Transcription
All right. All right. Oh, we started. I didn't even see a countdown. Oh, you you were you you were somewhere else there. Yeah, I was. Yeah, you were. Yeah, somewhere. Somewhere nicer. Somewhere nicer. Now I've been jerked back into this podcast. We're recording an excellent podcast in sunny Norwich. Well, we don't know that this one's going to be excellent. No. And we don't know it's going to be sunny for the for the listener. True. By the time it comes out. True. Um, I just had a Renie and I don't know if it was off cuz it reie didn't taste right. Oh, an off reie. I don't know. It was like a Lenny. What's the uh what's the I was going to say statute of limitations. What's the um like sell by on a Renie? How long I I feel like they're like a post-apocalyptic thing where there will be cockroaches and renies at the end of at the end of things. But and if there are any that will taste like the one I just had. I've only got the foil thing so I don't know. There's no and it's it's not like taste best before or now when it comes to Renie. It's just no does the job. Did you just like raw dog the Renie or do you do you like you take it with something? You don't take Renie with something. It's It's not like It's not like when you're trying to give something to a dog and you have to like squeeze it into their treats. Yeah. That's what we should have done with you. Yeah. Or like in the crevice of a Kit Kat. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. or like crumbled it up and like sprinkled it over. I have to do that with my dog. Do you? Uh yeah. Well, my dog's not regularly sickly enough that we have to give her anything to be No offense to Olive, but Yeah. I mean, Olive is sickly enough. Not like flea stuff and [ __ ] like that. Like the regular stuff. Oh, like Wait, like regular food? No, no, no. So, we I think there's like a once a month flea thing we put in our food or something. Oh, yeah. No, we do the back of the neck liquid, which is horrible by the way. Is it? Yeah. Cuz then I forget and stroke her and then it's all over my hands and it smells really strong. Okay. That's probably going to be there with the Renie and the cockroaches at the end of the world then. Yeah, that's exactly [Music] it.
Um, okay. What do you want to talk about this week? Uh, so we're talking about email design, which honestly when you suggested it, I was like, well, we've already done that and then realized that actually we haven't at all and that feels like a bit of a blind spot. So we Yeah. So that's what we're talking about today. Yeah. I I went through the episodes not as in I looked at all the titles and I thought we started off with like these ticking off like the regular normal stuff and then for a little bit we went a bit meta. Yeah. And I think Yeah. We forgot to do some of these more kind of standard subjects. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we we will have touched on design in previous newsletters. Probably I keep calling these podcasts newsletters where my head's at. Yeah. Um in in previous episodes, we probably did talk about uh design in patches, but this will be a a dedicated episode where we'll talk about the dos and don'ts. Not not from a what looks best perspective, but from a what performs best perspective. And I think that's important to stress like we are not designers whatsoever. So we're not coming at this from the angle of like should your newsletter be red or blue. We're talking about the best practices when it comes to email marketing that are going to ensure your email gets the maximum number of subscribers and and can be enjoyed by the maximum number of people. Nice. In fact, we probably touched on it when we did the accessibility episode. Yeah, we would have done Yeah, for sure. Okay. Nice. Um, and there there are offshoots of of this topic that will probably need their own mini episodes or episodes, right? So, if we talk about, I don't know, um, buns. Um, yeah, maybe headers and furs. Headers and volleys. Yeah. Yeah. If you're really stuck with content, we can do a whole episode on furs. Yeah. Or just like dividers. Easy one. That's an easy half an hour for us. Yeah. divides opinion for sure. Oh, stop it. Save some some gold for the episode. Okay. Sorry.
Uh um do do you think you have a um like a catch all standard response when it comes to uh what makes a good newsletter design? Yeah, I do actually. Yeah. Simple, boring. Um that's my advice. Your advice? Okay. Yeah. Simple and boring is best. I have no appetite whatsoever for sexy looking emails unless unless there is a really clear and obvious way that it serves your ability to do what emails ought to do which is uh engage with your audience and uh ultimately sell sell the thing you're trying to sell for most of our listeners. Right. Okay. So, there is a devil's advocate uh point here which maybe we should get out the way first, which is that if you sell a product that is heavily dependent on its visuals, there might be an argument that your newsletter should look um should should betray some of the rules that we'll talk about this episode. Um, so you know, I don't know, maybe you're a design studio that that specializes in um like loud um elaborate paisley designs or something. Or maybe, you know, maybe you maybe you sell some sort of skin care product that is, you know, that that that where the bottle looks incredible and it and it always needs to be in every email because that's one of its main selling points or, you know, I don't know. I'm I'm struggling to find examples because there are very few caveats to the rule of simple and boring in my view. Yeah. Maybe maybe the way um I'm kind of don't want to speak on your behalf here, but maybe the way that that's um uh what what you mean there is unless for me unless the design and imagery is um doing some of the work that copy would be doing but better. M that's nice. Yeah. So the whole like picture speaks a thousand words thing, right? So if if there are things that you want to get across in in your email that is done better with a picture than it is with words, then then fine or if the images and the design are helping the copy. Yeah, I do I do subscribe to that and thank you. Yeah, because I think that's a more succinct way of putting it. But what I would stress here for the listener is that I'm not talking about when we're talking about design, I'm not talking about images. You know, I'm more than happy to use images in your newsletter. I would encourage images in your newsletter for the most part. And I think that generally, yeah, there will always be an opportunity to use an image that is more industrious than using words in place of that image. Um, you can have lots of images in your email theoretically and still have a simple boring design. And I think the two are separate. So there's the design of the email which is the sort of the fundamentals that are in every single email and then there are image and copy which are are sort of separate to that if that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Nice.
Um, okay. I think one of the the arguments against complex design for me is the amount of effort that it requires to to build every single email you send out. Yeah. Such a great point. Yeah. Yeah. and it ends up becoming a blocker. [Music] So unless there is a really good reason for you to be investing that amount of time into rebuilding every single email because your comp your design is so complex that actually simplifying it down so it doesn't serve as a blocker to getting your newsletter out or your campaigns out more regularly. And I've got two examples for that. Right? The first example is is um uh let's do e-commerce first. So if you're an e-commerce or a consumerf facing business um there is a um a tendency for those kind of businesses to use all image emails. Now um James you'll have a lot to say on on accessibility when it comes to using all imaging emails because that's a good topic for you right now. For me, the point that I want to illustrate at this point this time is that by using an all image email, you are signing yourself up for having to um redesign something every single time you use you send an email. So, it's really intense um cycle of of you know building these designing them building them and sending them out. The plus points of of that are that you um they tend to like look nicer to to the reader. I would say as u from a objective standpoint, not from a performance standpoint, I would say um they they look better and I think some of the reasons that they look better is because you have more freedom to use design elements, but also you get you keep your um fonts, your brand fonts get protected because if you're using a native text field when you're designing an email, it will get defaulted to a web save font. So you you don't get your brand font. So those are the plus points, but for me the negatives far outweigh the positives when it comes to that. So the email is less accessible. Um it's less likely to be uh performed properly across the range of devices and inboxes. Uh and unless you're this kind of c, you know, multi-sight corporate huge company who has its own marketing and design function where you can start to turn these out multiple times a day. it's a blocker because you're you're asking too much of yourself to get these things built and sent out. Uh and the other example is for B2B newsletters. Now, uh B2B newsletters are much more um idea and thought leadership led and and those things are best imparted through copy. And I think we should be asking ourselves the question, how could I be more clever with my copy before we ask ourselves, how can I be more clever with the design of my newsletter? And so, you know, thinking putting more effort into what you're saying as opposed to how it looks is far more important in B2B newsletters. Yeah. Yeah. I I Yeah. I would say and for B2C as well in in nearly every case. Um what what you're saying is way more interesting because there's a there's a time and your place, right, for there's a there's a time and a place for visuals when it comes to the product that you're selling. like, you know, if you're a successful e-commerce store, you're going to have an Instagram, you're going to have Tik Tok, you're going to have you're going to be active on all of these channels. Email is not the place to it. Email is not a visual platform, right? It is not the place to be to be sharing the the best and brightest of the the the pictures and videos that you've that you've taken um of your product. Uh it is the place to get the message across. It's the place where you build your brand. It's the place where you um amplify promotions that you might be having on your website and it's a place for for sort of building up that brand loyalty and creating fans of your products as opposed to just consumers of your product. That's what emails are really good at. It is not good at showcasing how beautiful your product is. And so it needs to be viewed through through the lens of uh the the the the stuff I've I've mentioned and not through the lens of here's another way for us to to to show everyone how how beautiful our product looks. Um, yeah. So ju just to be really clear with what Jamie's talking about there because when when you say all image emails, what we're talking about is not an email just full of loads of pictures. We're talking about o opening a Canva file, for example, building your email on Canva. So, writing text, creating text boxes, creating headers, inserting buttons, all of that stuff, and literally just exporting that Canva file as a PNG, putting it into an email and and pressing send. And and and that's what Jamie's talking about there. So, um, yeah, they are um as Jamie's already alluded to, terrible for accessibility. Um, uh and that's because uh email service providers uh get the image through any tool that someone might be using in order to read uh email text to magnify email text to read out on loud. For example, sometimes uh people with accessibility issues have to change the font. There are uh fonts for example that are more friendly for people that have uh dyslexia. Um, so all of these tools that depend on the fact that they're able to extrapolate text from an email can't be used because all of those all those tools are getting is an image. Um, so that's the main reason for uh for why these are a problem for from an accessibility point of view. They're also just awkward to zoom in on. Um, you can't if you want to include links in your email, it becomes a lot more difficult because you have to hyperlink the whole thing. So that also makes it challenging and often inflates your click rates because people accidentally click it. Um, so there are there are all kinds of implications that these have and there's a big deliverability implication as well. That being if you're just sending an image as a brand and let's say you're sending that to 10,000 people that just looks super spammy as far as the email service provider is concerned. Gmail, you know, the the the bots that sit at the gates of Gmail in order to determine who comes in and who doesn't are seeing that and thinking, "Oh, okay. well, this is just one big image. Like, that's the sort of thing that a spam sender might send. Um, so it it doesn't look good from from their perspective either. They're not able to pick up on key words in the email that might be a green light as far as um as far as these spam filters go. So, um it looks proper dodgy for for them, too. Yeah. I think the other thing is it's less likely to be changed uh to be optimized for dark mode as well because it won't it won't it'll be an image, right? And it won't in dark mode it won't change. So if your image has a white background for instance it won't change that white background of the image. Yeah. Um whereas if it was like a native field it would change it. Yeah. Exactly. And dark mode isn't just a let's let's not forget dark mode isn't just a preference. I mean I use dark mode cuz I want to. Some people have photo sensitivity. That means dark mode is essential if they're going to consume digital content. So it's important. Yeah. And if you're not sold on why accessibility is important, just go back and listen to our accessibility episode because it is it's more important than you think it might be. Yeah.
Um, Okay. So, if we if we break down should we should we break down what a design should include, you know, if we we think about what a good one looks like and we if we think about let's just take a newsletter for as an example in this instance. Yeah. Because there is an in between, right, between like these all image emails that are fancy and have all these fancy fonts and whatnot and then the other extreme is the plain text email, right? The one you get from your your work colleague or your grandma that's literally just like a like a letter. Um, and most newsletters fall somewhere in between those two extremes. I would say I'm I'm much more inclined to to be closer to the plain text than I am the uh the the all image one. um you know it's it's hard to be too um prescriptive uh when it comes to how an a newsletter ought to look because so much of it is dependent on the content that you're sharing. uh you know if you are if you send out an incredibly short newsletter uh every week for example then um that is probably more conducive to a simple format uh because there isn't so much pressure on uh one individual email to carry huge amounts of information because you're emailing every week or maybe even more regularly and so therefore you can get away with uh with including less and and as such your design ought to be more simplistic if you're sending every month and maybe you need to cram in more information. There might be different sections in your newsletter, for example. Uh there might be more onus on a design to ensure that there there's clear distinction between those sections, you know, between those pillars of content. So maybe if you're a business sending once a month, uh you have an intro, you might have a case study in there and testimonial. Uh you might have some value that you're offering as well. You might also have a little section that talks about the kind of inner workings of the business like the things that you've been up to or the events that you're attending. Maybe there's a blog post you want to share in there. So the more stuff that goes into a newsletter I would say the more important it is that design works for you and not against you. Um, so and of course then there are there are lots of offshoots here. So let's say for example that you are a software business and you've created a welcome flow where once somebody subscribed to your newsletter they get instructional newsletters on how to use different elements of your platform. That's a great way of using a newsletter but because it's educational and because it involves presumably having to show and not just tell there may be more of a need for images or videos. Generally, we don't encourage videos in newsletters. To be crystal clear, you cannot embed videos in newsletters. Well, technically you can, but Gmail won't allow them through, and lots of other email service providers won't allow them through. So, instead, what you have to do when you're sharing a video is link to a video that's hosted elsewhere. We generally don't encourage that, but there are exceptions. So, um, Jamie, I've waffled a bit there. What I want to get across here is that there are no hard and fast rules. It is very case by case, but I think fundamentally adearing to um simplicity over sexiness is like the best place to start almost indefinitely. Yeah. And we have to be I have to be careful about how I word this because I don't want to don't want to get cancelled. Not that I'm big enough to be cancelled, but you know, sometimes uh simplicity is um sexy. And I'm using I'm using that word because you you've just used it. So if I'm getting Is that a counselable word? Uh well, no. I think it just has like well I don't want to start comparing newsletter design to the female form and and sexiness and stuff like that. I was firmly thinking of like Rod Stewart when I say sex. Okay, fine. Let's use Rod Stewart. So what does Rod Stewart always wear? Oh sparkly suit. Yeah. So okay, so let's say suit, right? I think if we look at a suit, is there anything that's kind of more simple and sexy than a suit? Yeah, I I see where you're you're driving it. I would say that actually a suit is probably one of the more complex uh things that I would wear in an average year, but I know what you're saying here. Yeah. So, if we think uniform Yeah. If we okay, let's let's put it on the on the Metcal red carpet and we see someone that's just wearing like a a suit versus someone who's dressed as a coconut or something, you know, maybe that's the comparison to draw. Yeah. Yeah. A suit is high impact, simple, looks good, uh timeless, etc. Um, coconut is maybe attention grabbing, but isn't taken seriously. I don't know. I'm kind of you trying to use a metaphor here that I'm not sure is actually working. No, no, no. You I think you've nailed it. Okay. Yeah. The the other version is the is maybe like an LBD little black little black dress. Oh, sure. If we were going to feminize it, I was like le before wicket, but that's not um so, you know, I think um what we want the design to do is to accentuate what's already there. Um, you know, I think it's, um, you know, where my beard is only making what's already there look all right or where makeup is best used because it's kind of accentuating what's already there. Yeah, maybe. And and what's interesting, what what you tend to find, and this is purely anecdotal, but I'd love to one day sort of build a portfolio of these, is that the the the the businesses that are best at design, right, design houses, uh design agencies, the the guy who used to be chief designer for Apple, the guy who literally designed the the iPhone, like the chief designer behind that, now has a consultancy. You go on any of these uh any of these institutions websites, you subscribe to their newsletters and you will find a common theme which is that they are all stripped back and incredibly simple much like the iPhone itself, right? Um, and this is where people most frequently go wrong is they think that good design equals elaborate design. Actually, it's the opposite. Good design equals a a a lack of noticeable design. The if the design is noticeable on an email, you've done something seriously wrong. Ultimately, the design needs to be there to give the copy, the messaging, the important bit uh a louder platform uh than than it would have had on its own. And and I would argue that actually the way that the world is going and the savviness of the average recipient uh these days means that actually plain text emails are the essence of great design these days because they don't look like corporate emails. And if we're really boiling it down, what do we want our emails to achieve? Well, we want people to read them and we want people to engage with them, right? We want them to stick on the email for long enough that they're they're they're happy to read it all and they really absorb the message that we're sending them. I would argue that if the first thing you see when you click on an email is some huge picture or some like moving gif of like a woman in various poses wearing a coat, you're immediately your brain now recognizes that immediately is like this is from a brand. I'm not interested. This is spam. Whatever. Um, unless you know you happen to be you happen to love that brand already and that's a different conversation about sender reputation. Um, people are becoming blind to ads and this is why there's such an emerging trend in the paid ads world for creating ads that don't look like ads. you know, we've gone from the era of beautifully shot video um that was like heavily branded, heavily produced, really good-looking to now CEOs doing selfie videos in the middle of Trafalga Square selling whatever they're selling and and that those way outperforming the, you know, 100k budget ads. And I think apply that logic and take it to email. You know, there was once a time where the best thing a brand could do is fill their emails with color and images and it look really sleek and cool. And that is no longer the case. The less it looks like a a branded email, I would argue that the more likely it is to perform. M and I would say it's it's um we're not talking about because I I think it's more clever as as well in order to to create a uh an email that performs well because the design is stripped back in a similar way in which getting um a really powerful message across in in fewer words is harder and more clever than it is getting it in over in more words. um you know, if we we've got to be intentionally simple here. We've got to be intentionally creating a newsletter or designing an email that is achieving the goals that we want to achieve. So, it needs to we're not just talking about being low effort, you know, we're talking about intentionally making it simple and and stripping it back. Um which is really important. Um, it's funnily enough one of the big challenges that we come across as an agency because there is whether we like it or not a bias towards really sexy email design, Rod Stewart email design, right? There is a there is a moment there is a a big reveal moment that we get to enjoy uh as agency owners where if we're working on a a template for a client, we we reveal that template and you know um that that is often the moment of like real excitement as opposed to reading the first draft of the newsletter, which is what we really care about. It tends to be that moment of like, oh yes, this is what my newsletter is going to look like. It looks so cool. Uh, and you know, for for us it it would feel it would feel harsh to for some clients to reveal this just like plain text email, you know, imagine. Um, but as the conversations that we have with our clients and and the ones that we're having with you listener now is is is try it, give it a go. Don't necessarily default to plain text. Um, sometimes it can be really nice and really conducive to your effort to create brand loyalty to have consistent visual themes amongst your your newsletters. And the counterargument is that it's it can be if your sender reputation is strong, it can be hugely beneficial if people know that it's from you the moment they open it. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the kind of brand you are and the relationship you have with your subscribers. So definitely uh don't default to the plain text but incorporate plain text. I would say try it. Give it a go. Maybe you have an eight email welcome flow for example and one of those emails is plain text. The rest are designed one of them is plain text. Just see what happens to the metrics on that email compared to the others. Look at the open rates. But more importantly look at the click rates. Look at the engagement on those plain text emails. And I would wager that just like a lot of things in email marketing, if we can capitalize on variety instead of uh hard and fast and set rules, if we can capitalize on variety, we will see significant differences in that plain text email compared to the others. Nice.
As we're recording this episode, I've just had a a first concept through for a new client for their for their newsletter. So, it's like a you know, for something that we will submit. now having built expectations around um what their newsletter design should be. So we now have this first concept that we will send to them for feedback um which is which kind of is good timing but it perfectly illustrates and I'll talk you through this this design. It's, you know, it has the header um as in the header image which is, you know, very stripact, very simple, very on brand. Um, we have dividers which are very clean, professional looking because the client, that's the kind of client that this is. Then we have, you know, some uh kind of image frames and then some feature blocks. So, you know, some colored feature blocks which pull out something that's kind of short and and you know, like a little feature like an idea or a trivial thing. Uh, and then we have this footer. Um, and so, you know, it's it's very clean. It's very simple. And that's fine. And I think sometimes what can look um if people might look at these kind of designs and they might think, okay, well, is that it? Um, but that's fine because this design concept doesn't have the copy in yet. It doesn't have the message that is the lifeblood of what this newsletter is going to be. And so that's so important. It's like what is this going to say? And so if we say that design needs to carry the message and the design serves as a backup function to to the copy. If the copyy's not in there, then we just have someone on stage playing bass, which isn't that interesting. But if you put vocals and a league guitar on on top of that, then it is interesting. Um, so yeah. Good timing. That was all. But uh Yeah. Nice.
Um, should we hot take very quickly and then hot take? Let's hot take. Yeah. Cool. I went first last time. Okay. Yeah. So my I I'll go first, Jay. I'll buy you some time. So um so my hot take is I actually ran a poll on LinkedIn. Um, which damn it, it's just refreshed. Um, I can remember the results. Um, so I ran a poll on LinkedIn about 4 months ago asking about this exact thing. I said, would you prefer to read an email that is completely plain, boring, no design whatsoever or a super sexy, lovely, elaborate design? I was really hoping that the results would be oh are definitely the simple one because you know we at the inbox club have always been very pro simple and boring. Uh actually the results were the opposite. So 45% wanted the simple and the boring. 55% wanted the the elaborate and the interesting. Um, now there are only 29 votes, so it was it was not the biggest survey that's ever been conducted when it comes to uh email design, but I think an interesting little glimpse into the difference between what people might think they want to read and what performs best from a email best practices perspective. And there is a gulf between those two things. Sometimes depending on the audience, depending on the product, there is a gulf between those two things. And the bravery in going for a simple design is being able to accept that that golf exists and to pursue with a simple design nonetheless because you know that it's going to get to more primary inboxes. All of your audience are going to be able to read it, not just those that don't suffer from from visual impairments, for example. Uh and it's going to carry your message in a much more powerful and effective way that actually encourages engagement. So um this is an exercise in putting aside your vanity. I think in a in a lot of cases it's about accepting the fact that yes you have this beautiful brand and yes there are other places to show that off. The inbox is not that place. Nice. I re I reckon you should run that poll again and I think you should change the wording around it because I think people will see plain and boring and they think well okay well obviously I don't want the one that's plain and boring. I think you should opt for would you like something that's uh simpler, cleaner, and easier to read versus something that's elaborate, messy, and harder to navigate. Yeah. Um it's just some salesmanship, I guess. But yeah. Yeah. Uh I was so interested in what you were saying there that I I didn't even think about what my hot take would be. Oh, you charmer. Um, but I um, okay, my hot take is I think if you've listened to this episode and you think, "Okay, well, I have a newsletter already and it's I send it out every week or every month." I think next month for your next edition, uh, run a test. And I think my hot take is um, I don't know, run that test. Run the test. Do old design versus new design. And actually you did that test change for a client very recently. Yeah. Um and so yeah, I think run a test for two different designs. Um run that test a few times and then see what the results tell you. Um because as always, you know, it's very all well and good hearing two guys [ __ ] about on a podcast coming up with ideas and stuff. Another thing is to test these things in the real world and then act on the results. So I would do that. Um, and then if if I'm okay to include a quick call to action here, if you are not sure whether your design's any good or not or which direction to take for a new design, etc., etc., uh, submit it to us and and we'll have a look for you and we'll give you some tips uh, free of charge. Just email us. We're party at theinbox.club. Do you regret that email that email domain at thebox.comclub? No. So, you've you've done that thing where you've taken cuz I said domain. You've taken you you've taken me literally. I meant the email address party at Oh, do I regret it? Yeah. Uh, I don't regret it cuz I didn't put it in place. So, but are you resentful that I uh No, I don't think so. No, I don't mind party at the inbox. Um, yeah. Are you a little bit sometimes? Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes I wish I'd just gone something a bit more conventional like hello or or whatever. But well, we can change it. I So I probably had a few probably had a few sig Miguel's or something when I uh Yeah, maybe when I when I put that in place. You're sober now, though, so maybe now is a good time to redo it. I'm sober. Only occasionally. I'm sober at the moment. It's sober right now. Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, I think that's it. Yeah, this episode. Nice. So, um, we recorded this on a Monday in midappril, you're probably getting this at the end of April if you're the listener. Yeah. If you're like a diligent listener who listens to episodes as they come out. Oh, yeah. True. Who knows? I think it might be Christmas 25. Yeah, it could be Christmas 2020 9. Well, Philly's never died. Uh, I bat myself into a corner then by saying 2020 and then like realize I could only go four years ahead and not I wanted I wanted to be like 2089 or something. But uh, well, four years is a long time. Who knows what's going to happen by then. Yeah. Yeah. True. Anyway, anyway, probably both be dead by then, Jay. Do you think? Well, I don't know. Well, you won't be. You're sober now. True. You were heading out at one point, but the way you're going, mate. Yeah. Right. Okay. Thanks for listening. All right. Thanks. Bye. Bye. [Music]