January 8, 2016
Responsive email editors
Email marketers place a great deal of emphasis on the design of their email campaigns. Each email is an extension of their brand. Before they hit send, marketers need to ensure that for every email the text is aligned, images are rendered, and the design is optimized for all devices. Tinkering and tweaking with the design of emails can be a tedious process, especially if you’re not using a responsive email template.
While marketers should have a basic understanding of some programming languages, they shouldn’t be required to code an email from scratch. This is where responsive email templates come into play. They replace the need to code with a drag-and-drop interface and enable users to build and design personalized emails.
Responsive email editors appeal to a wider range of marketers who require more flexibility when it comes to email design. Next year, designing personalized and automated emails will continue to be a top priority for marketers. Already, 13% of brands generate a majority of their email marketing revenue from automated emails (State of Email Survey).
With so much attention to detail being placed on email marketing, it’s practically a no-brainer to integrate responsive email templates into your marketing automation strategy.
To get started with responsive email marketing, check out the capability of Autopilot’s email integration and our range of basic and advanced editor functionality.
Personalized email templates
In 2019, 30% of marketers predict that a larger focus will be placed on personalized email. (ClickZ). The best responsive emails are the ones that allow you to either personalize from the ground up or customize within a template.
With Autopilot’s email editor, you can choose to start from scratch, select a pre-designed template or upload your own HTML. It’s a simple as adding the email integration to your customer journey and configuring the shape to suit your business needs.
Autopilot offers two editing options: advanced and basic. With the Advanced Editor, you can create completely custom, responsive emails (no coding required). With the Basic Editor, you can design simple, personal emails that look like they’ve come directly from the sender. Or, if you’re familiar with HTML, you can use the basic editor to code your emails the manual way.
Advanced and Basic Editor options in Autopilot
Designing your emails with a clear intention in mind is important. Ask yourself what the purpose of your email is and choose a template that fits. Are you sending customers an email about a product launch or are you sending them their first welcome email?
No matter the intention, each of our email templates is designed with the customer in mind. The image below displays some of our most popular templates from “announcement” and “bold welcome” to “webinar.”
Some template options you can use with the Advanced Editor in Autopilot
Customize premade templates to take your email a step further. Insert content blocks like text, images, buttons, videos, HTML and social media links to add extra elements to your template. You can even personalize your messages with merge tags like first name, last name, salutation, company, number of employees, title, phone and more.
Create your own templates
If you’ve built an email that you want your team to replicate in other campaigns, you can save your design as a template. For example, if you send a weekly newsletter, you can design a template by arranging the content blocks in your email in a specific order, adding your brand colors and fonts. Every time you send a weekly newsletter, give it the same look and feel by using your saved template.
You can access your saved templates in the Advanced Editor and use them to jump-start your next email without having to redesign from scratch.
Customize your content
Autopilot’s drag-and-drop interface allows you to arrange your content into various rows. Content blocks can be inserted in a multitude of row configurations. For example, you can insert two images side by side or add a row of three text boxes. No matter how you structure your email, each content block is designed to look great on every device.
If you want to take your customization a step further, you can reconfigure the content settings by changing the color of the background, text and link or reconfiguring the image size, font, content area width, padding and alignment. You can even opt to hide certain email elements on mobile.
Customize email content without coding HTML
Send a test
Once you’ve finalized your email design, send yourself and your colleagues a test. You can enter multiple addresses and send your email to your whole team for review.
If you’ve personalized your email with merge tags, you can also add a random contacts name to view exactly how the messaging might be displayed.
Sending a test email should be essential for final approval!
Optimized for mobile
Mobile has become the preferred platform for opening and reading emails, with a study revealing that 77% of all emails are opened on mobile devices (emailmonday). It’s clear that designing mobile-friendly emails is more important than ever before.
With Autopilot, every email you create is automatically optimized to look great on any device including iOS, Android, tablet and desktop.
Ensure all your emails are viewable on every device. Otherwise, you’re missing out on a large part of your audience.
Building an email shouldn’t take a team, a designer or a developer. With Autopilot’s responsive email editor, anyone can design personalized emails that are beautiful and intuitive.
