Email doesn't begin and end with copywriting. Design elements can help persuade customers to click and convert.
Discussions on persuasion in an email message usually begin and end with copywriting. But your email design can also encourage your customers to click and convert.
Think about the last time you tried to talk a friend or family member into doing something. I’ll bet you didn’t just present a written note with reasoned, rational arguments. Did you changed your tone of voice, wait for an opportune moment to state your case, or set the scene some other way?
I’m not saying you must resort to the email equivalent of tears to persuade your subscribers to act. But your email design can amplify your copywriting to encourage conversion.
Why ‘skimmability’ isn’t enough anymore
Both attention spans and email reading screens are shrinking. Now that 60% or more of all email opens happen on a smartphone or tablet, your email messages are more likely to be read on a six-inch mobile screen than a 13- to 16-inch laptop or 22-inch desktop monitor.
With those smaller screens comes less patience to read through the entire email. The latest read-time statistics show the average read time fell four seconds, from 13.4 seconds in 2018 to 9 seconds in 2022.
As an optimist, I would like to believe that this shorter reading time results in part from efficient email design, now that we have evolved to mobile-friendly single-column layouts, larger images and shorter copy blocks. But a thumb swipe is easier than a mouse scroll, so readers can also miss key points that don’t stand out.
This shorter attention span means you have to be even choosier in the images and copy you select to promote a product or tell your story. Your design also has to work even harder to make sure your readers can see your message as you intended, understand what you want them to do and feel compelled to act.
The most common design advice I see is to make emails skimmable. In other words, someone who opens your email (Victory No. 1) can scan it in two to three seconds and grasp what’s important (Victory No. 2). But skimmability doesn’t guarantee action.
That’s the cue for persuasive design. It can highlight key features, move the eye to essential information and make it as easy as possible to click, and keep the reader in the email longer and thus more likely to view all of your offers or other important information.
Overt and covert persuasion in email design
Just as email copywriting can use both overt and covert tactics to persuade customers to act, so can email designers employ both obvious and subtle ways to draw attention to key points in an email message.
Overt persuasive design uses obvious elements like images, animation and layout to call attention to important content like the call to action, price changes, offer copy and the like. It’s centered in the principle of cognitive ease, which is a measure of how easy it is for our brains to absorb information.
Covert persuasive design uses many of the same elements as overt design but as subtle visual cues rather than attention-directing elements. This method of design is more complex and calls on a collection of psychological principles that motivate customers to act.
Overt and covert persuasive design concepts aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, combining them in a single email can make the message more persuasive. You can reach two kinds of readers — those who are engaged and need just a quick nudge to act and others who need more information and a bigger push.
The examples below include a selection of tactics in persuasive design that call upon cognitive biases to help guide customers.
1. The Principle of Least Effort
This concept asserts that people will naturally choose the path of least resistance, which lets them achieve something they want by exerting the least effort. The move toward streamlining email content for scanning is based on this idea.
Remember first that an email’s job is not to deliver the conversion within the email. It sets the stage and persuades the reader to take the next step, which most often is to click to the website and convert there.
To accomplish that goal, a designer can use visual cues that guide the reader to the content they need and influence them to act.
The design can be wildly obvious, using arrows or other devices to direct attention to the benefit or the CTA. But do your readers need to be hit over the head like that?
An implicit (covert) design cue can be more effective by using positioning and line of sight to direct the reader’s eyes to the objective. Instead of feeling pushed toward a call to action, image or copy block, readers can feel as if they’ve discovered it on their own. That can be more persuasive than the equivalent of an email airhorn.
Source: MailCharts
2. Persuasion tactics: Anchoring and visual cues
Anchoring is the human tendency to rely heavily on the first piece of information offered (the “anchor”) when making decisions. In other words, first impressions count.
For example, the initial asking price for a retail item sets the value to make the sale price more appealing. This is a classic discounting tactic, but it’s most effective when the design incorporates other persuasive elements to highlight the anchored text like those used in the email below.
Subject line. Fancy saving $219 in a click?
Sender. Depositphotos
Why it works. The anchor text sets the value for the photo collection at $299. The layout positions the discounted total of $80 immediately next to the strike-out copy. Even the most math-impaired reader can see the discount is sizable. The subject line has already told them how much they’ll save, so they open the email expecting to see a big discount.
The highlighted percentage-off image above the copy reinforces the value expectation, but the email copy conveys the value if the image was blocked.
Other design elements focus attention and prompt customers to act. The pastel color blocks on either side of the white box with the offer copy are stylized human profiles, and they are shown looking at the offer and the CTA button.
Visual cues. As I mentioned above, mixing overt and covert visual cues increases a design’s persuasive potential:
Overt: The bright red reverse bar across the top of the email and the matching CTA button stand out against the blue background and pastel color blocks surrounding the white box containing the copy block.
Covert: Those pastel color blocks are stylized human faces, and they’re looking at the copy. One pair of silhouettes lines up with the CTA button.
Although it can be easy to go overboard with visual cues, a combination of compatible cues, such as overt and covert elements, creates a stronger persuasion environment in the email while also not forcing the reader to think too hard to process the message.
Source: Author’s collection
3. Persuasion tactic: Cognitive ease
As I mentioned above, cognitive ease measures how easily our brains can process information associated with a concept or cue. Arrows are familiar directional devices, so we almost instinctively look at whatever the arrow is pointing at. It’s a common visual cue.
We can also use covert cues to help the brain grasp that something is important. Surrounding a copy block with white space takes less processing than positioning a CTA button in one color against a contrasting background color.
Subject line. Last chance! Take 70% off your purchase
Sender. Kate Spade
Why it works, Oh, is Kate Spade having a big sale? Why, yes! Yes, indeed! The design of this email leaves no doubt that one of the biggest clearance sales of the year is happening.
Kate Spade used variations on this simple black-gray-and-white design for all of the emails in this campaign. This email, sent on the last day of the sale, added yet another visual cue to drive home the urgency of acting — the scrolling reverse bar across the top saying, “LAST DAY! LAST DAY!”
That’s in case the big gray arrow pointing directly to the offer with “This Way to Early Savings” wasn’t attention-getting enough. Too much? For a sale like this, it might be just enough to get super-scrollers to stop and read
Source: eDataSource
4. Persuasion tactic: Hick’s Law / the Paradox of Choice
Hick’s Law says the more options you give people, the more time they need to decide and the harder that decision becomes. Give people too many choices, and you can bring on “decision paralysis” or “the paradox of choice.”
The evolution from multi-column email design to a single scrollable column helps alternatives stand out more on the screen. But for brands that pack their emails with offers, invitations, bargains, account info and the like, it distracts from the email’s primary goal.
Hick’s Law doesn’t prevent you from giving your customers options. But an email design that helps readers find key information quickly is essential if your emails usually combine multiple CTAs, product promotions, dynamic content modules, account holder information, a loyalty program or other elements.
Testing can help you learn where the number of options tips over from “just the right balance” to “too many.”
Subject line. 100% FREE design sessions: Spots go fast!
Sender. Pottery Barn
Why it works. Pottery Barn packs a lot into their broadcast email promotions. This message alone has eight different content modules not including the admin center in the footer.
But this email design gives each module a distinct appearance, which differentiates it from the modules before or after it and keeps the overall effect from becoming overwhelming.
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