By next year, an estimated 376 billion emails will be sent and received daily, with over 90% being checked or opened on mobile devices. Therefore, using a responsive template for your email marketing campaigns is crucial.

Designing simple HTML emails is already challenging, but creating ones that work well across all email clients and devices’ varying screen sizes is even more daunting.

Fortunately, several designers and developers have done most of the work for you by creating free, easy-to-edit, and responsive newsletter templates that work on all devices and email clients. You’ll find the best of them below.

Pre-Designed Responsive Newsletter Templates

Briar Free Responsive Email Template

Designed by Slicejack

Briar is a free responsive newsletter template with a simple design. It has been thoroughly tested with Litmus and EmailOnAcid and works perfectly well with all email clients. This template is MailChimp-ready.

Green Village Free HTML Template

Designed by Pixelbuddha

Green Village is a clean pre-designed email template that is suitable for various purposes and business types. The download package includes both a layered PSD template and the HTML source files.

Olivia eCommerce Responsive Email Template

Compatible with almost all email service providers, Olivia is a responsive newsletter template that comes bundled with thirteen pre-designed modules so you can create your newsletter exactly how you want it.

Bussy Free HTML Email Template

Designed by MailBakery

Bussy is a free newsletter template that has been designed with a simple layout and dark blue and soft red color scheme, making it ideal for corporate business.

Passion Free Responsive Email Template

Designed by Pixelbuddha

Modern and clean, Passion is a multi-purpose email template that various business types can use. It is compatible with both MailChimp and CampaignMonitor, and works in all major email clients.

Madeline eCommerce Responsive Email Template

Easy to customize and bundled with nine pre‑designed modules, Madeline is the perfect responsive newsletter template for fashion and eCommerce businesses. You can create your newsletter without writing a single line of code by using the built-in email builder.

MailPortfolio Free Responsive Email Template

Designed by Slicejack

With a simple and clean design, MailPortfolio is a free responsive email newsletter for sending personal portfolio or blogging updates to your readers and followers.

Emailology Responsive Email Template

Designed by Email On Acid

Released by Email on Acid, Emailology is a pre-designed template that offers three layouts that trigger based on the screen’s width. By default, it supports either one, two, or three columns, and as you activate each media query, the template converts to a one-column layout for mobile devices.

Way Mail Email Template

Way Mail is a collection of email templates that comes with over thirty pre-designed modules. Responsive, compatible with all major email service providers, and also includes the PSD templates of the original design.

Creative Boost HTML Email Template

Designed by MailBakery

Creative Boost is a free newsletter template from MailBakery that is fully responsive and tested in all major email clients. It comes with a dark color scheme that would be perfect for most types of businesses.

Free Material Design HTML Email Template

Designed by Paul Goddard

Created by Paul Goddard and based on the design aesthetics of Google’s Material Design, this simple newsletter template has been fully Litmus tested and is completely free to use.

Dazzle Photography Email Newsletter Template

Even though the minimally designed Dazzle newsletter template has been specifically built for photographers, it could easily be edited and used by any creative person or agency. It comes with an online builder, so you don’t need to know any coding to design your newsletter.

Daily Times Email Template

Designed by Email On Acid

The free newsletter template Daily Times is perfect for online newspapers, magazines, and personal bloggers to share content with their followers and readers. It can even deliver dynamic ads when paired with LiveIntent’s software.

Shopilicious Free HTML Email Template

Designed by MailBakery

Thoroughly tested in all major email clients, Shopilicious is a free responsive newsletter template that has been designed specifically for eCommerce stores.

Litmus Responsive Email Templates

Includes 7 Templates, Designed by Stamplia

Designed by Stamplia and released by Litmus, this is a collection of seven pre-designed responsive email templates that have been thoroughly ‘Litmus-tested.’ They also come with the PSD source files.

Barebones Responsive Newsletter Templates

Cerberus Responsive HTML Email Templates

Includes 3 Templates, Designed by Ted Goas

Cerberus is a small collection of robust and thoroughly tested barebones HTML email templates. The Fluid template is percentage-based and shrinks on mobile screens, the Responsive template uses media queries, and finally, there’s a Hybrid template that uses a blend of both percentages and media queries.

Antwort Responsive Layouts for Email

Includes 3 Templates

Antwort offers a small collection of barebones responsive layouts for email that fits and adapts to client widths. The one, two, and three-column templates work perfectly well on all major desktop and mobile email clients. The templates also come with extensive documentation.

Email Blueprints HTML Email Templates

Includes 6 Templates, Designed by MailChimp

MailChimp released this collection of six bare-bones responsive templates, entitled Email Blueprints, so that they could be used as a solid starting point for designing email newsletters. The templates include some MailChimp specific template language elements, but they can be easily removed if you are not a MailChimp user.

Basic Free HTML Email Template

Designed by MailBakery

Designed to be used as a base for your own responsive email newsletters, Basic is a free to download template that comes with just enough CSS and a simple layout so that you can get started quickly.

Responsive Table-Based Email Template

Designed by Phil Wareham

This barebones template has been based on MailChimp’s Email Blueprints and the Email Boilerplate from Sean Powell. It is a responsive table-based email template that includes MailChimp merge tags, but they can be removed if you don’t need them.

Responsive Newsletter Frameworks

Foundation for Emails

Includes 11 Templates

Previously called Ink, Foundation for Emails is a responsive email framework from ZURB that includes a flexible grid system and some simple UI elements for rapid email prototyping. Foundation for Emails also has 11 responsive email templates available.

MJML Responsive Email Framework

Includes 21 Templates

MJML is a markup language that has been designed to reduce the pain of coding a responsive email. Its semantic syntax makes the language straightforward, while its rich standard components library shortens your development time and lightens your email codebase. MJML’s open-source engine takes care of translating the MJML you wrote into responsive HTML.

Bojler Responsive Email Framework

Includes 2 Templates

The Bojler Framework has been built by the team at Slicejack to make it easier for you to create lightweight and responsive newsletters. The framework has been thoroughly tested on numerous email clients and devices.

The HTML Email Framework

Includes 3 Templates

The HTML Email Framework has been developed to help you build responsive HTML email templates using pre-set grid options and simple components needed for building responsive HTML email templates. It support’s over 60+ email clients.

Maizzle Framework for Rapid Email Prototyping

Includes 5 Templates

Powered by Tailwind CSS and a Node.js build system, Maizzle is a modern framework for developing HTML emails and newsletters. The framework doesn’t use tags like row or column; instead, you use real HTML tags that you style with Tailwind CSS’s utility classes.

The post 30 Free Responsive Newsletter Templates for Your Marketing Campaigns in 2025 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

One of the keys to getting conversions (clicks, sales, etc.) is having a clean, easy-to-read newsletter template. But that’s not all. Your newsletters must also be responsive to account for the variety of mobile devices out there.

All told, the goal is to craft emails that are informative and look good on every screen. Thankfully, you don’t have to look far for inspiration. That’s exactly what the simple responsive email newsletter code snippets in today’s collection are for.

These sharply-designed snippets cover a variety of potential use cases. And they’d make a great starting point for your own project. Let’s get started!

You might also like our collection of free responsive newsletter templates.

Email Template Practice

This highly-visual email template provides the perfect look for showcasing your products. The mix of photos and short passages of text will help get the point across without overwhelming users. It encourages readers to click for more details.

See the Pen Email Template Practice by Regina Catipon

Simple Abandoned Cart Email Template

Sticking with eCommerce, abandoned cart emails offer an opportunity to casually remind customers about what’s waiting for them. In this attractive snippet, the message is simple and provides actionable information. It also leverages the popular Tailwind CSS framework.

See the Pen Simple Abandoned Cart Email Template by Maizzle

UI Guild / Email Template

Email clients are still quite limited when it comes to compatibility with the latest CSS techniques. But here’s proof that you can still create something unique. The use of color and typography make this template stand out from the ordinary.

See the Pen UI Guild / Email Template by Edmundo Santos

Invoice email template

Some types of email messages should be as simple as possible – invoices are one of them. Some basic branding and a clear call to action are vital. It’s a solid example of a single-purpose message that provides users with exactly what they need to know.

See the Pen Invoice email template by chetan

VOH Facebook Live

Event invitations are a great way to drum up interest in virtual or in-person happenings. This snippet not only looks great but also serves as a guide for content strategy. Recipients will instantly know what the event is, when it takes place, and how to register. That’s how you do it!

See the Pen VOH Facebook Live by Alisa Longoria

HTML Email Template – Blog

Not everyone has time to check out your blog regularly. That’s where an email newsletter can help keep readers up-to-date. What makes this template sparkle is that it allows for effective branding and breaks posts down into bite-sized chunks. It’s easy for a reader to digest in a short period of time.

See the Pen HTML Email Template – Blog by Josh Beard

BMIC Newsletter Template

Here’s another approach to a news-based email. It focuses on a single article while providing additional clickable headlines below. This might be a terrific option for non-profits who want to highlight a fundraising campaign while also listing other relevant news. In addition, the typography in this snippet makes the newsletter very easy to read.

See the Pen BMIC Newsletter Template by Tom Markart

Welcome Email Template

An onboarding email is a great way to welcome new users. Once again, simple is better. This snippet uses white space and clean typography to fill newbies in on the relevant details. Colorful icons also help to make specific items stand out.

See the Pen Welcome Email Template by Jude Francis

Email Templates for Every Need

In many ways, email template design lags in terms of available features. While that may be disappointing, it’s also an opportunity. Because email clients aren’t as savvy as modern web browsers, it forces designers to strip all the bells and whistles away.

This allows us to focus more on simplicity. It’s about promoting the message within rather than wowing readers with fancy extras. That’s something each of the snippets above does quite well.

The post 8 HTML Code Snippets for Creating Responsive Newsletter Templates appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

This set includes fifty beautifully illustrated icons that are not only visually appealing but also highly versatile. They are fully scalable and infinitely editable, giving you the flexibility to use them in any size or format you prefer. The download package also contains the icons in both SVG and PNG formats for your convenience.

Whether you’re working on a new marketing campaign or trying to improve your website’s SEO, you’ll find a relevant icon in this fantastic set. Best of all, you can use these icons in both personal and commercial projects without any restrictions!

The Free Marketing & SEO Icon Set

Download the Free Marketing & SEO Icon Set

More Free Icon Sets

The post Free Online Marketing & SEO Icon Set (PNG & SVG Formats) appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

We’ve rounded up the best newsletters for photographers that will help you start, grow, and scale your photography business. Some of them will even deliver weekly inspiration for your photoshoots so you can build a powerful portfolio.

Whether you’re just starting with your photography business or simply want to take up a new hobby, the newsletters in this collection will help you master your photography skills, so be sure to check them out!

1. Digital Photography School

The Digital Photography School offers a plethora of tips for improving your photography skills as well as advice on the best gear for photographers. When you sign up for the weekly newsletter, you’ll get tips, tutorials, and access to their ‘Ultimate Guide Library’ of downloads.

2. SLR Lounge

Sign up for this newsletter that’s chock-full of photography tutorials, tips, and exclusive workshops for photographers that will help you build a successful photography business.

3. Unsplash

When you sign up for Unsplash newsletter, you’ll get weekly inspiration in your inbox. See what other photographers are creating and get inspired for your own photography projects.

4. Death to the Stock Photo

Similarly to Unsplash, this newsletter is perfect if you need a dose of inspiration in your inbox or ideas for what to photograph next.

5. Photography Concentrate

If you’re looking for’photography freebies, resources, and tutorials, this newsletter has you covered. You’ll get photography books, presets, Photoshop actions, printable posters, and more.

6. TheLawTog

Learn how to legally protect your photography business with the help of this newsletter. You’ll get a free photographer’s contract and a plethora of tips on accounting and legal matters concerning photographers.

7. Photography Spark

The Photography Spark is your go-to newsletter to learn how to start and grow a profitable photography business. Learn planning, legal, taxes, proofing, marketing and download a free ‘Business Product Checklist’ to get started.

8. ShotKit

Stay in the know on everything related to the best gear for photographers with ShotKit’s newsletter. You will also get exclusive discount to items in their store when you sign up for their newsletter.

9. The Modern Tog

If you want to learn how to book more clients with your photography business, this newsletter subscription is a must. As a bonus when you sign up, you’ll get access to a free checklist outlining the biggest mistakes to avoid in your business.

10. Fuel Your Photos

Learn how to optimize and improve your photography website to get new clients on the regular with the help of this newsletter. You’ll learn SEO and marketing tips to turn your website into a lead-generation machine.

Final Thoughts

Starting a photography business is the easy part. Growing it, on the other hand, is not so easy. However, by signing up for these newsletters, you will get instant access to business tips and advice as well as tips that will help you improve your skills and some always appreciated weekly inspiration.

The post The 10 Best Newsletters for Photographers appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Whilst HTML and CSS have progressively changed over the years, web browsers have adapted to these changes. However, email clients haven’t changed much at all in terms of the way they render HTML – and this is what makes email signatures frustrating.

When creating email signatures, you really have to take yourself back to the days of eating pizza’s in front of CRT screens while “surfing” Netscape Navigator, and then you might have a chance of getting it right.

Designing a (Sensible) Email Signature

There are a few things to consider when designing an email signature which will make your life easier in the long run.

1. Use a good photo editing tool to design the actual signature

Don’t try and do it on the fly thinking it will work out – it never does. If you’ve done web design for a while, you’ll know exactly what I mean. A good tool to use is Adobe Photoshop or Sketch.

2. Don’t include irrelevant information

No one wants to know your favourite quote at the end of your email signature, or your pet camel’s birthday.

3. Check the visual size of the signature

Once in a while, take a step back and check the size of the signature. Will it look too big and intrusive at the end of emails? Does it take up the whole screen when displayed on a phone?

4. Include a logo or profile picture

People remember faces and logos more than names. It also adds some personalization to the email.

5. Use complimentary colors

Using colors which work in harmony always makes the signature look more beautiful. Adobe has a great tool for checking complimentary colors.

6. Design with spacing in mind

Email clients are known for adding random spaces between tables and other elements, so make sure the signature will still look fine if a bit of spacing gets added here and there (we’ll come back to this later).

Fields to Use

The fields you use are ultimately up to you (or your customer) so there is no set answer here. However, these are the most common type of fields used: name, position, company, phone numbers, logo, profile pic, website, address, and social icons.

Coding the Signature

Remember how I was saying you need to go back to the old days of CRT screens? Well, hope you have your Netscape Navigator open, ready for some coding.

Here are some of the most important things to keep in mind when coding your signature.

1. Don’t use background colors

Although background colors work perfectly fine in normal web design applications, they are a no-go zone for email signatures. The reason? A lot of email clients don’t support (or are buggy) with background colors (such as Outlook 2007-2016). Take a look at the comprehensive list of CSS support for email clients here.

2. Use only web safe fonts

Web safe fonts are basically fonts which are available by default (or pre-installed) on most operating systems. Web safe fonts are: Arial, Arial Black, Calibri, Comic Sans, Gadget, Helvetica, Palatino, Tahoma, Verdana, Trebuchet, Courier New, Lucida, Times New Roman, and Georgia.

If you use a font that is not a web safe font, ensure you include a fallback font, just in case your primary font is not installed on the recipients’ device.

3. Check the size of the email signature (in KB)

Images have a huge role to play in large email signatures. So, before using any images in your email signature, make sure you compress them by using a tool like TinyPNG. An email signature should be under 30Kb in size. Any larger, and you will be taking up valuable space in not only your mail server (sent items), but also your recipients mail server (their inbox).

The accumulated bloat can also increase the time it takes for server migrations and in general it can make life more difficult for your / your customer’s IT department.

4. Only use HTML tables for your layout

I can just imagine your cringing face right now! Tables aren’t meant to construct a layout, right? Well that’s completely true…except for email signatures. This is because you’re going to have to design with Microsoft Office in mind, which you can think of as IE6. So, no flexboxes, don’t even float anything! Instead, only use tables.

5. Remove image metadata

Leaving metadata like DPI in your images can cause them to be resized in Outlook under some circumstances such as when the recipient’s Windows computer is set to render at 125% zoom.

6. If you get stuck, use a tool

There are many email signature generators out there. However, most of them don’t give you enough flexibility to warrant including them in your web design toolkit. Gimmio is one that allows you to change a multitude of settings and is made specifically for web designers, which makes it pretty handy if you’re stuck with creating signatures for your clients.

Testing the Signature

Remember the last time you created a great looking website, and it looked just as great in Internet Explorer 8? Me neither.

Unfortunately, it’s a much worse situation with email signatures, and there’s no way to get around it. You can’t stop people from using an older version of Outlook, so you just have to try and make it look as good as possible given the situation. Maybe a good comparison for email signatures is if your task was to make a website that works perfectly in IE6, IE7, and the first versions of Firefox, Opera, Chrome… you get the point. Nightmare inducing!

1. Test the most popular email clients first

According to this source, the most popular email clients as of December 2017 were: iPhone, Gmail, iPad, Apple Mail, and Outlook.

Notice that 2 of the top 5 were mobile? This brings us to the next point.

2. Mobile Compatibility

Mobile screens are (usually) small, which means they do a host of funky things with email signatures. For example, your signature may look squashed and unreadable on a mobile screen, and this is because the outer table in your HTML is wider than around 300px. So, using a vertical signature usually makes for a much nicer mobile experience.

Also, keep in mind that modern phones use scaling, which means that images (such as logos and profile pictures) can appear to be bad quality and blurry because the phone will try an upscale the raster image as well as everything around it. Take a look here for more info.

3. HTML Rendering Engines

Whilst it’s not essential to know this, it definitely helps when troubleshooting for problems. Here are the most popular email clients and the rendering engines they use:

• Outlook 2007 – 2016 – Microsoft Word Rendering Engine
• Apple Mail (OSX & iOS) – Webkit Rendering Engine
• Thunderbird – Mozilla Gecko Rendering Engine
• Mailbird – Chromium Rendering Engine
• Gmail, Office 365, Yahoo Mail and all other webmail services – Uses the rendering engine of your web browser

Hopefully, now you can see why email signatures are such a pain to deal with. The top 5 most popular email clients in the world use 3 different HTML rendering engines.

Known Problems with Email Clients

Here are some of the most talked about problems with email client compatibility. I’ll limit it to 1 per email client, otherwise this article will quickly turn into an essay.

Outlook

Outlook is known for changing the size of images in your email signature. The best and easiest way around it is to remove the image metadata, specifically the DPI attribute.

Gmail

Gmail has a known issue where it will automatically add a gap below images. This can make your signature look broken if you didn’t take my advice earlier to “design with spacing in mind”. As far as I can tell, there isn’t a way to fix it. If anyone would like to shed some experiences in the comments, I’d love to hear it.

Apple Mail

For the most part, Apple Mail handles email signatures really well. The most common issue here is when you go to install the email signature, it will look really broken in the signature preview window. However, the email signature will still look perfectly fine when composing a new message.

Thunderbird

Although not many people use Thunderbird, this one is worth mentioning. When using an email signature with thunderbird, it seems to place red dotted borders around all the tables.

Two More Points…

When you create your email signature and want to copy it into your email client, always copy it using either Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox. Other browsers don’t copy all the HTML tables correctly, so you end up with a broken email signature when you paste it into your email client.

It’s important that you don’t treat email signature design in the same way as designing a website because it’s not possible to achieve complete consistency. If you follow the points above, you’ll get a high level of consistency, but there will still be differences. So, it’s important that this is communicated in advance to your boss / customer, otherwise expectations will not be met!

The post How to Create an Amazing Email Signature appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

But paying attention to each and every one of your customers becomes more challenging the larger your clientele becomes. To ensure that nobody gets left out, you can turn to chatbots and email marketing, analyzing which works best for your business.

Chatbots: A Program You Can Talk To

A chatbot is a computer program that is capable of conversing with and responding to human users. The technology is relatively young, so its full potential is still being explored. Basic chatbots can provide preset responses to certain questions, often through an if-then approach, but advanced versions can provide more customized answers and solutions.

Suppose you want to buy something online. Traditionally, you’d have to browse through multiple product pages to find the item you need. With a chatbot, you can ask a question about your desired item and the program will take you directly to relevant product pages. It’s like having your very own shopping assistant.

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There are many advantages to using chatbots, not only for your business, but also for your customers. Here are some of them:

Better customer service – At the end of the day, chatbots are all about improving user experience. A survey says that more than 80 percent of customers expect assistance during shopping – and they need it within five minutes. Chatbots are designed to provide fast, real-time assistance by offering content and links that your customers may access to find and purchase the products they need.

Higher Net Promoter Score (NPS) – NPS indicates the likelihood that your customers will promote your brand to their peers. One of its most important determiners is customer satisfaction. Many customers are delighted by a business’ quick response, even if their issue isn’t completely resolved. Prompt assistance makes them feel valued, so they become more likely to speak positively to their family and friends about your brand.

Easy and cheap maintenance – Chatbots are easy to configure according to your business’ unique needs. Maintaining them doesn’t require much effort and resources either. For instance, they don’t cost as much as paying one of your staff members to be available 24/7 to entertain and engage your customers.

Accurate consumer data monitoring – Chatbots do more than respond to your customers. They also collect feedback and other insights that you can use to improve your product or service. The data collected by chatbots can also help you monitor your customers’ needs, gauge interest in products and services or specific features, and boost the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

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Time savings – You can use bots to send messages to all your clients at the same time. Even as a growing business, you probably have way more customers than you can send messages to manually within a day. A chatbot simplifies the process, saves you a lot of time, and ensures that messages are delivered when needed.

Compatibility with messenger apps – Nobody wants to download and install apps they’ll probably use once and won’t use again. This is why people usually stick to certain apps that get the job done. For instance, most people prefer to use popular messenger apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Viber instead of downloading new ones every so often.

Chatbots are highly compatible with most messenger apps, allowing you to send messages through the media your customers actually use. In fact, chatbots are compatible with most social networks, too, which means you can also use them to improve the effectiveness of your social media strategy.

Increased in-app purchases – If you offer products that your customers can purchase through messaging apps, you can use chatbots to encourage higher sales. Analyze your customers’ buying behavior and program your chatbots to take advantage of any trend or opportunity to sell.

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Email Marketing: It Still Works

Despite being around for decades, email remains to be a crucial communication channel, and the data proves it. For instance, people sent 1.8 million more emails in 2017 than they did in 2016. And in 2018, 281 billion emails were sent and received daily around the world.

The continued relevance of email marketing rests on its many advantages, which include the following:

Targeted messages thru segmented lists – It’s great to be able to reach out to a lot of people, but it’s even better if your messages reach those who actually need and are likely to respond to them. Email marketers can segment their lists to ensure that only those who meet certain criteria receive a particular message.

With a large number of emails an average person receives in a day, making sure your content is relevant to them is an excellent way to getting noticed in your customer inbox. This tactic is known to increase engagements, making it effective for purposes ranging from spreading awareness about your brand to being an effective tool to grow your ecommerce business with email marketing.

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Revenue growth– With the right subject line, dynamic content, and call-to-action, it’s possible to influence email readers to purchase your product. When paired with the right targeting strategy, email marketing can be one of the best tools to generate sales from impulse purchases.

Multi-device compatibility – People read their emails on multiple devices, which means you can reach your customers no matter what device they may use. Make sure you optimize your emails for all screens for the best results.

Message testing – Your email is only as good as its content, but it can be hard to create the perfect email on your first try. The good thing about email marketing is that you can send out several versions of the same email to test which ones are the most effective. The feedback you gain may be incorporated to your content marketing strategy to improve your outcomes moving forward.

Lead generation – Many of those who receive your emails won’t make a purchase, but that doesn’t mean your efforts are wasted. By using your succeeding emails to check on them or update them about your products, you can foster a relationship with these leads and eventually convert them into paying customers.

Relationship maintenance – Just because a purchase has been made doesn’t mean you relationship with your customer has ended. Using email, you can keep the relationship going. With the right push, you may turn a one-time buyer into a loyal customer who will stick to your brand long-term.

Email or Chatbots?

Now on to the big question: does your business need chatbots or email marketing more? Without a doubt, both email and chatbots have their strengths and weaknesses, requiring an analysis of which could help your business more.

Chatbots offers quick and highly personalized service to users. It is also entirely driven by consent – your customers absolutely won’t have to use it unless they choose to. Because of this, chatbots tend to generate higher click-through rates and conversion rates. To compare, emails have a CTR of only 4% on average, while chatbots generate up to a whopping 16%.

Chatbots are also not known to send spam messages, which tend to fill up email inboxes and annoy users. Because of this, customers are more likely to read messages you send them via messenger apps.

However, emails are a lot cheaper than chatbots. If you were to look at the two services in the market, you’d see that both of them actually have almost similar price points. The difference is that email, having been around longer, offers more choices in terms of providers. Some email services charge nothing up to a certain number of messages sent, meaning you can send out marketing assets without spending a single cent.

Messenger apps may be popular, but not everyone uses them. People older than 55 tend to use emails more than they do messenger apps. That said, chatbots are generally better for businesses with younger customers, but email marketing is able to reach out to customers of any age.

Chatbots are a developing technology and it is exciting how they will improve in the future. Email, on the other hand, seems like it isn’t going anywhere soon. Find out what each option’s strengths and limitations are and choose which one offers the most benefits to your business. Better yet, why don’t you use both?

The post Chatbots vs Email Marketing: Which Is the Best for Your Business? appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Below are tips on how to grow your social following with email marketing – all of which could help not only expand your reach, but improve conversion rates as well.

Why the usual approach doesn’t cut it

As alluded to earlier, looking to grow your following solely within the platform you’re in isn’t the optimal way of going about it. You can promote your page, boost posts, or even implement sketchy tactics like mass following and buying followers, but it still won’t be as effective as using your other channels to promote your social channels.

Email marketing not only has the highest ROI of all digital channels, it’s also excellent at spreading the word about your social channels. This is simply because the people on your list already know you and have an ongoing relationship with you.

So if you already have a robust email list, here’s how you can translate that to more social media followers:

Improve your list building strategy

Of course, before you can leverage email to grow your social reach, you’ll need to have a healthy email list. And you don’t want just any list, you want a robust list of people who will actually engage with you. One way to do this is by having easy-to-fill subscription forms on web pages you identify as frequently visited by potential subscribers.

Make sure you keep your forms short and simple, asking only for the most basic information. If there are two things people don’t like – it’s filling up long forms, and giving up too much information.

Include social media links in your emails

One of the most straightforward ways to go about it is to simply ask your subscribers. They’ve opted in to receive content from you, so you can entice them to get similar content on the platforms they’re already on.

As you can see below, Crate & Barrel has a small “Get Social With Us” section at the bottom of their emails. In it are social buttons of all the social channels they’re in, letting their subscribers follow them on whichever platform they prefer.

Alternatively, you can straight up send an email encouraging subscribers to engage with you on social media, as McDonald’s does below.

It even has a great two-fold call to action (more on this later) – “Keep us in your pocket with our mobile app. Or follow us!” This approach is also a great way towards becoming an integrated mobile driven business.

Weave social media into email campaigns

Here are some of the ways you can do this:

• Upload your subscriber list to social networks – Following your subscribers on different social channels gives you an idea of their interests, preferences, and the types of content they engage with. This also lets them know that you’re on the platform, so if they find your content interesting enough, they just might give you a follow back.
• Add a live social feed in your emails – Third-party tools like Zapier allows you to include live Twitter and Instagram feeds in your emails. So when a subscriber likes a post, they can click on it and be redirected to the social account, making it a great way to get organic engagement and following.
  
• Retarget active email subscribers with social media ads – These days, it’s all about multichannel marketing, and a great way to go about it is matching intent and interest with targeted ads. For example, if a subscriber showed interest in a particular product, you can keep showing that same product on their social feeds with Facebook advertising. This way, you’re not only keeping the product in their minds, you know you’re reaching out to qualified prospects.

Incentivize subscribers who engage on social

For example, you can send an email offering a 10% discount for subscribers who like your page and share a particular post. You can even give an additional 5% for every one of their friends that does the same. Additionally, you can also host the incentive on your website, enticing more traffic along the way.

Add more calls-to-action

Sometimes, your subscribers just need to be told what to do. This is why you need to add compelling calls-to-action whenever you can. Whether it’s following you on social media, sharing a link, or reposting content, entice your subscribers to engage by telling them exactly what to do. As well, explaining what they get in return for following up on your CTA also helps in convincing them to oblige.

It also doesn’t have to be all about your social media, as you can see below, where multiple CTAs are placed.

Incorporate a social media contest

Everybody loves contests, and you can leverage users’ affinity for contests (and prizes) by making yours fun and engaging. Alternatively, you can just make it easy for people to join as Diamond Candles did with their contest below.

Every week, they ran a sweepstakes on their Facebook page. This created a habit, excitement, and expectation – turning those who were merely aware of their brand to fans. In less than six weeks, the brand was able to generate 30,000 leads and 148,000 Facebook followers.

Come up with a plan and stick with it

Building your social media following takes time regardless of how sound your tactics might be. The important thing is to come up with a solid plan and practice enough patience in thoroughly implementing it. Now, sticking with a plan doesn’t mean you can’t tweak a few things. See what works and what doesn’t and adjust your plan accordingly.

Takeaway

The good thing about using email marketing to build your social following is that subscribers are already aware of what you do and what value you can potentially bring. Getting them to engage with you is just taking your relationship to the next step.

But before you begin to think about growing your social following thru email, make sure you have a healthy list that’s actively engaging with your content. Once you have that, it’s easier for you to grow your followers.

The post Social Mail: How To Use Email Marketing To Build You Social Following appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

It is important to note that UX does not just refer to web or mobile app design. It refers to all your digital collaterals, not the least of which are the emails you send to your subscribers.

A majority of all marketers consider email the most effective tool for generating leads, so you can imagine why you should give your email marketing campaigns due attention.

Here is how to optimize them with the right UX design.

The Email-UX Connection

UX expert Jakob Nielsen states that the average user spends just 51 seconds on a marketing email, most (81%) simply scanning it instead of reading it through. This is because most users are inundated with so much information that they have to skim through most of what they receive and only give time for content they find truly interesting or important.

If your email is text-heavy, hard to scan, requires a download, and/or loads slowly, then the UX leaves much to be desired. If you want subscribers to read it, you have to pay particular attention to some key UX issues. Let this UX guide show you those issues.

Send Only Relevant Content

You may not immediately connect content with UX, but user experience refers to the whole of it, and that includes how much satisfaction you get from opening and reading the message. No one likes to waste their time on an email that doesn’t have any relevance or value to them, so you have to make sure your email content has both for your recipients.

Highlight Your Call to Action

The main purpose of your email is to get your readers to take the desired action, such as clicking on a link or button. Make sure your call to action jumps out at the reader as soon as the email is opened. Readers are more likely to read a bit more of the text so that they can decide whether to answer the call to action or not.

Focus on Typography

Because marketing emails tend to be mostly text (or text-graphics), you have to pay special attention to your typography. You have to make sure the text is easy to read, and the background is not too busy or distracting.

Visual content is always a winner, but you have to make sure it will not slow the loading time too much, or your hard work may face deletion.

Test the Links

You may feel that double-checking that the primary link in your newsletter actually works borders on OCD, but it is a necessary part of your UX. In fact, it should be part of the SOP for email marketing campaigns. Links in your email are not going to generate leads if they don’t work and will also give the recipient a poor opinion of your company.

Link to a Relevant Landing Page

Sure, you can send your email recipient to your homepage. However, unless you actually have something there that your readers will want to see, you are forcing them to search for the relevant page on your website in connection with your email.

Instead of the homepage, link your newsletter to a landing page directly connected to your email message, and make sure you give more information than is available in the email and with the appropriate call to action.

Check for Typos

Another seemingly obvious practice that is often overlooked is proofreading and editing your work to check for grammatical, spelling, or typing errors in your copy. Misspelled or sloppy content elicits a negative impression on your readers, and emails with these gaffes will be (mostly) confined to the trash.

Design for Mobile

Did you know that more than half (54%) of all emails are read on mobile? If you have ever tried reading anything on a smartphone, you know how frustrating it can be when not all of the content fits into the screen, so you have to move sideways to see everything.

Do you think most people would bother to read an entire email message, let alone click on the link, in that situation? Would you? Follow these tips for mobile-friendly emails, and your click-through rates will improve immensely.

Keep Your Design Consistent

What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. While this typically refers to gender equality, the same idea can be applied to email marketing. Make sure the look and tone of the email message are consistent with the branding on your site so that it is instantly recognizable. Use logos, colors, fonts, and visual content that reflects your brand.

Make it Accessible

When designing your newsletter, you should think about accessibility. Some of your readers may have poor eyesight, so you want to make sure the text has good contrast with a good amount of white space and the fonts are readable. You should also make sure your call-to-action buttons or links are nice and big, so they are easy to find and click on, even on a mobile device.

Test it for UX

Perhaps the best way to make sure you have a good email-UX connection to make the most of your email marketing campaign is to send test messages. Check if your newsletter works well on various devices and clients if it loads quickly (within 3-5 seconds), and test the links to make sure they work.

Get feedback from test recipients by asking them directly or checking the open and click-through rates. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, after all! You can also use a tool like Litmus to check if your email is compatible across different email platforms and browsers as well as devices before sending it out.

Conclusion

Email marketing is a simple and effective tool in your repertoire of marketing tactics. A positive UX can increase its effectiveness immeasurably. Follow these simple and straightforward optimization tips for the easiest tweaks ever!

Do you know of any other way UX can optimize your email marketing campaigns? Give us a heads-up in the comments below.

The post How to Optimize the UX of Your Email Marketing Campaigns appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

However, to persuade a team of opinionated individuals, I needed more than just my own opinion; I needed and wanted to find facts, statistics, and reasons why other forms of online communication would be more suited to our and our audiences’ needs.

I really struggled to find anything outside of a marketing spiel to support my opinion that newsletters should be scrapped. This is not a great start when you are trying to find unequivocal(if such a thing exists) proof that we should no longer send out monthly email news.

So, to that end, I thought I needed to come up with my own list of reasons against and for newsletters in order to form a valid opinion that could potentially sway even the most stubborn individual.

Responsive Web Design

Like me and many others, you might primarily use a table-based design when creating an email-out. (If you are, then you should take a look at our collection of responsive newsletter templates). Like me, it probably grates on you that in 2012, we still had to design this way for email clients.

I have to work with a table-based layout and a mailing manager (GraphicMail), who adds a lot of unnecessary code to an email. While browsers (and developers) are moving more and more towards responsive design, are email clients and mailing managers?

I was really hoping to find conclusive proof against newsletters in this area. However, I couldn’t find a definitive answer. A quick Google (a girl’s best friend) showed that MailChimp allows for media queries, so at least a good designer/developer can include these in their template to ensure a design that responds to whatever device a person is viewing the email on.

However, the email client itself does need to allow media queries to ensure the correct display.

While there aren’t definitive facts on what email clients support media queries, and unfortunately, we don’t use MailChimp at work, so this isn’t an option for me; we do know that mobile use for browsing and email is on the rise. Having a table-based layout means a lot of scrolling on a smaller phone, even up to a tablet; the e-newsletter might not display as expected, impacting the user experience for the audience.

I think this is where the rise of other online communication wins and provides a compelling argument for why newsletters should be put on the digital scrapheap.

The Rise of Social Media

Since April last year, when we launched our social media presence (primarily on Twitter), we’ve increased the number of our online followers, far surpassing the rise in our mailing list, which has remained fairly static since the list was created in 2007.

While we’re not in Stephen Fry figures yet, our number of followers is growing by approximately six per day. We’re also looking to embed Twitter across all our channels, but the widget already sits on our website, meaning that our audience doesn’t have to be on Twitter to see that we are tweeting.

Using Twitter and other forms of social media allows our audience to engage in two-way communication with us and have more choice, not only in following or unfollowing us but also in choosing when to look at what we are tweeting, which we can aid through the use of hashtags.

Or, the mailing list, which is getting a bit old, potentially has contacts that aren’t up to date and has email addresses from people who have now moved jobs and have forgotten to manage their subscription, something that, for me, is an advantage of social media as it is easier for you to manage.

From a practical point of view, there are also many applications that help us manage our social media more efficiently and effectively than a mailing manager. We can schedule tweets, analyse our followers, and work out the best way to tweet and when.

While GraphicMail provides some statistics, they don’t go into as much detail, and the mailing manager doesn’t allow for as much embedding of communication as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ do.

Targeted content

One of the advantages of a newsletter (perhaps the only advantage) is that you can target or tailor your content to your audience. Doing this effectively can be a challenge, but if you decide whether you are informing, selling, or promoting, you can create content targeted to your audience with a clear purpose and reason for them to click through.

However, with the rise of sites such as GroupOn, voucher code sites, and even Twitter, do some of the email outs that are selling me an advantage of being a ‘loyal customer’ fall by the wayside? But then, what other method, if you are a smaller retailer, do you have to reward loyalty online? Is Twitter the best option?

Working with newsletters that mainly act as an aggregator, our own news is roughly a third of the content. Would RSS feeds be more beneficial to our website? Or potentially a very basic, less regular email-out that included the latest feeds? I would argue that our content needs reviewing first, but if I can’t convince that the content isn’t up to scratch, I have to approach it from the benefits of other technologies.

Which way are the odds stacked?

Personally, I was hoping to find a decisive factor in why email outs are no longer viable—an irrefutable piece of evidence that I could take to my boss and say, ‘Look, they have had their day, let’s get rid of them! ‘

Unfortunately, the answer doesn’t appear to be as clear-cut as all that, relating it to my personal circumstances; I don’t think I can sway my boss with any argument to stop an email-out altogether.

However, persuading a rethink on how our content is presented and what content we present might be achievable, especially when we can see our social media’s success and look out to the success of sites such as Groupon.

I still have my doubts as to whether email-outs have had their day, not least as I end up deleting half a dozen of these emails each day (I really should make an effort to unsubscribe!); for me, social media is the most likely replacement, I can find content I need, be rewarded as a loyal customer/follower and easily engage in communication.

I’d be really interested in hearing other thoughts on the subject. Anyone who has had to create a newsletter using a table has to have an opinion!

The post Are Newsletters On Their Way Out? appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

There is no single tell-tale sign, but designers are always looking to be ahead of the curve. Predictive marketing is what keeps the strongest companies moving forward compared with other stagnant domains.

Changing with the Times

Social media is great for users who genuinely enjoy your updates. The best solution is to offer both so that your visitors may choose which form of communication works best. Lots of people don’t even use Facebook, so that method isn’t 100% infallible. Changing with the times can sometimes mean updating to newer methods and throwing caution to the wind.

One of the biggest issues I hear is that people get annoyed by e-mail newsletters. Then I ask why does anybody sign up? Most newsletters have an “unsubscribe me” link somewhere in the template. People who don’t want to receive any more updates can quickly opt-out and it’s not a problem anymore. I don’t agree that you’ll be annoying more users than you’ll be helping. But it also comes down to your niche and what type of market you are breaking into.

Target an Appealing Audience

Going into the future I have seen more newsletters aimed at more obscure topics. There are newsletters which run weekly, monthly, or even every couple of days without a set schedule. I can see how this would drive some readers up a wall with anticipation or annoyance. But I can also admit there is a market share for nearly every topic of interest.

When you are considering building a simple newsletter first consider who you should be targeting. This demographic will help with nearly every piece of the puzzle to designing, creating content, and building a usable registration form. You want to know who you’re looking to capture so this laser-targeted focus isn’t gone to waste.

Ask Plenty of Questions

For example, let’s say we create a gaming newsletter which is put out on a weekly basis. This topic obviously has a division of interest within the whole group of video game players because not everybody is interested in the latest gaming news. So how do you know who will be interested? It’s a tough question and won’t be solved overnight.

The best step you can take for market research is to look into other newsletters related to your topic. Are there any other big name gaming websites which are updating frequently? Why do people signup for those websites? Often it comes down to 1) great design and 2) frequent, high-quality content. Consider going through and actually signing up to various newsletters so you can get an inside scoop on some of your competition.

These ideologies are valued similarly within mostly all topics from interior design to fly fishing. This is why modern day newsletters need to be managed by a person or group who genuinely cares about the information. Readers can tell when you’re faking and it doesn’t promote confidence in your website.

Acknowledge Content as #1

You could argue this rule was always true when building newsletters but nowadays it is more transparent. The amount of startups and social communities which release newsletters is simply astounding. People can get so many of these per week that it just becomes annoying. And unfortunately there isn’t much you can do except remove as many annoyances from your own newsletter layout.

In general readers do truly care about your content and that’s why they’ve subscribed. Whether that would be shopping deals, website news, blog posts, free downloads, or anything else of vested interest. Your newsletter design should focus solely on what’s new and keep it all short yet sweet.

Don’t overload too much text for your readers. You should be able to skim over your own newsletter and pick out the most important details quickly. Also try to limit the length of your document so it doesn’t seem like endless scrolling. Even readers who truly care about your website don’t want to go through 20 or 30 different news updates.

Design for Minimalism

A little while ago I wrote an article similarly related to creating elegant email newsletter layouts. Many of these techniques should still apply and will be relevant as design trends progress in the future. People have less time to spend reading their inbox and just want to get the daily information at a glance.

Thumbnails and big text are a huge component to this design style. I know that whenever I open a newsletter I love seeing big fonts in the headings and paragraphs. It shows I can read all the content or quickly skim for the important tidbits. But images are also great to break up the page flow. They give you a solid implication of what each topic headline is all about before reading or clicking anything.

Some people are even checking their inboxes from smartphones or tablets on a daily basis. If possible you want to optimize any newsletter layout to fit smoothly on a mobile device. I find that people will take more time reading e-mails on their phone rather than on the computer. It may have to do with being out running errands and so there’s more time to kill reading e-mails. But this is a newer target demographic that you really want to capture.

Ultimately I would say the best design trait you can follow is flexibility. Make sure your newsletter design will cater to a wide audience of people. Use big text and plenty of images if possible. Also offer some type of unique branding to showcase your website. A simple logo in the header or footer will remind people about your website and why they signed up for your newsletter in the first place!

Final Thoughts

I hope this article can offer some insight towards design trends for e-mail communication. There is no end-all be-all final list for e-mail design. It’s a fluid process which takes a lot of trial and error before you learn which methods appropriately match your audience.

But this is a form of marketing which will scale alongside your website. As traffic grows from search engines more people will be interested in keeping updated on your website. And most people will check their e-mails frequently so it’s a natural progression between the web.

Along with these tips I have put together a small gallery of email newsletter designs below. Some of these are from older galleries online, while others are from e-mails I have personally received and archived. I find this to be an exceptionally inspiring gallery for web designers. Check out this collection and see if you can put together any email design trends which would match your own website content.

Newsletter Design Showcase

The post The Future of Email Marketing & Newsletter Designs appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.