Don’t let Your Email Template Become Stale!

How long have you been using your current email template? Really, think about it. At least try to ballpark it within a few months. And how often do you send email? Let’s say your template is a ripe two years old, and you send once a week. That’s over a hundred messages your subscribers have received that look exactly the same. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure your email template looks just fine…but think of your poor subscribers. Every week, it’s the same old thing. It might start to get mundane after a while.

Think of your morning commute. Boring, right? But what if, one day, somebody planted a beautiful tree on the side of the road? Wouldn’t that be great? It’s always been the same mind-numbing commute, but now you have that tree to look forward to every day! Sure, the tree will get boring eventually, but what if someone planted some flowers by it? Then maybe they’ll build a nice fence around their little garden…and who knows, they might even paint the fence a different color some day. Suddenly, your morning commute isn’t so boring any more.

Now think about the effect something like that could have on your email campaign. Don’t go changing your default font to Wingdings or turning your logo into a rotating .gif, but just think about what might spice things up a little. If I were one of your subscribers, a subtle redesign could be the difference between a disgruntled “oh look, it’s another email from those guys” and an excited “hey, those guys put a cool accent image in their header!” You’d be amazed how many times email marketers will thoroughly redesign their website but keep on using the same old tired email template.

The risk, of course, is that you’ll appear unprofessional or inconsistent. But again, I’m not saying you should turn all your images upside-down or anything. Do just enough to pique people’s interest. You might be surprised what it could do for your clickthrough rate (CTR). Your template is the foundation you build your entire email marketing campaign upon…it might be time to give it a facelift!