The start of summer means it's time for you to start getting to work on your Back to School email campaigns. To help you along the way, we've created a brand new Design Idea to help you go back to school in style...
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August is just around the corner, which means that it's time to start thinking about the next big event on your email marketing calendar: Back to School.
Although a lot of schools don't start back until September, many students and parents will already be on the lookout for the best deals and offers to get them ready for a brand new school year.
Make sure your business is prepared with these great tips and ideas for Back to School email campaigns. Keep reading until the end to also discover your FREE Back to School email template; exclusive for Mail Designer 365 customers.
Include Back to School in your subject line
Every email marketing pro will know the importance of a good subject line in grabbing the reader's attention. In the case of Back to School campaigns it's no different. Use your subject line to clearly outline the theme of your email.
This is especially important during the summer holidays, when your customers will already be receiving a large amount of emails and promotions.
Here are some A+ examples of businesses who have won customers over with their subject line:
The emojis add a colorful touch to this Back to School subject line from Shpock.
Adobe's subject line introduces their tempting Back to School offer to students.
Think about fonts
Fonts are also a very important element of your email design. For a Back to School campaign, using a fun font is a great way of appealing to both younger readers, as well as parents.
Here are some web fonts which we think are great for Back to School vibes. Tip: All of these fonts are available in Mail Designer 365!
Caveat Brush on a black background is great at recreating that chalkboard effect.
Finger Paint brings a fun element to your design - especially when advertising products for younger kids.
Sophisticated college students would love the classic, varsity style of Graduate.
A handwriting-style font like Just Me Again Down Here is a casual way of highlighting the Back to School theme.
Appeal to the more edgy side of kids with a graffiti-style font like Permanent Marker.
Quicksand Bold is another great font for younger kids and looks just like the fonts you'd see in a school book.
Use bright colors
Using a bright color scheme in your email design is a great way to get customers excited for Back to School. Although it means the end of summer, you should try your best to portray the new school year as a positive to look forward to.
Bright colors help you to motivate customers and also make your design look great. Try using bold, primary colors to recreate the classroom in your email design.
Sports Direct help get customers in the mood for Back to School spending with this dazzling blue design.
This inviting email design by Kohl's is also a great way for them to show off their products and offers to customers. We love the clear CTA.
Focus on kid-friendly imagery
The more your reader associates your design with school and the classroom, the more effective it will be. Incorporate as much school-themed, kid-friendly imagery as possible to make your message clear.
This Back to School design by Peek gets full marks for the clever imagery and use of primary colors.
Doc Martens also do a great job of appealing to older students with this laidback school bus image. We love the pops of yellow to brighten things up.
Offer discounts and promotions
It's no secret that offering a special promotion is a great way for your to boost sales and attract more customers to your website. During the build up to the Back to School period, it is especially effective to run a sale or promotional offer to make things easier for parents and students with supplies to buy.
Try sending out an email advertising your special offer. Bonus marks for including a clear and effective CTA (call-to-action) button.
Animal are winning plenty of extra credit with this great promotion. Not only are the image choices great, the CTAs are also super clear and clickable.
Provide a useful Back to School checklist
Provide readers with a Back to School checklist to make sure they have all the supplies they need for the new school year. This could be anything from uniform, to stationery, or even a new lunch box. Whatever it is, don't forget to include direct links to the products on your website!
Bando's checklist is super colorful and includes everything needed for the new school year.
FREE Email Template
If you're still in need of some inspiration for your Back to School email campaign, don't worry! Mail Designer 365 are here to make sure you're always top of the class when it comes to creating impressive email designs.
Check out this brand new Back to School email template - exclusively available for Mail Designer 365 users in the Design Ideas section. Click here to view the design in the app.
We hope these tips and ideas will come in useful when you're creating your Back to School email campaigns this summer. Don't forget to download Mail Designer 365 free today to try out the brand new email template, as well as a whole range of exciting creative tools!
Until next time,
Your Mail Designer 365 Team
Mail Designer 365 helps you create stylish, professional HTML emails on your Mac. Download for free to see what you can achieve.
With the Fourth of July just around the corner, we're sure many of you are working hard on your email campaigns for the big day. To make things easier for you, we've created a brand new Fourth of July Design Idea for you - exclusively available in the latest version of Mail Designer 365...
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Students are a growing market for your business to explore. Whether you want to attract more customers for your business, or are targeting students for research or recruitment purposes, it's important to adapt your email strategy to suit this unique target group.
In this guide, we are sharing some useful ideas about what you can do to make your email campaigns more attractive to students and young people.
What to consider before you get started
Students are a unique target group in many ways, before you start building your campaign, it may be useful to consider the following points to help you understand your audience a little better...
- Don't stereotype: The stereotype of students spending all their free time drinking and living off pasta may be true for some, but definitely not all. Even if it seems funny, including stereotypes like this in your emails is more likely to make readers roll their eyes and look elsewhere.
- Is your product appealing enough?: Being in full time education and having to pay for rent, living costs, etc. means most students won't have a large disposable income. For this reason, they will only be wiling to splash the cash on things which they deem worth it.
- Brand image: Your brand will also play a part in whether students and young people will want to purchase. For example, despite their premium prices, Apple's strong brand image means their products are still massively popular among younger customers.
- The latest trends: Young people are usually very in tune with the latest trends. If you do your research, you should be able to capture these trends in your campaigns. For example, many companies are now experimenting with more vegan and vegetarian options, due to a huge rise in young people going vegan.
It's important to understand your target market before starting work on your campaign.
5 tips for writing emails for students
These 5 useful tips should help you create emails which are more appealing to students and young people...
Focus on good design
Young people in particular will be drawn in by a great aesthetic. One way to win them over is through an email which is visually appealing and interesting to read. Incorporating colours, images and funny GIFs (check out Giphy for this) is a great way of livening up your newsletter. You should also avoid long chunks of text, as these will quickly become boring.
Urban Outfitters is massively popular with students. Vibrant email designs like this help them maintain their cool brand image.
Keep the tone friendly
When trying to recruit students, it's generally ok to take a more laid back approach. Although it's important to always be respectful and maintain an air of professionalism, overly formal language is not really required. Try and keep the tone friendly to avoid alienating potential new recruits. This will also help students paint a picture of your company's working environment.
Provide useful information
Students are busy and, like the rest of us, won't appreciate being sent meaningless content which clogs up their inboxes. Make sure the content in your emails is actually useful for your audience. Think about how your business could help students solve some common problems they experience.
Here are some ideas you could try:
- Selling stationery or study supplies? You could try including some helpful study tips in your email. Tip: This would be especially useful during exam periods.
- A food or cookery-related business could offer some low cost meal ideas to test out.
- Banks or financial businesses could share their best advice on budgeting and saving money.
- Recruitment agencies could try giving tips on perfecting a CV and applying for graduate jobs.
Target Jobs use their email newsletters to provide students with useful careers information.
Include discounts and special offers
If anyone loves a bargain, it's students. One way of winning the hearts of students and young people is to offer them a discount on your products. Many students will appreciate this gesture and actively choose your business over competitors who don't offer a student discount.
Try using your email newsletter to remind subscribers that you offer a discount and you should notice a boost in click-throughs and sales.
Students will definitely be aware of the discounts available to them thanks to this bold email from New Look.
Concentrate on your social media presence
Maintaining an active social media presence is a good way to keep students aware of your business. It also provides you with more opportunities to directly engage with them. Together with a strong email marketing campaign, you'll be able to increase your reach.
Tip: Remember to link all of your social media profiles in your email newsletters so readers can follow you! Check out this guide for more tips.
We hope this guide will inspire you to consider students and young people as a potential new target group for your business. Remember to keep things relevant, interesting and on trend, and you're sure to be on the right track!
Until next time!
Your Mail Designer 365 Team
Give Mail Designer 365 a try today for free...
Mail Designer 365 helps you create stylish, professional HTML emails on your Mac. Download for free to see what you can achieve.
Yes, you did read the title of this blog correctly! The Mail Designer 365 Workflow is now also available on Windows, iOS and Android devices; meaning you can get the whole team involved in your next big email project. Keep reading to discover your brand new productive workflow...
Collaboration is a huge part of working life, but mastering the art of collaborating effectively on projects and tasks can be a huge challenge. Not only can effective collaboration speed up your workflow, it can also promote innovation and creativity; improving the overall outcome of your project.
In email design, it can be helpful to work together to make sure emails meet the high standards you expect. For this reason, collaboration is also a key part of successful email marketing strategy.
In this quick guide, we will share some effective tips on how you can improve your collaboration skills at work; whether working together on email campaigns, or other projects.
Promote an open environment
It is important to make colleagues aware that their feedback and opinions are welcome. If team members don't feel like their ideas are wanted, they are unlikely to share them with you. This could lead to you losing out on opportunities for collaboration and missing interesting ideas which could potentially improve your project.
Here are some ways to promote a more open environment for collaboration...
Encourage your team to socialise
Whether this is during the lunch break or after work, the more your team socialise with each other, the more comfortable they will be discussing ideas and collaborating on projects.
Encourage your whole team to socialise and become comfortable sharing ideas.
Keep meetings small and informal
Meetings give your team the chance to catch up on the status of a project but, if too many people are involved, it can be hard to get the ball rolling. A quick sit down together over coffee with 2-4 people is great for productive discussions and brainstorming. A formal meeting with 4+ attendees is a productivity killer
Use informal meetings as a chance to share ideas in a laid back setting.
Improve communication in the workplace
There are many ways to improve communication in the workplace, but one quick and easy method is to create an internal newsletter. Not only does this keep your whole office up to date on what's happening within the company, it also gives other members of staff the opportunity to provide their opinions on projects they may not have been aware of.
Tip: If you are stuck for ideas on a project, try asking for feedback in your next company newsletter/office bulletin. You may be positively surprised on the suggestions you receive!
Consider all perspectives
Different people will have different experiences based on the department they work in. For this reason, it's important to consider all perspectives when collaborating on a project. Successful collaboration involves interdependence between teams and departments.
Whose input should I consider?
Assume you are creating a product release email for a small to medium business. Although the marketing team is usually responsible for sending these emails to customers, it is also important to consult with other departments:
- The product development team can provide feedback on the technical information you include about the product.
- The sales team will be able to guide you on prices and special offers.
- The branding team can instruct you on the specific visual aspects of your email as well as brand guidelines.
- The legal team will check over any disclaimers or terms & conditions, if you have included an offer or promotion.
- The management team can help determine what the main message or CTA (call to action) of the email is; as well as approving it for sending.
Finding the right collaboration tool
Using a collaboration tool can vastly improve your productivity and speed up the project completion process. It reduces the need to send emails back and forth and stops you wasting time sending new drafts around the office.
With so many different perspectives to consider, it's important to find the right tools to productively collaborate on projects. There are many tools out there for collaboration, but few can provide you with all the aspects you need to be able to successfully communicate with your colleagues.
The right collaboration tool will help you streamline your workflow and become more productive.
Here are a few things to look out for when choosing which tools to work with:
Mobile optimisation
Nowadays, everyone is on the go, and it is important to be able to keep up with work while you're outside of the office. Whether it's the daily commute or you're attending a conference or meeting, it's good to be able to check up on your projects using your smartphone.
Cross platform compatibility
With so many different devices out there, it's a good idea to choose a tool which is compatible with all platforms; as this will be more convenient for your team.
Usability
A good user interface is always a must-have with any kind of collaboration tool, as it must be comprehendible for users of all abilities. Over-complicated tools will only deter busy team members from getting involved, so it is a good idea to choose a software which is easy to use.
Affordability
There are many tools out there which cater to the needs of big businesses, but at a high price. In particular for small and medium businesses, it is important to find a tool which suits your needs; both productively and financially. As well as this, having the option to tailor plans to your own personal preference is also a plus.
Customer support
Finally, a tool which offers high quality customer support is also essential, as it is important for you to have access to support and advice, should you need it.
A collaboration tool for everyone
Mail Designer 365 is the perfect collaboration tool for email communications; offering expert design features and easy-to-use creative tools. Mail Designer has been specially designed for business teams to help streamline the workflow process for email design.
How it works
- Build up an email layout on your Mac using the Mail Designer 365 app.
- Lend your design to team members to add copy, graphics, legal disclaimers and any extras you may require.
- Share a mobile optimised, web-based preview of your design for your colleagues to add comments and feedback.
- Carry out suggested changes to your design and invite team members to decline or approve.
- After the final approval, you can export your design from the Mail Designer 365 app to send via your preferred ESP.
Check out this video to see Mail Designer 365 in action:
Why Mail Designer 365?
We hope you have found this guide useful and that it will help you improve your collaboration skills. If you're looking to optimise your email workflow, try Mail Designer 365 for free today. Already a Mail Designer 365 user? Make sure to set up your team at my.maildesigner365.com to start using the approval features!
Until next time,
Your Mail Designer 365 Team
Give Mail Designer 365 a try today for free...
Mail Designer 365 helps you create stylish, professional HTML emails on your Mac. Download for free to see what you can achieve.
Hey Mail Designers! We've got another mini compatibility update for you. This update follows on from our big 1.8 release and contains a few important fixes to improve your overall experience when using the app.
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Following on from our exciting 1.8 release, which introduced our brand new dynamic designs, we have a smaller update for you with version 1.8.1. This update is designed to make your design life easier and is made up of some useful productivity improvements as well as a few minor fixes...
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Hey designers! We've got yet another exciting new app update for you. Keep reading to discover what's new in Mail Designer 365 version 1.8...
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Thanks to the rise of the internet and social media, it's getting easier and easier to find great deals for holidays and getaways. One way for you to get ahead of the game is by putting together a solid email marketing strategy for your hotel or travel agency.
Here are just a few reasons why you should consider email to communicate with your customers...
- Low cost - Especially compared to costly TV ads or unsustainable print media.
- Direct access - Share tailored offers directly with your customers.
- Quick conversion - Transport your customers straight to the offers on your website.
- Visually effective - Get creative to convince customers through HTML design.
In this guide, we're sharing our top tip on creating an effective email strategy for your business, as well as some great examples of best practice in the hotel and travel industry to help you get inspired.
Email Marketing Best Practice for Hotels
1. Building an email list for your hotel or travel agency
Although there are ways to obtain large numbers of email addresses without putting in a lot of work, it is always better to go for quality over quantity and try to encourage organic signups. This will mean your email content is being sent to people who actively want to receive it.
Potential customers visit your hotel's website to find out more about your offers and deals. For this reason, it's likely they'd be interested in receiving this information straight to their inbox. By building a newsletter sign up form on your site, you will attract more customers with a genuine interest in staying at your hotel or booking a holiday with you.
Here are some great examples:
Trivago
On their website, Trivago go for the subtle option of integrating a sign up box into the footer area. This is simple and effective, but only if customers can find it first!
Booking.com
This sign up box from Booking.com is bright and uses convincing wording to encourage curious customers to sign up:
Thomas Cook
Thomas Cook have gone for an even more eye-catching option. The pop up window is a great way to grab customers' attention and inform them of your email newsletter:
Connect Mail Designer 365 to your website, with a dedicated sign up form builder for seamless lead generation. How it works →
2. Segmentation
To ensure you're sending the appropriate emails to your customers, it's helpful to have an idea of what they might be interested in when it comes to holidays and travel. You can do this by using list segmentation to split all of your contacts into separate audiences based on their tastes and preferences.
What do your customers want?
One of the first things to identify is whether your customer is travelling for business or leisure. This will help you set the tone of your email as well as knowing which types of deals to send out to them.
In this example from Thomas Cook, customers signing up to their mailing list are asked to answer a few quick questions:
Let customers tell you what they want while they sign up for your newsletter.
Tip: Easily implement this strategy into your Mail Designer 365 sign up form using the customer attributes field in the form builder.
Offer optional holiday types (e.g. families, couples, or party) for users to choose from to show you their preferences. When they sign up, the chosen attribute will be assigned to their contact in Mail Designer 365 Delivery Hub so you can send them tailored offers.
3. Email design tips for hotels and travel agencies
Without effective email design, your newsletters will not pack the punch you need them to in order to get customers onto your website. Here are two tips you can use to make sure your design stands out.
One of the most important elements of any email is the CTA (call-to-action.) Particularly for a travel related email, where there is a lot going on, it's a good idea to make this as clear as possible so readers know where to click to access your deals. This example by cheapflights is a bold and clear way to showcase their best deals:
Make your CTA buttons vibrant and clear so your readers know how to access your deals.
Another key aspect is the choice of image. In order to sell your hotel or holiday package, you have to let the image do all the talking. In this example from easyJet, their winter deal takes centre stage. The choice of a festive feature image will instantly help customers imagine themselves in the location and entice them to click to find out more.
Use strong, powerful images as your featured image in order to grab readers' attention straight away.
4. Email subject line ideas for hotels and travel agencies
When you're ready to send out your email, you'll need to craft an effective subject line which will convince subscribers to actually open it once it lands in their inbox. This isn't always as easy as it sounds. For some advice and inspiration, you can check out our quick guide.
Here are some simple, yet effective tips to try out:
- Keep it short and snappy
- Use holiday keywords to get straight to the point
- Mention a key offer or deal to entice customers
- Include time sensitive language to create a sense of urgency
- Use emojis to brighten up their inbox
easyJet get straight to the point in this subject line, enticing customers to get booking.
Stuck on your subject line? Try out Mail Designer 365 TextScout AI for AI-generated subject lines. Just enter your campaign keywords and go!
5. Transactional emails
Your initial email has worked its magic and you've managed to sell a holiday or take another booking for your hotel - the hard work isn't over yet! A good email marketing strategy will also concentrate on the after sales aspect, including booking confirmations, up-sells (e.g. upgrades, car hire), flight reminders and the all important customer satisfaction rating.
In contrast to your sales emails, the key to a good transactional email is simplicity. Here it's important to provide the customer with all the relevant information for their booking so they can refer back whenever needed. Remember to always include contact information for your support team, in case customers have any questions.
This flight confirmation from easyJet is simple, but contains all the relevant information the passenger will need to know before taking off.
We hope you have found this guide useful and that you'll consider these tips if you're building up an email marketing strategy for your business. Mail Designer 365 is the perfect choice for any travel agencies, tour operators, or hotel owners starting out with email marketing, due to the easy-to-use nature and stunning design tools.
Find out more about our email marketing solutions for hotels and travel.
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