The Layout for Email Marketing That Gets the Best Results

A big issue that many email marketers face is that an email campaign looks different on different devices. Learn how to make sure that your email campaigns look stunning on all devices!

Why Email Message Display Differently on Devices

Over 21 years ago, in RFC 2183, it was written:

[This] document does not address the issue of presentation styles; it provides a framework for the interchange of message content, but leaves presentation issues solely in the hands of mail user agent (MUA) implementors.

Of importance for this article is that standards for the presentation of email messages wasn’t defined but left to software developers. Of course we now have Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, Thunderbird and many others. These email readers all use their own definitions of how an email message should display. The end result is that we have thousands of combinations of email reading software combined with hardware that all may display and email message differently.

Ultimately, to ensure the most consistent display for all viewers of our email campaigns, we need to abide by the basics; for example we can’t use jQuery or even wide email messages as we can on a Website. We just have to stay with certain minimum ‘standards’ to ensure consistency of display.

The Most Popular Layout for the Best Email Campaign Display

In my Mailchimp classes I show examples of both good and bad email designs. I define bad design as those that don’t display or function consistently on most email readers. When looking at designs that display consistently well it becomes obvious that the layout is very similar between senders such as Google, Facebook, Adobe, Pepsi, Hertz, Uber, Crocs, Shopify and so on. Best of all the layout is very simple and is easy to replicate in Mailchimp using content blocks in the campaign builder.

In the above example of a typical email campaign layout that is widely used successfully:

1. The message is single column.
2. The maximum width is typically 600px.
3. The layout is typically (from the top); logo, image, heading, text (just a few sentences), button (also called “call to action”) and footer.
4. If there are more items to include in the message then the image, heading, text and button are repeated for each separate items.

Keep in mind with the layout formula that you don’t give all information in your email message; your message is a ‘teaser’ and the reader should then click the button to read more. You may also include video and so on but the layout should remain similar to that as above.

How do I use this Layout as a Mailchimp Template?

The best way to use this layout for your Mailchimp campaigns is:

1. Create a Mailchimp email campaign using one the the default Mailchimp layouts.
2. For future campaigns merely replicate the campaign that you created previously and amend as necessary.

Remember, if you want to learn to use Mailchimp like a pro the let me train you and your team.