More than 330 billion emails are sent around the world every day. And over 77% of the professionals sending those messages use email marketing templates.
That’s a lot of competition. So how do you make sure your emails stand out in subscribers’ inboxes when you’re competing with so many other emails?
Having great content helps, of course. But email design is also a key factor. Eye-catching emails that effectively communicate your branding and messaging will improve metrics like click-through rates and conversions.
Email templates are an easy and time-efficient way to create the beautifully branded messages you need to get noticed. And while most email service providers offer dozens of templates to choose from, AWeber has more than 600.
But before you start dragging and dropping your content into a template, let’s take a look at three ways email templates will give you more time to be you and get you better results from your work.
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Benefit #1: Email marketing templates make you more efficient
Adopting a template-based email strategy reduces repetitive work. This saves you time while ensuring a consistent look throughout your emails. No need to re-add a logo, social media icons, and other elements every week. Just load your template, paste in your new content, and test your message.
This gives you more time to write the content your readers look forward to and less time worrying about the design or layout of your message. Or how your email will look in different email clients.
Starting with a simple layout is the quickest and easiest way to get your newsletter template set up. Once you have a basic layout, you’ll easily be able to create additional templates based on additional email messages you send out.
Let’s take a look at a great starter template and its anatomy.
Make sure to update the color of the template to match your company colors. Need help getting started? Take a look at our Smart Designer. Just give it your website’s or Facebook page’s URL and it can create a branded email marketing template in a few seconds.
Your template should allow you to have a balance of content — to focus primarily on educational or entertaining content for your readers, but still save some space for a little promotional content. This is how using a template helps you maintain consistency, and lets readers know where they can find the offers in your newsletters from week to week.
The featured article in your newsletter should have your main call-to-action button that stands out from the rest of the links in your message. In the example above, I used our brand color for the main button and a simple black button for the promotional content. The supporting content uses hyperlinks so as to not pull readers away from the main focus of your email.
Benefit #2: Templates support consistent branding
While you want your email template to reflect your brand, it doesn’t have to look exactly like your website. You want to draw your reader’s attention to the important elements within your email, not overwhelm them with something that looks like a website.
In addition to your newsletters, do you also want to send a welcome email? Send product updates? Announce sales? Then start with your main template and just change out the content. This can then be saved as another template you can reuse in the future.
Take a look at how we used the template shown above to create an event to feature a guest blogger/speaker.
The email still has the same feel as your the first template, but it slims down the content to draw attention to the featured article. This allows you to quickly fill in the content and move on to your next task without the need to re-add your logo, social icons, button colors, etc. every time you need to send a new email.
Want a more customized email marketing template that perfectly matches your website or brand? Click here to work one-on-one with an AWeber designer to create one.
Benefit #3: Templates can elevate your marketing
Templates also let you plan to create a more personalized experience for your readers. More and more brands are discovering that, when they don’t personalize offers, they may be eroding brand trust while wasting promotional dollars, as more consumers prefer a more personalized experience.
A quick way to create a more personalized experience for your readers is to collect their name when they sign up. For me personally, I feel a closer connection to any email that addresses me directly rather than a generic email that is sent out. It’s not hard to do, either: See how to quickly add personalization to your template.
Another option is to use tags to gather more insight on the types of messages your readers are interested in. For example, you can include a quiz in your welcome email asking readers how often they would like to hear from you or categories they may be interested in. Then you can create a landing page and thank them for their interest, and based on the link they click add a specific tag to create a unique path based on their needs.
Maintaining consistency and branding with your email templates will also allow you to track key metrics more easily. Email metrics are critical to see how your emails are performing and resonating with your readers. The right template can make it easier for readers to access the content they are interested in quickly or more likely to be shared among their contacts.
Want to set up an email marketing template that perfectly fits your style, voice, and brand? Then contact an AWeber designer today.
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