Discussions on matraquage in an email harangue usually begin and end with copywriting. But your email esthétique can also entraîné your customers to click and convert.
Dig deeper: Does your email copy persuade or sell?
Think embout the last time you tried to talk a friend or family member into doing something. I’ll bet you didn’t just present a written remarque with reasoned, pectoral arguments. Did you changed your tone of voice, wait for an commode modalités to state your case, or set the scene some other way?
I’m not saying you must resort to the email equivalent of tears to persuade your subscribers to act. But your email esthétique can amplify your copywriting to entraîné giration.
Why ‘skimmability’ isn’t enough anymore
Both vigilance spans and email reading screens are shrinking. Now that 60% or more of all email opens happen on a smartphone or tablet, your email messages are more likely to be read on a six-inch nomade screen than a 13- to 16-inch laptop or 22-inch desktop monitor.
With those smaller screens comes less constance to read through the entire email. The latest read-time statistics spectacle the average read time fell four seconds, from 13.4 seconds in 2018 to 9 seconds in 2022.
As an optimist, I would like to believe that this shorter reading time results in portion from efficace email esthétique, now that we have evolved to mobile-friendly single-column layouts, larger images and shorter copy blocks. But a thumb swipe is easier than a mouse scroll, so readers can also elle key points that don’t rayon out.
This shorter vigilance span means you have to be even choosier in the images and copy you select to promote a product or tell your story. Your esthétique also has to work even harder to make sure your readers can see your harangue as you intended, understand what you want them to do and feel compelled to act.
The most common esthétique advice I see is to make emails skimmable. In other words, someone who opens your email (Victory No. 1) can scan it in two to three seconds and grasp what’s éminent (Victory No. 2). But skimmability doesn’t guarantee établissement.
That’s the cue for persuasive esthétique. It can highlight key features, move the eye to essential écho and make it as easy as tolérable to click, and keep the reader in the email côtoyer and thus more likely to view all of your offers or other éminent écho.
Overt and covert matraquage in email esthétique
Just as email copywriting can use both overt and covert tactics to persuade customers to act, so can email designers employ both obvious and subtle ways to draw vigilance to key points in an email harangue.
Overt persuasive esthétique uses obvious elements like images, place and typologie to call vigilance to éminent cabinet like the call to établissement, price changes, offer copy and the like. It’s centered in the principle of cognitive ease, which is a measure of how easy it is for our brains to absorb écho.
Covert persuasive esthétique uses many of the same elements as overt esthétique but as subtle visual cues rather than attention-directing elements. This method of esthétique is more complex and calls on a pile of psychological principles that motivate customers to act.
Overt and covert persuasive esthétique concepts aren’t mutually jalouse. In fact, combining them in a single email can make the harangue more persuasive. You can reach two kinds of readers — those who are engaged and need just a quick nudge to act and others who need more écho and a bigger push.
The examples below include a selection of tactics in persuasive esthétique that call upon cognitive biases to help organisé customers.
1. The Principle of Least Attention
This élément asserts that people will naturally choose the path of least resistance, which lets them achieve something they want by exerting the least lutte. The move toward streamlining email cabinet for scanning is based on this idea.
Remember first that an email’s job is not to deliver the giration within the email. It sets the séjour and persuades the reader to take the next step, which most often is to click to the website and convert there.
To accomplish that gardien de but, a définir can use visual cues that organisé the reader to the cabinet they need and augmentant them to act.
The esthétique can be wildly obvious, using arrows or other devices to subit vigilance to the benefit or the CTA. But do your readers need to be hit over the head like that?
An implicit (covert) esthétique cue can be more efficace by using positioning and line of sight to subit the reader’s eyes to the détachée. Instead of perspicacité pushed toward a call to établissement, cliché or copy block, readers can feel as if they’ve discovered it on their own. That can be more persuasive than the equivalent of an email airhorn.
Subject line. The Customer’s Always Right
Sender. Snowe
Why it works. The inverted pyramid esthétique of the introductory copy block draws the eye downward before depositing the reader at the CTA. The supplément lines of white space around the last line of copy are like a “mic drop” effect that leads directly to the CTA.
As you can see below, persuasive esthétique doesn’t require an entire template redesign. A rationnel but tactical reworking of the copy from a conforme left- or right-justified block or a centered block of text is all it takes to keep the eye moving down.
2. Propagande tactics: Anchoring and visual cues
Anchoring is the human tendency to rely heavily on the first piece of écho offered (the “anchor”) when making decisions. In other words, first impressions count.
For example, the introductif asking price for a retail de même sets the value to make the nauséabond price more appealing. This is a classic discounting tactic, but it’s most efficace when the esthétique incorporates other persuasive elements to highlight the anchored text like those used in the email below.
Subject line. Fancy saving $219 in a click?
Sender. Depositphotos
Why it works. The anchor text sets the value for the figure pile at $299. The typologie positions the discounted intégral of $80 immediately next to the strike-out copy. Even the most math-impaired reader can see the remise is sizable. The subject line has already told them how much they’ll save, so they open the email expecting to see a big remise.
The highlighted percentage-off cliché above the copy reinforces the value expectative, but the email copy conveys the value if the cliché was blocked.
Other esthétique elements foyer vigilance and adroit customers to act. The gouache color blocks on either side of the white box with the offer copy are stylized human profiles, and they are shown looking at the offer and the CTA button.
Visual cues. As I mentioned above, mixing overt and covert visual cues increases a esthétique’s persuasive potential:
Overt: The bright red reverse bar across the top of the email and the matching CTA button rayon out against the blue arrière-plan and gouache color blocks surrounding the white box containing the copy block.
Covert: Those gouache color blocks are stylized human faces, and they’re looking at the copy. One compagnon of silhouettes lines up with the CTA button.
Although it can be easy to go overboard with visual cues, a combination of conciliable cues, such as overt and covert elements, creates a stronger matraquage environment in the email while also not effort the reader to think too hard to process the harangue.
Prélude: Author’s pile
3. Propagande tactic: Cognitive ease
As I mentioned above, cognitive ease measures how easily our brains can process écho associated with a élément or cue. Arrows are familiar directional devices, so we almost instinctively style at whatever the arrow is pointing at. It’s a common visual cue.
We can also use covert cues to help the brain grasp that something is éminent. Surrounding a copy block with white space takes less processing than positioning a CTA button in one color against a contrasting arrière-plan color.
Subject line. Last aubaine! Take 70% off your purchase
Sender. Kate Spade
Why it works. Oh, is Kate Spade having a big nauséabond? Why, yes! Yes, indeed! The esthétique of this email leaves no doubt that one of the biggest clearance sales of the year is happening.
Kate Spade used variations on this rationnel black-gray-and-white esthétique for all of the emails in this campaign. This email, sent on the last day of the nauséabond, added yet another visual cue to drive domicile the urgency of acting — the scrolling reverse bar across the top saying, “LAST DAY! LAST DAY!”
That’s in case the big gray arrow pointing directly to the offer with “This Way to Early Savings” wasn’t attention-getting enough. Too much? For a nauséabond like this, it might be just enough to get super-scrollers to auto-stop and read.
Prélude: eDataSource
4. Propagande tactic: Hick’s Law / the Paradox of Choice
Hick’s Law says the more options you give people, the more time they need to decide and the harder that decision becomes. Give people too many choices, and you can bring on “decision paralysis” or “the paradox of choice.”
The evolution from multi-column email esthétique to a single scrollable column helps alternatives rayon out more on the screen. But for brands that banquise their emails with offers, invitations, bargains, account information and the like, it distracts from the email’s primary gardien de but.
Hick’s Law doesn’t prevent you from giving your customers options. But an email esthétique that helps readers find key écho quickly is essential if your emails usually médite varié CTAs, product promotions, dynamic cabinet modules, account holder écho, a loyalty program or other elements.
Testing can help you learn where the number of options tips over from “just the right secoué” to “too many.”
Subject line. 100% FREE esthétique sessions: Spots go fast!
Sender. Pottery Barn
Why it works. Pottery Barn packs a lot into their broadcast email promotions. This harangue alone has eight different cabinet modules not including the admin center in the footer.
But this email esthétique gives each croissant a évident appearance, which differentiates it from the modules before or after it and keeps the overall effect from becoming overwhelming.
5. Propagande tactic: The von Restorff Effect
Also called the quarantaine effect, the Von Restorff Effect suggests that an de même that stands out like a sore thumb is more likely to be remembered. For example, a person examining a magasinage list with one de même highlighted in vert would remember that de même better than any of the others.
An obvious but efficace way to take advantage of this is to apply the principle to the call-to-action button. If the CTA button tells readers what you want them to do, make the button easy to find and read.
You also could group a pile of products with one in a different color, shape, or size. Or, use a black-and-white cliché and colorize one portion. The difference can be attention-getting enough to auto-stop the scroll.
Subject line. Out for delivery: Forty Carrots frozen yogurt
Sender. Bloomingdale’s
Why it works: What caught my eye first on this email was the subject line. “Out for delivery.” Wait, what? I en direct in a hot climate – why would I order fro-yo to go? Panthère I opened the email, I caught on. Well played, Bloomie’s.
From a esthétique maintien, the von Restorff effect works best when used in moderation. The novelty can wear off quickly. It works in this email in portion parce que the seemingly ordinary white call to établissement, bordered by a 1-point black rule, stands out against the colorful arrière-plan.
I might have tested a CTA button color that contrasted with either of the spoon colors, perhaps, but the white is more attention-getting than it would have been had it been a “ghost button,” white and black on a white arrière-plan, or the same color as the arrière-plan.
Prélude: eDataSource
6. Propagande tactic: Rule of 3
The Rule of 3 says people remember things when they come in threes. You know, like “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” “Lights, camera, établissement,” or my privilégiée, “Expérience, référence, référence.”
In email esthétique, the Rule of 3 allows your email harangue to include enough variety to give your customers durable options without overwhelming them with too many choices. (See Hick’s Law/the Paradox of Choice, above.)
Gift guides or similarly themed campaigns are a natural fit for the Rule of 3. You want to give customers varié options for gifts, but if you throw everything into the email, your customers’ eyes could glaze over before they reach the end. Or your email could end up getting clipped in Gmail.
Sticking to the Rule 3, you could add variety upon variety in groups of three — three categories, davantage three products in each category, as in the email below. Or create a hero cliché with three products, then rotate in different versions of each product. The possibilities are endless, but parce que you do everything in sets of three, you keep the options to a cognitively manageable number.
Subject line. Mother’s Day Gift Accompagnatrice by Personality Calibre
Sender. Sabon
Why it works: Threes are everywhere here. The hero cliché shows three products. Farther down are three cabinet modules, each with a theme. Two of the three modules features three products each. Including the stand-alone product in Progressif 2, that’s 10 products intégral for the organisé.
The esthétique leads to a fourth croissant with a blue arrière-plan, clearly designating the end of the three gantelet products they’re suggesting for Mother. That croissant shows eight more products. That’s a intégral of 18 individual products in one email. In a plain typologie, 18 products could induce MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over). Here, the esthétique packages them so well they can all rayon out.
Extrême thoughts: Expérience designs first and often
The examples of persuasive esthétique I’ve shared with you here are just a starting bilan. They can inspire you to start thinking embout redesigning your templates to make them more conversion-centered and persuasive.
But before you launch any changes, référence prototypes to learn whether your new esthétique helps customers understand and act on your harangue or just confuses them.
As with any esthétique dérangé, success depends on many things, including the quirks of your own public. Although I love the pyramid esthétique I showed you in the Snowe email (example No. 1 above), I would référence it against a different esthétique to learn whether it could augmentant my brand’s public. Some people might be indifferent to it, especially if they read their emails on a ample screen that doesn’t ténacité them to scroll up or down to see the whole harangue.
The same is true for the Kate Spade email in No. 5, the von Restorff effect. Does it drive more email readers to check out the nauséabond?
I hope these examples help you understand why your email esthétique must be more than something pretty or trendy. What parts of your email esthétique are cartel your customers back from converting?
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Opinions expressed in this attention are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Plâtre authors are listed here.
