7 Avoidable Email Design Mistakes Ruining Your ROI

With over four billion daily users globally, it’s no wonder email is such an effective and profitable marketing medium. Sending a skillfully constructed email remains one of the best methods to reach customers today. The opposite is true. A poorly crafted email can damage your ROI and render your marketing efforts useless. Here are a few easily avoidable email design mistakes that might be ruining your ROI.

1. Inconsistent Branding

Subscribers should be able to recognize an email from you straightaway. A consistent header image, logo, colour scheme, and email template design will help customers instantly identify your brand. It’s okay to make small improvements here and there, but resist the impulse to continuously tinker with these fundamental design elements. Once you find a design that works for your brand, stay true to it. A lot of consumers appreciate consistency and familiarity.

2. Inefficient Use of Images

Choosing the right image(s) is crucial to capture your subscribers’ attention. Use high-quality images of real people when possible to help customers insert themselves into the experience of enjoying your service or product. At the same time, your email should never consist almost entirely of images. Designing your email to include too many images will cause a slower load time, annoy subscribers, and hence, damage your ROI.

3. Long Bodies of Text

The actual text of your email should be as concise as possible. A short message organized into small paragraphs is more digestible than a longer one. Readers should be able to get the gist of your message from a quick scan of your email. Eliminating large bodies of text from your email design demonstrates that you value your subscribers’ time and have a good understanding of what appeals to them. You can also use email templates by Topol.

4. Failing To Highlight A Clear CTA

Every email should have one clear call-to-action that stands out from the rest of its contents. This is the entire purpose of your efforts and the design of your email should reflect that. Ensure that the hyperlink is functioning. With the average email click-through rate at 11.3%, your ROI is sure to suffer if your subscribers can’t even find the CTA or equally worse, the link takes them nowhere.

5. Forgetting To Include Social Media Links

Further engagement is the ultimate goal of your email. Don’t make the mistake of neglecting to include links to your social media profiles and miss the chance to engage with your consumers on other platforms. Exposing your email subscribers to other channels of engagement is a good way to boost your ROI. Therefore, always remember to include your social media links in the footer of your email along with your contact information.

6. Not Mobile Friendly

Multiple reports found that over 50% of emails are now opened on mobile. Despite this, more than 20% of email marketing campaigns are not mobile-friendly. Failing to design an email optimized for mobile devices automatically cuts your ROI in half. To avoid this, ensure your emails are formatted for mobile as well as they are for desktop. Before you send your email to your subscribers, test it across multiple devices. The last thing you want is for your email to be one of the over 70% of poorly formatted emails that mobile users instantly delete.

7. Absence of An Interactive Element

Since the human gaze is sensitive to motion, interactive elements tend to capture the attention of subscribers more than still ones. Only 23% of marketers use interactive elements, but the trend is swiftly gaining popularity. While the coding required for an interactive email design may seem like a daunting and unnecessary task, it can drastically improve the experience of your subscribers. Litmus suggests beginning with something as small as hover effects for those new to interactive email design elements.

Conclusion

Despite claims that email marketing is dead, in truth, it shows no signs of slowing down. An average email generates $36 for every $1 spent–a 3600% ROI. Most of the seven design mistakes listed above are easily avoidable. An email is a powerful tool that can maximize subscriber engagement and boost profits, but only when designed effectively. Your email doesn’t have to be perfect or elaborate, it just has to be good enough to be noticed by steering clear of these email design mistakes.