I attended the “Change the Game” WhatCount’s Email Summit in Las Vegas,Nv earlier this month. During the Summit one of the sessions was about building better emails. Over the next few weeks I will be posting on how to build a better email. In this post we will discuss the email layout.

Layout

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. (**chart and copy from whatcounts handout)

So what should be in your preheader? This is the area where teaser text, housekeeping links, and forward to a friend link will be located. If the reader of the email does not have images turned on you want to tease them with inviting text. You want the user to want more, and thus turn on the images and continue reading the email.

The header of your email should closely resemble that of the website. Most of the time the user signed up for the newsletter from your site. So if the email resembles your site they will remember they signed up and be more likely to continue reading.

The navigation bar would replicate the navigation on your current site. If the user doesn’t click on any of the links inside the body of the email they might want click on a main navigation link to get to your site.

The primary, secondary, and tertiary messages are the main content of your email. Keep it simple! Tease users with “Read More” links back to your site. Engage with the users and give them just enough so they want more and click to your site. Because lets face it, the main goal of the email is for the user to open, click and preform some type of action.

The banner would be a call to action. The alternate navigation bar would be a scaled down version of the top navigation. Both the banner and alternate navigation bar are not needed for shorter emails but if you have a longer email you would want to re-introduce users to your site navigation.

The footer will be you copyright information and your unsubscribe link. The unsubscribe link needs to be on every email to be CAN-SPAM compliant along with a valid mailing address.

With this type of email layout it will be easy to interchange content for future mailings. Thus cutting down design and programming time, keeping down the overall costs.

My next blog post will be next week on best practices for building emails and some examples of some emails that are doing it correct and some that are missing the boat.