What Not To Do in Your Email Newsletter

4 Things To Avoid When Designing Your Legal Newsletter

We previously discussed different strategies that will help improve your Law Firm's newsletter design. After all, sending newsletters is an excellent Lawyer SEO strategy that enables you to keep in contact with site visitors even after they close the tab on your website. However, creating a good-looking email newsletter doesn't take into account the possible difficulties people might encounter on the receiving end.

Here's a list of Dont's that you should be avoiding while drafting your email marketing campaign:

1. Don't Rely On Images For Your Background.

Most email programs don't allow images to load at first by default. This prevents spammers from monitoring views through the use of embedded graphics in their emails.

If your email isn't formatted correctly, it can potentially make it unreadable (i.e., if you had white font color and relied on a darker image background for it to show up).

When developing a website, using colored text against a colored background image is completely fine. However, you should expect that the background image will not load in an email. For example, if this happens, your pale yellow text on a blue backdrop image will become unreadable yellow text on white or grey.

Remember: It goes without saying that an email that cannot be read is useless.

If your backdrop picture is embedded in a table, make sure the table has a background color provided that makes your content readable if your images do not load.

2. Don't Rely On Images To Load

Many designers try to get around the limitations of email layouts by creating a promotional email entirely made up of graphics. Unfortunately, while this enables more creative layouts, it also renders your email useless if your images fail to load.

Your subscribers will simply receive an email with a slew of faulty image links. In addition, many of your receivers will be reading your email on their phones or behind a corporate firewall or other content-filtering systems, which may block your images.

It's also worth noting that using a picture to replace text should be approached with caution. All photos should have alternate wording. It's also a good idea to provide a "Having Trouble Viewing This Email?" link that directs the recipient to a web page containing your email content.

3. Rich Media Isn't Necessary

It's almost certain that your email with embedded rich media will be marked as spam. If you don't, it's unlikely that your reader will take the time to view your GIFs and videos while reading their emails.

If you really want to show off a video or GIF, post it on your website and offer a link in the email—just make sure the email isn't just a link to your rich content. Someone will rarely view a video that isn't accompanied by any context.

Remember: You still want your emails to be standalone and helpful. For example, just sending a link to videos without the context defeats the purpose of people subscribing to your email lists for exclusive content and updates.

Finally, keep in mind that not every email client supports rich media. It may be restricted by default, the same as how photos are. Rich media drastically increases the size of your email. To save data, many mobile devices do not download emails that are larger than a specific size. If your email is too large, it may not be read.

4. Don't Use Heavy Or Complex Templates

Remember that the purpose of your email campaign is to keep your subscribers up to date on information that they might overlook if they don't visit your site regularly. Therefore, it's not required to devote a significant amount of time to the details of your email design. However, a concise statement can help you get closer to your goal.

A basic template is more likely to run without issues, can be reused with minor text changes, and will save you time by eliminating the need to test your design each time you start a campaign.

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