Top 7 Design Tips For Internal Email Communications
Learn how to encourage employees to read your messages
Posted on 04-11-2018, Read Time: Min
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Today, email is a visual medium, and as such, the words you choose are just one part of your message. Just as important is the overall appeal and visual design of what you send to employees.
When recipients open your message, perhaps, as the result of an informative and compelling subject line, they will read the layout and design before reading even a single sentence. It may create the difference between the recipient reading the email, deleting it or immediately clicking to the next item in their inbox.
Here are seven things you can do to improve your email design and encourage employees to read your messages:
1. Why Waste Space on Branding?
Internal and external email audiences are not the same. It’s advantageous to brand the top of a PR or marketing email, but for internal communications, it is redundant and occupies top of page space better used for getting to the point quickly. As noted on the Advanced Learning Institute’s website, “employees already know it’s internal communication from the ‘from’ field.”
2. Make Content Scannable
Email is more often a work processing medium than a reading medium. People tend to scan email before they slow down to read something. It’s a benefit to you and your audience to design an information hierarchy based on font size, bullets, italics and color to organize your content.
99designs offers this advice: “Use headers and bullet points in your email design to emphasize your content. Use short paragraphs and avoid large blocks of text.”
The best practice is to use brief subheads containing key messaging in a slightly larger or bold font and separate these from short paragraphs using white space. This technique makes an email more open and easily digestible.
Creative Market suggests, “A designer’s main goal is to make an email look simple and to un-clutter the visual frenzy that often pollutes the message.”
3. Place Eye-Catching Graphics and Relevant Images
Stock images of people in suits or typing at their desk are unlikely to increase readership. What does? Photos of employees and your business operations in action, as well as illustrations.
“If you are going to put an image in an email, make sure it is supplementing the message and make sure you didn't just download it from some stock website” instructs Creative Market.
4. Balance Images and Text
Many employees facing a big block of email text will simply move to the next message. The same can be said for email that consists of one large image, which might be slow to load.
It’s best to balance your image and text areas, and to always set text as live, searchable text instead of embedding text content inside an image (excepting logos and some banners, of course). According to the 2017 PoliteMail Benchmark data, aiming for a 60/40 image-to-text ratio will optimize readership.
5. Emphasize Your Links or Call to Action
When employees scan their inbox, one of the questions they’ll be asking themselves is, “Is there something here I need to do?” If there is, make it clear and have it stand out.
You put links in your email because you want employees to click to something, right? Don’t bury the lead. Place links and calls to action closer to the top of the email message. It also works better to link an action-oriented sentence, not just a word. Consider linking supporting images to the same content.
“If the only link in your email is the word ‘here’ hidden somewhere in paragraph three, your email-driven traffic is going to hover somewhere around the zero mark,” according to 99designs.
If you really want someone to do something, send a short email message and include just one link as a button (such as a link inside of a colored box). As the 2017 PoliteMail Benchmark data shows, messages with just one link will get a 43% better click rate than 2-6 links.
6. Add Color
Mary Stribley writes on Canva that strong color contrast is among the most effective elements of good design. As most email contains mostly black on white text, making an important element a bright, on-brand color in yellow, green, blue, or red will make this particular element stand out and make the whole communication more visually appealing.
7. Be Judicious with Fonts
Just because a font looks good on your computer doesn’t mean it should be used in your email. Unlike print or pdf, fonts don’t travel with the email. If your special font isn’t available on the recipient’s mobile device or computer, then they will see something completely different such as Time New Roman. It’s best to choose from the short list of web-safe fonts.
Creative Market advises, “Where people go wrong is when they use too many fonts or font styles.” When it comes to fonts, less is more and basic is better.”
When recipients open your message, perhaps, as the result of an informative and compelling subject line, they will read the layout and design before reading even a single sentence. It may create the difference between the recipient reading the email, deleting it or immediately clicking to the next item in their inbox.
Here are seven things you can do to improve your email design and encourage employees to read your messages:
1. Why Waste Space on Branding?
Internal and external email audiences are not the same. It’s advantageous to brand the top of a PR or marketing email, but for internal communications, it is redundant and occupies top of page space better used for getting to the point quickly. As noted on the Advanced Learning Institute’s website, “employees already know it’s internal communication from the ‘from’ field.”
2. Make Content Scannable
Email is more often a work processing medium than a reading medium. People tend to scan email before they slow down to read something. It’s a benefit to you and your audience to design an information hierarchy based on font size, bullets, italics and color to organize your content.
99designs offers this advice: “Use headers and bullet points in your email design to emphasize your content. Use short paragraphs and avoid large blocks of text.”
The best practice is to use brief subheads containing key messaging in a slightly larger or bold font and separate these from short paragraphs using white space. This technique makes an email more open and easily digestible.
Creative Market suggests, “A designer’s main goal is to make an email look simple and to un-clutter the visual frenzy that often pollutes the message.”
3. Place Eye-Catching Graphics and Relevant Images
Stock images of people in suits or typing at their desk are unlikely to increase readership. What does? Photos of employees and your business operations in action, as well as illustrations.
“If you are going to put an image in an email, make sure it is supplementing the message and make sure you didn't just download it from some stock website” instructs Creative Market.
4. Balance Images and Text
Many employees facing a big block of email text will simply move to the next message. The same can be said for email that consists of one large image, which might be slow to load.
It’s best to balance your image and text areas, and to always set text as live, searchable text instead of embedding text content inside an image (excepting logos and some banners, of course). According to the 2017 PoliteMail Benchmark data, aiming for a 60/40 image-to-text ratio will optimize readership.
5. Emphasize Your Links or Call to Action
When employees scan their inbox, one of the questions they’ll be asking themselves is, “Is there something here I need to do?” If there is, make it clear and have it stand out.
You put links in your email because you want employees to click to something, right? Don’t bury the lead. Place links and calls to action closer to the top of the email message. It also works better to link an action-oriented sentence, not just a word. Consider linking supporting images to the same content.
“If the only link in your email is the word ‘here’ hidden somewhere in paragraph three, your email-driven traffic is going to hover somewhere around the zero mark,” according to 99designs.
If you really want someone to do something, send a short email message and include just one link as a button (such as a link inside of a colored box). As the 2017 PoliteMail Benchmark data shows, messages with just one link will get a 43% better click rate than 2-6 links.
6. Add Color
Mary Stribley writes on Canva that strong color contrast is among the most effective elements of good design. As most email contains mostly black on white text, making an important element a bright, on-brand color in yellow, green, blue, or red will make this particular element stand out and make the whole communication more visually appealing.
7. Be Judicious with Fonts
Just because a font looks good on your computer doesn’t mean it should be used in your email. Unlike print or pdf, fonts don’t travel with the email. If your special font isn’t available on the recipient’s mobile device or computer, then they will see something completely different such as Time New Roman. It’s best to choose from the short list of web-safe fonts.
Creative Market advises, “Where people go wrong is when they use too many fonts or font styles.” When it comes to fonts, less is more and basic is better.”
Author Bio
| Michael DesRochers is Founder and Managing Director of PoliteMail Software. He has spent 15 years as CEO of a 75-person team of communications professionals prior to founding PoliteMail. Visit www.politemail.com Connect Michael DesRochers Follow @PoliteMail |
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