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Top chefs know, you “eat with your eyes”. A well-plated meal will get a more dramatic reaction, and leave a more positive impression over the same quality of meal not given the same attention to its visual construction. Successful outbound email campaigns use the same philosophy, but instead of plating, it’s email design. An email designed with best practices in mind will achieve better performance metrics and have residual effects on your lead generation and branding efforts.

Here are some proven best practices that will effectively turn your email design into a 5-star marketing campaign.

Pour your foundation first.

Often, we believe design to be all about the pomp and circumstance: crazy compelling visuals, witty and original copy and pushing the envelope with embedded video, gifs, and shiny things. But email design sinks or swims starting with a sound foundation. When choosing or building a template, it’s important to know the best practices for content placement.

The F pattern

Scads and scads of research have been conducted to figure out effective email user experience. Eyetracking studies show that people scan web pages, emails and phone screens in various patterns, one of the most prominent beings in the shape of the letter “F”.

Here’s how that works:

1. Users tend to first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area, forming the top bar of the “F”.
2. Then, users scan down the page and read across in a second horizontal movement forming the F’s lower bar.
3. Finally, users eyes move along the content’s left side in a more vertical movement, slowly (reading) or quickly (scanning) that creates the F’s stem.

Knowing this, email marketers tend to build content that grabs attention along the top bar, and puts prominence on information (words or images) that live along the left-hand edge.

We are living in a mobile world.

Don’t fight it, run with it. Studies show that over 56% of emails are now opened on mobile, so email design MUST follow mobile or responsive layout best practices. That means choosing (or building) a single column or cross-device compatible template. Also, sorry to say, but size matters. Conventional emails are set to a fixed width around 600 pixels, which is ideal for average desktop computers. However, mobile screens are much smaller; the most common mobile email readers are around 320 pixels.

Content is still the reigning king.

Even within the “kingdom” of content, there is a hierarchy. In the email marketing arenas, a content hierarchy is the practice of planning and organizing email content based on order of importance. This allows even the laziest, or most passive of readers to easily determine the primary goal of the email and the Call-To-Action from the secondary or even tertiary ones.

Your email’s hierarchy must be planned by setting clear goals for your campaign. It’s tough NOT to throw everything you want to say in an email, but the muddier the message, the less likely you’ll achieve engagement results. Rank your goals based on how important they are to the overall success of the campaign, and lay out your content accordingly.

Remember that mobile reading breeds a quick scroll culture. We don’t spend as much time allowing content to sink in, so write clear, pointed copy that provokes easy and immediate action. On average, emails with 20 lines of text or less (or about 1,200 characters) see the highest click-through rates. It’s always a good idea to A/B test your subject lines, or even content placement (hierarchy) to improve your open, click-through and conversion rates.

Eating with your eyes.

Just like a winning plate on the Food Network, email design relies on balance, composition and sensory stimuli to be successful.

Everything in balance.

It has been proven that less is more. Less variation in font type, color or weighting. Less Call-to-Action buttons or links. Even fewer images. Sounds counter-intuitive when we’re talking about design, doesn’t it? Effective email design is clear, simple and compelling. That’s the balance you want to strike.

Here are some design tips that will help you achieve balance and simplicity:

• The rule of three: restrict font styles, sizes, and colors to three or less.
• A lighter color background will enhance the readability of your font colors.
• Keep your goal above the fold. A crisp, clear CTA above the fold will get up to 84% more attention than the ones below.
• Use images, but not too many – resist the urge to clutter your email with visuals. According to studies, emails with 3 or fewer images perform better.
• SPAM filters and ISPs still don’t love or support images. Include alt-text, and try to create an email that would be just as compelling without a visual aid.

You don’t have to be a design whiz to create effective and professional email marketing campaigns, but it is important to choose an email design tool that practices the very best. Clickback’s email lead generation software is designed to make it easy to follow these principles and test your campaigns to boost open and click-through rates.

Humans make snap decisions based on perceptions that are predominantly visual. That’s why email design is critical to the success of a campaign. A solid foundation, content, balance and the right tools combine to help make that all important first and lasting impression.