WhatCounts White Paper - Top 10 Best Practices

TOP 10 BEST PRACTICES
For Crafting an Effective and Reusable Email Template


THE PROBLEM: THE ENDLESS CYCLE OF
CREATIVE PRODUCTION
One of the biggest challenges facing email marketers today is the endless cycle of
creative production. By the time one campaign is out the door, you are already behind
on the next one. Though many email marketers use some form of templates, often these
templates are designed in a way that prevents the necessary flexibility to adapt to new
business requirements or strategic advances, and so need extensive rework. Often, it is
simply faster to start over and create yet another new template.

Unfortunately, under this scenario, one often has barely enough time to work on the
next campaign, much less think strategically and plan for the long- term. There are a
number of possible contributing factors that prevent email marketers from breaking this
cycle including:

• Limited Resources mean that you
have to focus on your immediate needs
versus working on long-term strategic
programs
• Lack of Flexibility within your
current templates usually result in you
having to rework or start over in order
to support a specific campaign objective
• Inability to Personalize or incorporate dynamic content prevents you from
taking advantage of the best way to send relevant and targeted emails
• Errors most often occur when time is tight and corners are cut
• Costs and Inefficiency are immediate by-products when constantly creating
new assets to support your current email campaigns

Copyright © 2012 WhatCounts, Inc. 3630 Peachtree Rd. Toll Free: 1.866.804.0076 2
All Rights Reserved. Suite 900 Email: sales@whatcounts.com
Atlanta, GA 30326 Website: www.whatcounts.com


THE SOLUTION: FLEXIBLE AND EFFICIENT
TEMPLATES
One of the most important steps any marketer can take to shift the focus from the never-
ending cycle of creative production to long-term strategic planning is to utilize flexible
and efficient templates.

By creating a library of reusable templates to meet your long-term marketing needs, you
will be taking the first critical step necessary to have more time to build new programs,
test and analyze in order to maximize the potential of the email channel.

There are ten key recommendations to keep in mind when crafting a template solution
designed to meet your long-term marketing needs.

YOU HAVE TO CHANGE BAD BEHAVIORS!
The first four recommendations are closely related, but are in many ways, the most
important ones that must be embraced before jumping into the strategic and design
phases of creating a new template.

1 GIVE YOURSELF TIME

2 ANALYZE YOUR PAIN POINTS

3 CONSIDER THE BIG PICTURE

4 THINK MULTI-PURPOSE



To do this right, you have to give yourself enough
“Having a library of reusable time to identify your needs; ensure all appropriate
templates will allow you to contributors are able to identify their needs and
spend more time testing and
provide feedback; and are looking at your long-term
building new programs to
needs — not just the next quarter. It is also helpful
maximize the full potential of
that you review where there are issues whether in the
the email channel.”
production process or in the templates themselves so
they can be addressed accordingly.

Email marketers often work with very tight timelines, but it is important you treat this
as a long-term investment and set the appropriate expectations. You should plan on the
process to take at least six weeks, if not more, start to finish.

5 FOLLOW BEST PRACTICES
One of the first mistakes many marketers (or their creative partners) make is not fully
embracing the reality that the email channel is different than the web and print
channels.

The email channel is very unique with its own standards and limitations. Therefore, it is
important that everyone working on a new template understands and applies current
email best practices appropriately.

LEARN YOUR ABCS!

• Acknowledge the current creative limitations of the email channel
• Believe best practices are best practices for a reason — implement, test, repeat
• Customize to meet your brand’s objectives, testing results and production
realities



CAN’T LOSE CLASSICS

• Email width set between 550 - 600 pixels
• Quick links in header for immediate engagement
• Mixture of system text links and graphic calls to action throughout email
• Social media push — forward to a friend, social media outlets, SWYN,
progressive profiling, surveys

6 USE FLEXIBLE MODULES
The use of flexible modules, also known as a modular template, is a template innovation
designed to provide maximum flexibility whether creating different layouts for your
promotional campaigns or supporting multiple lifecycle marketing programs.

A modular template is a series of pre-designed and formatted HTML content modules
that can be:

• Removed
• Rearranged
• Repeated

With a modular template, instead of creating series of different templates, you create
one master template that takes into account all your content and program needs.



THE RECOMMENDED MODULES INCLUDE:

• Pre-header
• Header
• Main Navigation
• Primary Navigation
• Secondary Navigation
• Tertiary Message
• Banner
• Alternate Navigation Bar
• Recovery Zone
• Footer

The number of modules will vary according to your
needs. The best way to identify and layout all the
possible configurations is to use wireframes that can
be used later as a blueprint in the design process.
This will help facilitate the design process and reduce
the overall time required.



7 DESIGN FOR ABOVE THE FOLD
There are multiple challenges to overcome to help ensure a campaign’s success aside
from deliverability and inbox competition including image blocking, preview pane
limitations, and mobile device rendering. By designing for the above the fold range,
which is 300-500 pixels from the top left corner both vertically and horizontally, you
will help ensure your emails are read and acted upon.

One quick test for every email is whether a recipient can quickly answer the following:

• Who are you?
• What do you want?
• Why should I do that?



The use of a system-text pre-header is the easiest and most effective tool to help answer
these questions and overcome the challenges noted above.

A great pre-header should include:

• Engaging teaser system text statement with an underlined system text CTA (Call
To Action)
• View online & view mobile version prompts
• Safe sender prompt for welcome messages

Ideally, the pre-header is placed at the very top of the
“It takes only a few seconds for email and aligned to the left so it is above any
email recipients to decide if the blocked image and not cut-off by the right side of a
email is worth taking a closer
vertical preview pane. Also, make sure it is not white
look - and over 50% decide not
or other light colored system text. Otherwise, you risk
to scroll.”
the pre-header not being legible should the
background color be removed by the email client.



Several additional considerations to keep in mind when reviewing design layouts
include:

• Email recipients take a few seconds to decide if email is worth taking a closer
look, over 50% of the recipients decide not to scroll
• People generally read left to right, top to bottom
• Readers click all over the place including non-clickable areas (so make sure all
non-structural template graphics including supporting imagery, icons and
especially your logo are clickable)
• The first paragraph is usually the most read so make sure this always focuses on
your primary message and call to action
• Recipients don’t usually read entire sentences or headlines so use bullets when
possible

8 DESIGN FOR THE Z-CURVE
Great email design not only looks aesthetically pleasing while incorporating current best
practices, but works on a subconscious level to guide readers to critical content and calls
to action. This is accomplished by designing the template and laying out the content in a
way that naturally flows with the reader’s eye movement (left to right and back) using
the “Z curve”.

It is essential to include visual cues to clearly indicate your calls to action and
incorporate interrupters to draw the reader’s eye to important content and offers.
Always remember, if a recipient has read through your email, but has not taken an
action, assume he or she is interested, but has not found anything to click on yet.



9 INCORPORATE A RECOVERY ZONE
Though a well-designed above-the-fold area can make a critical difference, there is
another worthwhile opportunity at the often-neglected bottom of any email right above
the footer content. The inclusion of a recovery zone is a great way to engage recipients
that otherwise might be missed!

The benefits of a recovery zone An effective and thoughtful
include: recovery zone should include:

• Showcase more up-sells • Navigation links
• Promote other marketing • Customer service details
channels • Social media options
• Highlight customer service • Promotional content
resources • Logo
• Promote other brands,
partnerships or associations
• Reinforce the brand

RECOVERY ZONE EXAMPLE

“The inclusion of a recovery
zone is a great way to engage
recipients that otherwise might
have been missed.”



10 CODE FOR EMAIL
A very common error that can have serious rendering and deliverability consequences is
coding an email template according to current web standards such as XHTML. Utilizing
the older coding standard HTML 4 is your safest bet and is likely to work with almost all
email clients.

Another trick is to use the current limitations of Outlook 2007 as your guide. If it works
in Outlook 2007, chances are it is going to work almost everywhere else!

• No Flash or other plug-ins (a red “X” shows where the Flash would display)
• No background images (HTML and CSS)
• No HTML form submissions
• No JavaScript event, such as mouse-down
• No CSS floats and positioning
• With the exception of color, CCS background properties are not supported — this
includes background-attachment, background-position, background-repeat, and
background-image
• No replacing bullets with images or unordered lists
• No animated GIFs (only first frame displays)



SUMMARY
You have to give yourself time to get it right versus just getting it done. By analyzing
your long-term campaign and program needs, you can then craft a best practice
template solution that will make a positive impact on your bottom-line. Improved
results and less time in the creative production process will mean more time to be
strategic or even give yourself a break!

ABOUT SHAW + SCOTT
As a WhatCounts services partner, Shaw + Scott is a digital communications agency
with an award winning team of strategists, designers, copywriters and technologists
dedicated to the interactive web, social and email channels. We offer a full suite of
strategic, creative and technical solutions to help manage your digital campaigns and
programs. Our award-winning team offers a rare blend of creative excellence, strategic
vision, technical knowhow and business sense that seamlessly comes together to deliver
highly customized, targeted solutions tailored to your brand, marketing objectives and
production realities.



ABOUT US
WhatCounts, a private Atlanta-based company
founded in 2000, is a leading email technology
innovator offering a fully integrated lifecycle
marketing platform supporting dynamic and targeted
content delivery, robust segmentation, API and
transactional capabilities as well as integrated video
and social media tools.

WhatCounts offers deliverability management,
strategic coaching, best practices benchmarking,
CRM integration and advanced analytics facilitating
ROI maximization.

The robust WhatCounts platform is delivered as a
hosted Web-based SaaS application and as part of the
unique Broadcaster on-premise appliance line.

WHATCOUNTS, Inc.

3630 Peachtree Rd. Telephone: 404.995.8600

Suite 900 Toll Free: 866.804.0076

Atlanta, GA 30326 Fax: 404.995.8611

www.whatcounts.com Email: sales@whatcounts.com

ATLANTA • BALTIMORE • CHICAGO • SEATTLE • SYDNEY • WASHINGTON DC


WhatCounts White Paper - Top 10 Best Practices

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