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Creating effective visuals for email campaigns

According to a study by Vero, email campaigns with visuals had a 42% higher click through rate compared to campaigns without images. However, including images is not the be-all-end-all, it is also about creating effective images that call out to your audience!

A 2020 study by Red Sift and Entrust found that logos positively increased brand recall by 18%, and purchase likelihood by 34%.

The placement of your logo would depend on the intention of your email. For example, if you would like to improve your credibility and make the email feel more authentic to users, you can place it on the top right corner.

An image of an email with the company logos on the top right

Similarly if you are sending out a longer email, you can place your logo at the bottom right to remind your users about the agency they are interacting with. This will improve your engagement rate.

An image of an email with the logo at the bottom

Make your call-to-action (CTA) prominent​

To make your call-to-action effective , you should make it highly visible. Use contrasting colours and provide whitespace around your button to make it easily clickable.

Your CTAs could be part of a larger image (e.g. in your header) or be created separately via buttons or hyperlinks.

2 different emails to show usage of contrasting colours and whitespaces

If you’re using multiple CTAs, consider using different colour combinations. For example, use your brand colour with white text for the primary CTA and a grey background for the secondary CTAs.

[An image of Hush Puppies' landing page

Source: EmailOctopus

Pick the optimal email layout​

The layout of your email should help your recipients consume the content of your message with ease and in the right order. Here are some examples:

In a one-column layout, all your email content is placed within a single column, one after another. This is great for focusing your audiences’ attention in the places you want them to look at. It is a simple and mobile-friendly design which ensures your information is shown easily.

An image of an email that uses a one column layout

See more layout examples here

Make your visuals accessible​

It is highly recommended to ensure your campaign is digitally accessible for people with disabilities and impairments. Make use of contrasting colours between your backgrounds, images and text.

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Low contrast text is known to be the highest cause for accessibility failures!

Your design system communicates your UI and UX practices and it is a good place to encode knowledge about acceptable colour pairings based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines’ contrast ratio of 4:5:1

An image comparing good contrast and bad contrast

Align visuals with your own branding​

Use visuals that are identifiable to your agency and be consistent with your design elements (composition, typography, colour palette, etc). This form consistency creates a visual identity for your agency which leaves an emotional impression on your users and connects with them better. Avoid stock images and use more real photos!

Optimise Spacing and Padding​

Ensure that your campaigns have enough whitespace (negative space) to ensure there are ample differentiating points to make reading and clicking your emails easier. Essentially, to allow for ‘breathing space’.

According to GetResponse, the ideal padding ratio for the sides is 20-30px and 10-20px for the top and bottom.

Did you know that you can customise your padding and spacing settings on Percy? Try it here!

A screenshot of the email asset editor in Percy dashboard

Use the right text-to-image ratio​

Images are used primarily to illustrate the text content and are not the main focus of the email. According to Mailchimp, a good ratio would be 80% text, 20% visual to ensure faster load times for users.

An image of an email that uses an image with texts

Source: Hustler Marketing

Use these tips for your next email campaign here