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WHAT’S NEW IN FITNESS - AUTUMN 2013
Stick to a good thing
You may want to tweak your email template after reading this article, and that’s great. However, once you’ve got it looking
good, resist the urge to keep changing it. One way to keep your emails from being trashed is to choose a look and stick to it
for a while so people recognise who the email is coming from in a quick glance.
Take steps now to make your emails clear and readable. Use these tips to create a recognisable brand experience with
every message you send. It’s the best way to ensure that the great information you share doesn’t end up in the virtual junk
box.
Be consistent with your contact details
Sometimes predictability is a good thing. Include your contact information, your company mission, and your social media
profles in a consistent footer area at the base of every email. This makes them look professional and it also makes it easy for
your readers to stay in contact with you outside of their inboxes.
Steer clear of awful images
There’s nothing that says “an amateur designed this email” like cheap clip art. Avoid cheesy images and stock
photography that looks staged and fake. Remember, people want to do business with real people, so use your own photos
or acquire stock images that are high quality and look natural.
Order your information logically
You can make your emails instantly look more inviting by avoiding these formatting problems:
• No hierarchy of information. When a reader glances at your email, they should know right away which information is
the most important, what they should look at next, and what’s the least important. Make this obvious by using a larger,
bolder and brighter main headline. Make your subheads smaller and less prominent. Make your legal information,
notices and “housekeeping” messages smallest and least important.
• Great walls of text. To make your messages easy to scan, use plenty of subheadings. Write in short paragraphs, and
break up your text into easily-digestible chunks.
Be mindful of colour catastrophes
For your email to look professional and inviting, you have to master color. The biggest color mistakes are:
• Garish colour. Stay away from colours that are overly bright or furoescent. Tone them down so they don’t compete with
your words.
• Too many colours. Use a colour palette with two dominant colours and tone down the rest to make your emails look
cohesive.
• Light text on a dark background. The most readable combination is dark text on a light background, so stick to that
whenever possible.
Avoid hard-to-read fonts
Your email newsletter’s main goal is to communicate, and – obviously – that happens through words. But, what if the words
are hard to read? Be sure to avoid these two errors:
• Using fonts that are too small. This is especially important if some of your readers are 50 and over, and may have
eyesight problems. And with so many emails being viewed on smartphones, it makes sense to increase font sizes.
• Using too many fonts. Combining too many different fonts makes your email look messy and unprofessional. Pare it
down to no more than two fonts, and just use the italic and bold weights to add variety.
Say ‘hello’
Your emails should feature an instantly-recognisable, consistent header image. Ideally, this email header should relate to
your business or the product your reader signed up to learn more about. So, if you’re a health club and you have a specifc
email newsletter just for members with weight loss goals, your header should directly relate to the information you’re sharing,
and look visually connected to your overall brand. Over time, your header image will be associated with the high-quality
information you share.