It’s Easy To Create
And Send Email With Rare.io!
Written by Rob Lane.
1. Overview
When we hear the word “design” as it relates to email, we often think of needing an actual designer, or coding skills, in order to create something of quality. It may also conjure up thoughts of elaborate images and templates that take great effort and skill to create.
Fortunately, none of the above has to be true in order to send effective email campaigns that customers will respond favorably to. In fact, clean, simply designed email performs very well.
Best of all, when you use Rare for email you have the ability to create both elaborate and simple mailouts, and you don’t have to be a designer to make it happen. But before we get into how to build an email with Rare, let’s quickly cover some basics of good email design.
- Embrace whitespace. Back in 2005 too much whitespace created the perception that you were lacking content. In 2015 whitespace serves a higher purpose. It lets the reader “breathe” and helps convey your core message more quickly.
- Get in line. A clean, well-aligned look creates a sense of order for the reader and serves as a visual guide to the desired call to action.
- Don’t “over-expose” images. Choose images that enhance your message, but not too many. Ecommerce stores often try to feature as many products as possible in one email – don’t. Encourage the reader to click through to your store to see more products. Make sure images in your email match those on your website.
- Choose consistent colors. Keep colors consistent with what’s on your website – landing pages or otherwise. When readers click through they should immediately know they’ve landed in the right place. Also, don’t let colors in your email distract from the message.
- Trim the text. From a purely visual perspective, less is more. There are exceptions of course – service announcements for example – but otherwise keep the message short. Remember, let your reader breathe!
- Clear CTA. What do you want the reader to do? Make it clear! If using a button make sure it matches those on your website for a consistent experience.
- Personalize for Performance. Though we’ll talk about email content next time, people take notice when you include their name in the subject line, or when you include product images that are relevant to the individual.
2. Rare.io Makes It Easy To Create And Send Email
At Rare we’re all about helping our customers generate revenue through email that helps them connect with their own customers. We’ve worked very hard to make email creation easy, and we’re confident that you’ll be able to create email that will serve as a great representation of your brand.
All images that follow are courtesy of one of our amazing customers – Boot Cuffs and Socks. We chose them for this post because they are great at creating a simple, efficient and effective email that customers respond to. Their mailouts are short, clean, personal, and deliver great results!
Let’s Do This!
From the mailouts tab, click “New Mailout” in the upper right hand corner.
Select a name for your campaign, choose your audience, and specify whether it’s a bulk email or event driven. Bulk email goes to all customers, while event-driven ones go to those who meet a certain criteria – after their 3rd order for example.
Click the “+” sign in the blank template and then choose from our pre-built templates, create a custom one, or use one you’ve built previously.
For this example we’ll choose one of our pre-built templates. Simply click on the desired one, then click the back button.
Next up, pick your subject line and be sure to choose an email address for sending a test! Once that’s done, click the “edit content” button.
Here is where the magic happens! You have plenty of options available to you – too many to show in this post in fact. You can change the layout, choose how many product recommendations to display, change margins, add mobile margins, add a border, change colors, customize the header and footer – everything you could want to create an email is available to you here.
Today we’ve chosen to remove the “We’ve Missed You” section, which we simply drag and drop into the garbage can on the left.
Then to replace the section we just deleted, we drag in an image placeholder and position it in the header.
Now to add an image we just click on the desired section and choose the image icon from the box.
This will take you to the Resources section where all of the images you’ve uploaded are stored. Simply choose the image from the appropriate image group and click on it.
You can do the exact same with the footer. In this case we’ve chosen an image but it’s not quite lined up yet.
We can fix this by changing the top margin from the settings on the left, which helps move the image into place.
NOTE: Company and unsubscribe information is automatically added into the text fields when the email is sent.
Of course you can also change your text styles and layout as well. Our templates are flexible by design because we know email is a very personal thing. We want you to do it your way.
Once you’re done, be sure to save your changes. Your next step is to send yourself a test before you publish the email. You can also see previews of the mail on both mobile and desktop from within the mailout interface.
When you send a test, the email populates with product recommendations as if it were sending to one of your customers. *Note that we’ve edited out the unsubscribe footer as it contains the email address of an actual customer.
If it looks good, just hit publish!
If you have questions as you’re working in our drag and drop email builder, please reach out to us for help! We’ll get you pointed in the right direction and you’ll be sending beautifully designed, fully responsive email in no time!
3. Conclusion
If you’re an ecommerce merchant and don’t have automated email marketing campaigns setup for your store, you’re losing money. Right now.
Rare.io makes it easy to start using automated email campaigns for common challenges like: Welcome Series, Abandoned Carts, Order Follow-up emails and more! You can learn more about our powerful email marketing automation features here or go ahead and get started right away by using Rare.io for FREE.
And if you’re one of the thousands of merchants who are already using Rare’s Smart Email Marketing software and want to see how our Customer Success Team can work with your brand to grow your revenue – feel free to book a call at your convenience here.
