Graphic and technical design of your email

The email must support the proposal and guide the user's gaze to encourage them to click. Graphic compositions are therefore increasingly worked on in order to maximise click-through rates.

However, e-mail remains a delicate medium for complex formatting. In fact, each e-mail reading platform (webmails like Gmail or software like Outlook) interprets the HTML code used to format e-mails differently. Some platforms support formatting attributes that others do not, and vice versa!

Email images

An important point is the treatment of images, because most e-mail reading platforms block them. The Internet user therefore receives an "empty" e-mail without any information. To remedy this problem in part, it is advisable to provide each image with an alternative text ("alt" attribute in the HTML code) that will be displayed when the image is blocked and to suggest that the Internet user add the sender's address to his or her address book (which will have the effect of automatically displaying the images). In addition, it is better to avoid e-mails containing only an image without any text because it will be more difficult for it to get past the operators' anti-spam filters (ISPs, webmails). Mix HTML text and images for better results!

It is recommended to host the images of your messages on a remote server. Some emailing solutions offer to embed the images directly into the message but be aware that there is a risk of blocking in the inbox due to the message being too large.

Beyond the technical limitations, e-mail is a medium that is sometimes restricted in its reading. A large number of Internet users only read their e-mails in the preview window of their software. It is therefore necessary to concentrate the essential information in a restricted area, the ideal being to have an e-mail that is no more than 600 px wide and whose essential information is above a line situated at about 300 px from the top of the e-mail.

Use standard fonts

It is possible to use a font that is not present on the reader's computer or terminal via CSS (a computer language that manages the presentation of a web page) which will retrieve a font from a remote server. Unfortunately, most email clients do not allow this functionality. So you will have to limit yourself to fonts that are universally installed on all computers so by default use Arial or Verdana.

How to make a CTA (Call To Action)?

The Call-to-Action, or CTA, is an important element of the ergonomics of your message. It is the element that will incite a click and therefore enable you to achieve your objectives. Your calls to action should be visible, stand out from the rest. So use a colour that stands out from the rest of your email.

Your calls to action should be visible, stand out from the rest. You should use a colour that stands out from the rest of your e-mail. They should be easy to understand, for example by using pictograms, arrows and other graphic elements, in order to reinforce the meaning and the words. the most important elements of your e-mail should be located at the top of your e-mail and should have more graphic importance than the rest.

Make your emails responsive

A responsive email is an email that is adapted to all media, be it computer, tablet or smartphone. Thanks to this technique, the email automatically adapts to all screen resolutions, allowing readers to consult emails on the device of their choice. The technique used consists, in a way, of creating two "versions" included in the HTML code. A "desktop" version that will be displayed on a computer, and a "mobile" version for smartphones. 

While a newsletter may look great on your computer, it can be unreadable on the small screen of your smartphone: small fonts, hard-to-use links, broken layout. An email that is not optimised for mobile will lose its effectiveness.

So choose an email builder that offers a responsive version of your email or if you want to create a responsive emailing yourself, you must first master HTML and CSS.