The Benefits And Challenges of HTML Email Design
You’re a small to medium-sized business owner who’s ready to ramp up marketing efforts in 2020 with HTML email. Good for you! Using responsive HTML emails in your marketing strategy is one of the most rewarding tools with an ROI of $44 for every $1 spent. That’s because consumers who purchase products through email spend 138 percent more than those who don’t receive email offers. With all the revenue and business growth opportunity hidden inside each marketing email, you’d be doing your brand a disservice by not crafting beautifully design campaigns that speak to your target audience.
While HTML email clearly has its advantages, it also comes with a number of roadblocks. When’s the last time you brushed up on CSS styles or image style tags? For the average web developer, a custom HTML email may not be too challenging, but for the entrepreneurs and business owners who want to benefit from this marketing tool, custom coding an entire email could present a problem.
Most Common HTML Email Design Challenges
Whether you’re familiar with HTML code or not, understanding the most common HTML email mistakes will help you design a better campaign. From how your audience views the email to delivering the fastest loading time possible, your ability to overcome major obstacles will determine the success of your efforts. Hand coding an email is difficult enough, but you also have these challenges to be aware of:
- Mobile Responsive: Roughly 55 percent of email is opened on mobile devices, so if your email text, images, and videos don’t respond to the device being used, your recipient will quickly send it to the junk folder. To create a responsive design, you must inline CSS styles, otherwise, your recipient must zoom and scroll to read the message (not likely to happen).
- Image Size: When images are too large, they can slow load times and scare away first-time customers. You do, however, want your email display to be high quality. For best image display results, create the image at about twice the size you wish to display it and then customize the HTML or CSS properties to fit the desired display size.
- Plain text email: No, plain text email isn’t dead. With technological advances like smartwatches, home assistants, and screen readers, you need short, clear headlines, shorter copy blocks, and appropriate white space.
- Unnecessary code: If you use tools like Microsoft Front Page or Publisher, junk code could break up your email layout or cause other unexpected problems.
- Testing emails: No two email platforms are exactly the same, so your HTML email may display correctly in one email client, like Gmail, but be incorrectly formatted in Yahoo! or Hotmail. In order to find the code that works in all three, you’ll need to create email accounts in all clients and send test emails to yourself. From there, you can make edits to the code until it displays properly.
Even if you’re familiar with HTML code, these challenges and time-consuming testing methods are an antiquated way to reach your target audience.
Alternative To Manually Coding HTML Emails
While caniemail.com and other websites provide support tables for HTML and CSS in emails, a better user experience can be found in incorporating a platform like Admail.net. HTML emails give you an advantage or eye-catching images and inviting text display, but you no longer need to be a part-time web developer to achieve your marketing goals. Admail’s responsive email designer is the perfect way to create marketing email campaigns and take advantage of several HTML email benefits.
Better Branding
Create an email template that showcases your brand colors and logo. Successful email marketing must include a visual impact, and Admail simplifies the email creation experience. Your promotions, product launches, and company updates are more luring when you include quality images and a clickable call-to-action.
Increased Conversions
Email conversion rates increase when you have a clear and specific call-to-action. HTML email design allows you to call attention to a clickable icon so readers can easily engage with your content.
Analytics
Track the results of your email when you use the Admail platform to craft messages. Measure audience engagement and which images receive the most clicks to customize your messages to your recipients’ preferences.
Concise Formatting
White space is a visual element that helps break up your content to make it more digestible for the recipient. With an easy-to-use HTML responsive email platform, you can easily sort and format your content to be displayed in an attractive way.
Video
An estimated 87 percent of businesses now use video as a marketing tool. Using videos in your marketing emails is a two-fold benefit. Whether you want to increase your email open rate, or you want your videos to get more views, combining the two marketing efforts will give you the results you want. Some reports have shown that using the word “video” in the subject line increases open rates by 19 percent. And videos embedded in an email can increase your conversion rate by up to 9 percent.
HTML Responsive Email Service
An email service like Admail.net allows you to customize the message to your target audience. You promote your product, services, and brand through a professionally-designed email template that supports text, images, and video.
Crafting a message that displays vivid imagery and doesn’t require manually coding each email campaign means you win over customers while saving time. The Admail responsive email designer allows you to add or remove images, insert video, and craft text around each image.
The responsive email builder will also assist you in optimizing images to the appropriate size and give you options to change colors, designs, and media. With a simple point and click system, Admail takes the lengthy, often error-filled task of hand-coding emails into a simplified form.
There’s no doubt email marketing has the power to increase your revenue and grow your brand reach. By choosing an email service that’s focused on user experience, you’ll create powerful messages and have time remaining to focus on engaging with your customers. Explore Admail’s platform through a product demonstration video.