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Good design increases the impact of your newsletter - here's how
Newsletters are smart channels for communicating with your customers, don't you think? But have you ever considered that it's not enough to have interesting contents? You also need a design that will pull the reader in.

We talked to Carina Carlén at Apsis about the role that design plays in the effectiveness of newsletters and what you should think about when putting yours together. Don't miss out on Carina's five important tips!
Carina Carlén
About Carina Carlén
Carina Carlén is an Engagement Consultant at Apsis, a platform for digital marketing. Carina also has several years of experience as an e-Mail Designer.
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Carina, what role does design play in newsletter effectiveness?
Design plays a huge role. Your newsletter is met by stiff competition in your recipients' inbox so you need to spark your subscribers' interest to keep them engaged.

Give some thought to what your purpose is and what value you want to add for your recipients. It helps to have an airy, easily accessible design. It should be obvious what your newsletter is about, what is expected of the recipient and what the recipient gains by clicking on links.
And just how important are images?
Images play an important role in your newsletter. After all, it is a visual medium and when it comes to visual mediums, images play a great role in enhancing your message, tone and accessibility.

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5 tips for smart designs
1. Go with an airy design. Newsletters that have text in a font that's easy to read and has some subheadings that show what is coming tend to be more accessible.

2. Avoid big images. Keep your images under 1 MB, preferably in the range of 300 KB. Big images take longer to load and could result in your recipient giving up and moving on.

3. Use fonts designed for the internet. Not all e-mail clients can handle special fonts. Outlook is one such example.

4. Utilize font size and line spacing in your text to increase readability and content accessibility. Use at least 14 pixels in the body of your text.

5. Use clear links and buttons. It needs to be obvious what is a link and what isn't. For example, you could use a different color for the link than for the text. It should also be clear to the recipient what will happen if they click a link or button.

Do you see any visual trends?
One of the trends I've been seeing for a while is that newsletters are getting wider. At Apsis, our standard is 600 pixels, but when I was working as an e-mail designer, most of the newsletters I created towards the end were 700-750 pixels wide. This larger format makes room for images and spacing in your information. For example, it allows larger margins between the various elements.

It is also trendy to use different background colors to differentiate between different sections. I dare say that earthy tones with fewer sharp contrasts are in right now, but that also goes for fashion and interior design.

Don't forget that your newsletter needs to follow your graphic profile. It is just one piece of the puzzle in all your communication with customers, subscribers and anyone else you're directing your message to. You want your recipients to recognize that it is your particular company they are communicating with.

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Photographers: Stina Gränfors (ima191915), 360you photography (sca19912), Cultura Creative (imsis09bz20u and culisc12342141).