It’s one thing to put together your email marketing campaign, but it’s quite another to get it read. Let’s look at some things you can do to improve the readability of your email marketing campaign and keep people engaged.

Horizontal Viewports
Your email message needs to be designed to have a horizontal viewport. Most designers know this, but what’s not as well known is how small most viewports are. The normal size of the preview pane is approx. 638x86 pixels, according to recently released information by MicroMass Communications. What this means is that the first 100 pixels of your email won’t be seen in the majority of cases. With the shift moving towards mobile devices, that viewing area is getting smaller not larger. So make sure you make the most of this very small space. It is the only place you get the opportunity to convince your reader to read your entire message.

Email Clients Are Unforgiving
Web browsers are pretty forgiving of messy HTML or flawed code. However, email clients are not at all this way. CSS will be frowned on. Images that are undefined will be tossed somewhere, and messy HTML will be rejected not corrected. You must define the height and width of all the images you embed. You must use Title and Alt tags, and you must make your links absolute. Don’t do fancy unless you are sure it will work.

The Writing Rules of the Game
Use few images and many words. Yes images are certainly eye catching but they slow down the load time, and this is important to many users especially those that don’t have hi-speed internet or who are using mobile devices. Rely on text to its job. Super copy will load fast, fits into tiny spaces, and gets your message across.

Avoid the Use of CSS Whenever Possible
Email clients and CSS don’t get along all that well, so it is best to avoid if you can. Even with major email, clients there are compatibility issues, which doesn’t make a lot of sense in this day and age but it will eventually improve. However, there are times when CSS is necessary for your email design. If that’s the case, then you need to make sure that all of the properties remain inline and are not in shorthand.

Keeping these tips in mind when designing your email will improve the likelihood that your email will be read and that makes your email marketing campaign effective.