at one of your brands by extending it to your other brands. Because of the dangers of increased spam complaints, the vast majority of brands wisely resist this temptation and many smartly use their email programs…

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…

Find Your Marketing Inspiration in the Swipe File

A “swipe file” is a collection of tested and proven marketing communications that you keep to inspire and inform your future messaging. We love this concept so much that we’ve created a series of Pinterest boards where we’re pinning marketing campaigns that inspire us. Today we unveiled the Email Swipe File, where…