Now that you've set your goals and have a clear expectation of what you're working towards, it's time for Week 2 of Constant Contact's Ready, Set, Send Challenge! This week, we're turning our attention to the ins-and-outs of crafting the perfect email. A well-written and designed email can make all the difference in engaging with your audience and driving the results you want. Watch the video below, and then share an email you created – either in the past, or a brand new email with BrandKit, to earn your badge and get feedback from our community and coaches.
I’m Aaron Wesley Means, founder of ACTIVATE Business Solutions, based in Asheville, North Carolina. For more than 12 years, ACTIVATE has served clients of all shapes and sizes from local to national, has trained thousands of businesses through seminars, webinars, and conferences, and is a recurring award-winning solution provider.
In this week’s Ready. Set. Send Challenge, we will tackle a true cornerstone of successful marketing: your emails. The inbox is easily the most powerful and visible strategy in your marketing lineup, so it has to be great! What does that mean? Designing the perfect email starts with the basics of a great subject line, stellar branding, and a handful of critical components ranging from a featured image, font size, a call to action, or social media integrations. Be sure to plug in for Week 2 of Ready, Set, Send for a breakdown of how to execute the perfect email.
Behind most successful projects, careful planning keeps everything on track and makes sure the results have impact (we love using the word ‘impact’). Crafting an effective email campaign is no different. Check out our 7-step checklist below and try implementing the strategies that make sense to rise above the inbox clutter.
🗒 Feeling overwhelmed? Download our PDF cheat sheet on The Anatomy of a Perfect Email to design the perfect email faster.
You can spend hours crafting the perfect communications, or you can use Constant Contact tools to cheat your way to more opens, more clicks, and more time saved. Click to see if you know these shortcuts:
Use the BrandKit feature under Tools to ensure consistent application of your brand. BrandKit acts like a library for your logo, colors and even images, and applies them to our special Layout Templates.
To take advantage of BrandKit, enter your URL or upload colors and images, make any tweaks you want, then click Create choose Email, and choose Layout templates. Your aesthetic will be instantly added to emails.
There are several easy ways to make your subject lines pop. When editing your subject line in Constant Contact, check out the “recommend subject line” options to see if AI has any better ideas.
To really catch a subscriber’s attention, click on the Personalize button to include a subscriber’s first name. Adding emojis might also do the trick.
Finally, when you’re scheduling your email, check that A/B Test toggle under Campaign Info and try testing one subject line against another.
We recommend using the free graphic design tool Canva to craft crisp, bold, and eye-catching images. Once you're satisfied with your creations, you can save your graphics, photos, and more directly to your Constant Contact library, making it easy to incorporate them into your emails.
Have a lot of Instagram-worthy photos on your phone? Download our mobile app, and save those photos directly to your image library.
Reply below with your email’s permanent URL or a screenshot of your draft, and you’ll receive the Week 2 badge. It will be proudly displayed on your Community profile, plus keep an eye out in your Community inbox for a larger image to share on your own social channels once Week 2 is finished.
TL;DR
Design the perfect email by following the 7 Essential Design Elements from the Anatomy of a Perfect Email handout and dip your toes into BrandKit. Watch the video, follow the tips, and crank out those emails for greater inbox visibility, improved open rates, and increased click rates galore!
Not yet a Constant Contact customer but want to start creating beautiful-looking emails? Start a free trial.
We’re excited to see what cool templates you come up with!
Aaron Wesley Means ACTIVATE Business Solutions Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. |
---|
Awesome job @Marc-AndreN! This is so aesthetically pleasing. One thing I do think it is missing though is links to any of your social media platforms! Consider adding those in and you'll be good to go.
Abigail St Jean Community Program ManagerHelp others find this post by giving it kudos. |
---|
I'm new so I don't have full reigns to create templates just yet, but here is a past email I designed from (GASP!!) another email provider. Don't get me wrong: I'm excited to start using Constant Contact! 😀
LIVE URL: https://wfly.co/Di3x8
Thanks!
@user74951 wrote:
I'm new so I don't have full reigns to create templates just yet, but here is a past email I designed from (GASP!!) another email provider. Don't get me wrong: I'm excited to start using Constant Contact! 😀
Cracking me up here @user74951 🤣 appreciate the sense of humor
Elevate your marketing with Constant Contact's Professional Design Services! From eye-catching email templates to custom branding and social media graphics, our professional design services are tailored to boost your business's impact and engagement. |
---|
I couldn't tell you how I ended up with these brand colors. Eight years later, I'm still experimenting with how to use them. Thank you for running the challenge. I'm running a little behind on the tasks. I missed the week two email and didn't realize it until I looked at the week three challenge.
There’s no need to hurry @JohnC53338 , feel free to take your time. We understand that life can get hectic. Looking forward to seeing you in week 3!
Elevate your marketing with Constant Contact's Professional Design Services! From eye-catching email templates to custom branding and social media graphics, our professional design services are tailored to boost your business's impact and engagement. |
---|
@JohnC53338 thank you for sharing your email for feedback, no worries on being late, the challenge is wide open the whole time! What a neat business you have!
✅I think your branding is fun an energetic. I might consider using more whitespace in the email and having your color scheme ride secondary to that, similar to how you have done it on your website, that way the viewer isn't overwhelmed with too much bright backfill like the yellow backing and green exterior border.
✅Your Logo and branding is clear - be sure to link your logo to your website
✅Consider intreating the font, especially on the smaller sections. They are readable but I have to squint on some words, so pump everything up a size or two.
✅You could swap your header about upcoming learning opportunities with the "join the Fierabend Approach". The flow would feel better - one sets the tone of the email, the other matches with the list of events to follow.
✅Consider truncating the list of events - having so many means your accompanying graphics are thumbnail sized, and this doesn't work well on many devices... the list also comes across as slightly repetitious. A solution would be to feature a handful of events in bigger font, with bigger imagery, and then below them have an additional button that says something along the lines of "view all events" so that they can peruse the expanded lineup on your website.
✅Your footer is great, you've included social buttons and all your contact info and details. I'd increase the font, space out the items to let them breathe so they are easy to peruse and easy to click individually.
Aaron Wesley Means ACTIVATE Business Solutions Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. |
---|
I tend to write too much in emails. I liked the breakdown to keep it simple and point people to action steps.
Love this @LaineA 😍
Elevate your marketing with Constant Contact's Professional Design Services! From eye-catching email templates to custom branding and social media graphics, our professional design services are tailored to boost your business's impact and engagement. |
---|
We’re here to help you grow. With how-to tutorials, courses, getting-started guides, videos and step-by-step instructions to start and succeed with Constant Contact.
Start Here