Get festive with flair and flexibility in your email template designs
The holiday season is upon us and it’s time to think festively with your design systems! Adding some design flair doesn’t have to be a complex endeavor. Simply changing a color scheme, swapping out a holiday logo, or adding a holiday banner, animation, or even some fun interactivity, can go a long way.
Seasonal embellishments can extend brand flair and awareness, but it’s good to understand what’s simple to do. What kind of flexibility do you have in your current template setup? How easy is it to change your font colors, or add a small or large graphic banner? Do you know your image and HTML specs? With the holiday season fast approaching, now is the time to consult with your email experts and explore what kind of flexibility you have to get ready for the busiest season of the year.
Here are a few ideas that can help you start that discussion…
Animations are always in season
GIF animations have been proven to consistently lift conversions and can make your emails stand out visually amid the slew of messages your customers will receive. Based on results from our 2019 Holiday Study, we saw a 3% increase in click rates when an animation was included in the creative. Here are a few tactics you can consider:
- A simple 3-5 frame image rotation can give that carousel feel and attract attention. You can also tell a story or highlight a simple process.
- Try a micro-animation: a couple of blinks – or a slow brew of animations can draw your eye into the content. Give your images, icons, or even your logo a little wiggle n’ pulse.
- Add a cinemagraph or a video GIF to create a stronger sense of excitement and motion in the inbox, viewable by nearly everyone.
Branding adjustments
Another simple way to add holiday flair to your emails is changing up the style of buttons and adjusting brand colors for a spooky, harvesty or snowy setting. Break the button, add some ice, pepper it up with sparkle and spice. It may be easy to swap or change some of your evergreen content, like your logo, navigation, background colors, footer area and loyalty section. You may have to design some internal mocks for approval, but this can be simple too. Get the idea and trust your design system. You’ll want to avoid a hodge-podge look to your emails when recycling holiday themed content so that all your variable messaging modules will flow on brand.
Using your template differently
You can make some interesting changes in your seasonal emails without having to break up your design system. It just takes a little creative thinking. What about the negative space in your templates? Can you design across the grid, across images slices, painting a festive feeling across a boxy structure? Are you able to use background images? It’s fun to think outside the box, but first understand the box. Create a spec guide that all stakeholders in the process can reference: designers, coders, marketing managers, campaign specialists, executives, ghouls and goblins.
Bring on the bells and whistles
- Try interactive email. A small game, an expand/collapse module or a tap n’ reveal hotspot can increase user activity with hip interaction and mystery fun. And, according to our 2019 Holiday Study, we observed a 6% increase in transaction rates when an email included an interactive element.
- Explore dark mode. On supported devices, you can use a relatively new coding tactic to serve up different style experiences better suited to either dark or light (default) mode preferences.
October, November and December are the months where seasonal spirit is in its prime, but also a time where machines and teams go into lock down. Respect the content creation, HTML build and campaign setup processes while inspiring and preparing all team players for the seasonal flow, allowing for some wiggle room in the process. Then bring on the bats, spiders and spooktacular copy; the autumn leaves, friends and thanks; and the gift-giving joy that the winter solstice brings.
Embrace seasonal change in your design flow, and have a happy Q4!
