iContact Update Email Marketing Design Best Practices in The Ultimate Email Design Lookbook

Good old, reliable email. It’s like it’s always been there, the unifying factor between your desktop, laptop, and latterly your smartphone. Can you imagine life without it? How did anyone get anything done before it?

As digital communication technologies go, email is a real survivor and you’d be forgiven for thinking it hasn’t changed too much, if at all, since its inception.

Email’s gradual evolution, since the very first electronic message was sent via the ARPANET in 1971 to the latest mobile iteration of Google’s Gmail service (recently celebrating its 15th birthday), is a testament to the genius of its inventor Ray Tomlinson. It is now, as it was then, an incredibly simple, useful and engaging communications channel. The advances in email have simply enhanced the email environment which remains true to its original vision.

Email has changed but you didn’t notice because it has never taken us out of our comfort zone.

Email Marketing Best Practices

As email has changed, email marketing best practices have also evolved.

Social media, the smartphone, and marketing automation technology have changed the way we think about the way we grow our subscriber lists, how we reach our customers, and refined our engagement techniques.

Legislation impacting on email marketing, like GDPR, has also meant many of the best practices we’ve been talking about for years are now mandatory – and this is a good thing.

Enhancements to the way email is delivered and served have also allowed email marketers to become more creative in their approach. This is important because, thanks to the success of email marketing, creative sends (great subject lines, slick design, compelling offers, etc.) stand more chance of standing out in a potentially crowded inbox.

Email Marketing through the Ages

Over the years, email design has progressed from a text-only medium to HTML, then HTML with CSS, and now advanced CSS with animation, proving the point that even in good old, reliable email, nothing stands still for too long.

And while everything changes, everything remains the same. Email marketing’s primary goal is to make a lasting impression and to encourage an engagement based on a marketing objective, such as triggering a sale, soliciting a review, or sharing a piece of useful content, etc.

Email marketing’s success can be attributed to the simple fact that, when marketers adhere to best practices, it simply works. It always has done and there is nothing to suggest that this is about to change any time soon.

New Campaign Design Trends

iContact, who also recently celebrated their 15th anniversary, know a thing or two about successful email design, having managed the sends of billions of email marketing campaigns on behalf of their clients.

Keen to highlight the latest trends in email marketing design and highlighting the success marketers are achieving by following up-to-date email marketing best practices, iContact has recently published The Ultimate Email Design Lookbook.

The visual guide features a series of tips and tricks covering the latest best practices regarding:

• Animation
• Branding
• Call-to-Action
• Color
• Content
• Layout
• Message Types
• Illustration and Photography

Essentially every component of a successful campaign send is covered in an easily referenced and highly actionable format – if you are not already incorporating these best practices, you should be.

The Lookbook is topped off iContact’s design team highlighting their favorite sends, explaining why each campaign is a great campaign.

Download The Ultimate Email Design Lookbook and don’t forget to share your email marketing best practices in the comments section below:

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