From header to footer: The Anatomy of the perfect email [Infographic]

How to engage your audience by optimising every feature of your email

Every email that you send to your clients has distinct elements. There’s the subject line, of course, as well as headline and body, to name just a few. And every single one of those elements has a distinct role to play in emails that are either engaging and often read versus those that quickly land in the “trash” folder.

Take the body of an email: If your customers feel like they’re reading a generic piece of information that’s crafted for everyone, and not specifically for them, they’ll be turned off. That points to the importance of data gathering as a part of the email-crafting process. The more you know about customers beyond that email address—who they are, how old they are, what they like and don’t like—the more likely you can create sub-groups of emails that offer benefits and reasoning for continued email subscriptions.

Emails are also a process: You hook in readers with that super subject line and headline. You lead them through information. Then you ask them to do something. What that ask, or call to action, is varies and can be fun or simply engaging. But it should feel urgent and personalized.

And even after you’ve taken a look at all the various parts of an email, you should never, ever send it without testing it, and making sure that it works on every device on which it might be read.

Creating the perfect email takes time and practice. The tips in this graphic can help guide you through the process, from start to finish.