{"id":7357,"date":"2024-04-25T14:43:57","date_gmt":"2024-04-25T14:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tup.kxe.temporary.site\/how-to-produce-brand-approved-email-designs-on-time-and-on-budget\/"},"modified":"2024-04-25T14:43:57","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T14:43:57","slug":"how-to-produce-brand-approved-email-designs-on-time-and-on-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/okdesign.ca\/en\/how-to-produce-brand-approved-email-designs-on-time-and-on-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"How to produce brand-approved email designs on time and on budget"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Marketers short on time and\/or resources have developed shortcuts to produce emails and the most common of those can seriously hurt performance. Fortunately, there\u2019s an alternative that can help you with this. Also, you can improve performance by modifying your approach based on whether your company is CPG, ecommerce or B2B.<\/p>\n

Common email shortcuts that hinder performance<\/h2>\n

First, let\u2019s look at what you might be doing wrong.<\/p>\n

Mistake: Image-based emails<\/h3>\n

The single biggest shortcut we see is that brands will resort to sending image-based emails, which means they don\u2019t incorporate live text, dynamic elements or personalization. You can\u2019t, for example, swap in specific images, customize text, dynamically insert loyalty points, etc.<\/p>\n

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Yes, an image-based design will be brand-approved and quicker to produce. Still, even beyond the creative restrictions and inability to personalize, that email will lose engagement from many people who won\u2019t download email images in the first place. That and it\u2019s not ADA-compliant at all.<\/p>\n

Mistake: Poor rendering<\/h3>\n

Your email needs to look good on mobile and desktop \u2014 which, even in 2024, can\u2019t be assumed. But these days, you consider and test how your emails render for different ESPs, devices and settings (i.e., dark and light modes).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also seen some brands put out super-streamlined, over-simplified templates that minimize rendering issues but don\u2019t do the brand any favors. The best scenario is to create an on-brand and engaging design and include a stringent QA step that renders the email across all variables.<\/p>\n

Mistake: Truncating<\/h3>\n

Gmail users will know what I mean here. Sometimes, an email will truncate before you get to the end of the text. That\u2019s not from too much text; it\u2019s from too much code. If you get a truncated message when you test how your emails render on Gmail, see if you can send the same amount of info using less code.<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: 8 major email marketing mistakes and how to avoid them<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Building a better brand-friendly foundation for email creative<\/h2>\n

Creating compelling emails that render properly for your entire audience is time-intensive. Instead of starting over every time, I recommend a template approach: designing a template that includes email building blocks in a way that\u2019s fully on brand, reviewed, approved, built to dynamically pull in unique content and tested to make sure it renders well across the variables described above.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of legwork upfront, but it\u2019ll save incredible time over the long term. If you build a base of building blocks, the work is in choosing the right blocks and pulling in the right images \u2014 while avoiding the rendering and rigidity issues mentioned above.<\/p>\n

Once you set up your foundational template, you can really up the personalization ante by pulling together a good archive of images to help you appeal to different audiences (e.g., kid-focused vs. general or group-focused vs. individual). Include a healthy mix of lifestyle images, images of the product in use, images of product bundles, etc., and you\u2019ll have a lot of good options for aligning your email list segments with relevant email creative.<\/p>\n

One more thing to consider is whether you\u2019ll need different email themes. An SaaS company might need different designs for enterprise and free starter products, especially if the products carry different branding. That scenario is rare, but if you can identify different themes that need foundational creative work before building the emails, you\u2019ll appreciate the prep work when the day comes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: 5 impactful ways to level up your email marketing designs<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Tweak your approach by vertical<\/h2>\n

Different verticals carry different audience expectations that you should integrate into your email designs.\u00a0<\/p>\n