Not all designers are ready to deal with the layout of email newsletters because they put creativity into a rigid framework. However, the web design of letters helps to release true creativity. If you follow the email rules, mailings will look cool on all devices and generate income for your business. These cool life hacks will teach you to fulfill the requirements of mailing services and create cool layouts even for Outlook.
1) Make it adaptive
According to statistics, 9 out of 10 users go online from a smartphone. Those who have already used emltopst.com utility to transfer from side services to Outlook, use the mobile version to read the letters. This means that the layout for mailings should be designed in a way that it would be easy to turn the desktop version into a mobile one. In order not to make it adaptive, do not overload the header and footer with information. You are making a letter, not a landing page.
2) Remember about the dark theme
Are you using a dark theme? According to the Android Authority, 81.9% of Android users apply it. 82.7% of Mac clients also prefer the dark mode of the operating system. If you create newsletters in HTML, and they contain design elements, switching to the dark theme can break everything. Fonts can change, colors can be inverted. So, create simple letters with a minimum of graphics. They will display normally on all devices.
3) Compress GIF files
Mailing services don’t like emails that contain GIFs over 5 MB. Even if your mailing list is lucky to get into the “Inbox”, it will take a long time to load. If a message is loaded for more than three seconds, it is deleted. Therefore, it is worth compressing GIFs. For instance, you can adjust the settings in Adobe Media Encoder to get the GIF size you want.
4) Use standard fonts
There are only 10 fonts that you can freely use for creating letters: Times New Roman, Tahoma, Geneva, Arial, Verdana, Courier, Georgia, Palatino, Helvetica, and Trebuchet MS. Of course, you can take any other fonts. Alas, if designer fonts are not installed on the user’s computer, the mail client will automatically replace them with standard ones. For example, Gmail uses Arial, iCloud Mail uses Helvetica, and Outlook 2007/2010/2013 likes Times New Roman.
5) Layout with pictures
This method will make the newsletter original and cool. But there is a problem — the text will not be scaled to fit the smartphone screen, like the HTML version. Plus, spam filters try not to deliver emails with only pictures. It will be unpleasant if the message that you have been making for several hours does not get into the Inbox. So, make up pictures only as a part of the mailing, for example, a banner.
The layout of letters is a space for creativity. On the one hand, email services push the designer into frames. Nevertheless, restrictions help to find an interesting solution. So, do not stop experimenting! Enjoy!