Creating compelling email invites under a deadline requires a balance of strategy and execution. But striking that sweet spot isn’t just a guessing game, and there’s a lot within your control to put your best email forward.
This guide covers each element required to create a successful email invites including:
From
Reply-to
Subject
Body
Survey Link
Help email addresses
Unsubscribe link
Senders name and title
Postal Address
Although that might seem like a lot of steps to remember, once you get more comfortable with your email design process and workflow, each of your next campaigns will come more naturally.
Email template
First decide if you will build each campaign from scratch or leverage pre-made and customizable email templates. The latter option provides a consistent version of your email campaigns in a short amount of time. Unless you have time and resources to build an email campaign, consider the email template as a go-to email design.
The email templates don’t need to be fancy or complicated. The more complicated you make the designs, the more you risk confusing your recipient and not allowing the important pieces of your email to have their own space.
A couple of design elements to consider during the design phase are the header/footer and your use of white space throughout the email template.
Email header and footer The header and footer are places to reinforce your brand and provide a consistent experience for your recipient. The header may be something as simple as your logo. And the footer should include the links to your social channels, your unsubscribe link, as well as your physical company address.
Whitespace Whitespace clarifies your email designs. It’s almost always better to lean on too much white space over too little as email designs can quickly become cluttered with too many elements.
Write your email copy
From name – Stop using a no-reply in your emails! Doing so creates a generic and unfriendly experience and will likely discourage your recipients from opening. Try using your brand name so there is no question who your emails are from.
Reply-to name – This email address will be used by your recipient when they want to write back to you. Having the same from email is encouraged.
Subject line – The first touchpoint you can make with your recipient is the subject line, so it pays to give it special attention!
Describe what is in your email, but you don’t (nor do you have space) to cover everything. Choose one thing to highlight. Shorter is generally better.
Body – Once your recipient decides that your email is worthy of an open, the next pieces of content they see are the headlines, body copy, and call to action (CTA).
Try writing your body copy first, followed by your headline, and then your CTA. With the exception of grammar and style guides, there aren’t any hard and fast rules for copywriting since it’s the most artistic part of the email campaign process. But every piece of successful copy shares a couple of themes:
High-quality email copy is conversational, not generic. This art undoubtedly takes consistent practice to master. The more you write, the more comfortable you will be with this step.
Building the right emotional connections comes from a deep understanding of the audience/readers.
Focus on the benefit for the recipient—what’s in it for them and why is it worth their time?
Survey Link – Survey link is required for your respondents to participate in the study. This is the most important part of your email invites. Try to provide easy way of participating in your study say by providing a button to start survey as well as copy link. Most likely they will click the link to participate but as a backup always provide the copy link. Choose friendly color for the button as well as the link.
Help Email address– Adding a one liner to address to assist with any technical issues is good gesture for respondents. You can take advantage here by adding a technical support email address instead of the generic email address. This is optional.
e.g. Should you have technical questions about the survey, please contact help@yourDomain.com
Unsubscribe – Even though you’re creating beautiful and engaging email campaigns, some recipients will want to unsubscribe. Unsubscribe can be easily added in the template or the email design. Failing to ensure a way for your recipients to unsubscribe from your email campaigns can cause disastrous consequences for deliverability and your sender reputation if ignored. All unsubscribed are stored in the sample settings> bad mail section, see below figure. If someone unsubscribes from your emails, they will automatically be removed from reminders.
Senders name and title – Adding a sender name along with title is encouraged as compared to unknown or undefined sender.
Senders postal address– As part of the anti-spam laws such as CAN-SPAM it is required to add postal address of the sender.
Take away
We have designed various templates with the above points. In order for you to send email, all you need to have are from/sender email, subject, body, name and address. Customise to your requirements and it should be good to start sending.