The days of newsletters designed to send text messages are long gone. Your contacts receive many informational and promotional emails, and they want to save time reading large blocks of written content.
Suppose you want to increase conversions and make your message understood. In that case, you need to pay special attention to making the design accessible and attractive and offering value to your reader.
Design Visual Elements Tips For Newsletters
Next, we will present seven tips on creating a newsletter using design to encourage customers to open your emails, read your content, and, when appropriate, click on your CTA (Call to action or, in translation free, call to action).
These seven tips are related to the following:
- branding;
- color palettes;
- sources;
- asymmetrical layouts;
- use of GIFs;
- minimalism.
Brand Visual Elements
Newsletters need visually solid brand identity elements as this is what will communicate your brand to your audience.
But randomly adding your logo doesn’t make your brand memorable. It would help if you thought beyond this essential element.
Branding can include several other elements, such as fonts, colors, personality, and tone of voice, that must be incorporated into your newsletter design.
Ideally, this should be defined in the brand manual or style guide and used consistently on the website, social networks, virtual store, logo creation, and, consequently, in creating newsletters.
Look at ads, social media posts, and blogs to see if they create a unified brand image. Newsletters must consistently use visual design elements and incorporate brand colors so that the content is immediately identifiable.
Also, use fonts defined in the brand manual or part of the same family to establish a coherent identity. If not, try to be as neutral as possible.
In summary, rely on something other than your logo to create brand awareness, as it may go unnoticed when viewing an email or even not be loaded in the body of the message.
Colors and other visual elements, on the other hand, play this role and are associated with your logo. This familiarity helps your contacts assimilate the sender to your brand, opening emails more frequently.
Color Palette
In addition to communicating brand identity, colors have a substantial emotional impact. Red can be attractive and romantic and cause a sense of urgency or danger., Blue inspires calm, security, and stability. Therefore, choose colors aware of the message you want to convey and the impression you want to leave.
Using contrasting colors can make newsletters more eye-catching and memorable. They can also be used to make newsletters more seasonal if that generates impact for the brand. For example, orange and yellow can be used in summer, while dark blue in winter.
Accent Colors
Only some people are comfortable using colors in abundance. And you don’t have to wear much to get attention.
One option is to use an accent color to draw attention to the main message. This can be done just for the CTA or to highlight data in a chart.
An accent color can make your message jump out and help the reader quickly find the essential parts of your newsletter.
Complementary Colors
Complementary, opposite colors on the color wheel can give your newsletter a more attractive touch, mainly when used as a background.
Using a complementary color in a gradient encourages the eye to move across the screen and makes the look cohesive and compelling. When combined with a contrasting color, the result is harmonic and, at the same time, energetic, enough to increase the click-through rate.
Contrasting Colors
Using contrasting colors was not a very popular practice, but it has become a trend in the digital environment.
Using color contrast is excellent for dividing your message into sections and making your material more accessible to people with color blindness and color blindness, as long as the choices are targeted to these specificities – which in itself is a great reason to use it. For more in-depth reading, see this article on choosing colors to communicate effectively.
Consistent Fonts
When it comes to design, you need to go beyond the color palette and look at how readers interact with your content. To do this, you need to examine the fonts you will use in your newsletter.
To begin with, the ideal is to keep the variety of sources to a minimum – two or three at the most. But preferably keep the uniqueness.
The title font can be extra large to make an impact and help with readability. Others, such as subtitles and body text, should be smaller to not compete with the title.
Asymmetric Layout
In newsletters, it tends to have a standard flow, usually top to bottom or left to right. But that doesn’t mean you have to use this format every time.
The asymmetrical layout is trending in the world of digital marketing, and not only can you, but you should explore it.
Try going outside the box using asymmetrical shapes or a zigzag layout. But remember to be unusual and creative in the right measure, carrying out reading tests on different devices and ensuring responsive design, as your newsletter must be designed for different screen sizes.
GIFs
GIFs have become quite popular in recent years, and having them in newsletters is a natural way to keep communication light and fun.
However, before using it as a simple trend, it is worth reflecting on your brand’s communication and positioning to understand whether they will be used to enrich the message.
In addition, they attractively present information when incorporated into storytelling, replacing images or static elements, giving more life to the message.
You can, for example, use a GIF to show the change of some data in a graph or even to communicate reactions to a one-time message.
Minimalist Design
There is a way to combine what has been said about colors, fonts, and layout to create an attractive and practical newsletter: by being minimalist.
Brands are often afraid of minimalist design when it comes to newsletters, as they have the false impression that – it can be wasteful by leaving “blank” spaces and little text.
The truth is that a minimalist design can be more precise, more orderly and make your content much more readable than layouts that incorporate too many elements.
Also Read: How To Put Together An Efficient Digital Marketing Strategy?
