NEWSLETTERS: Keep Them Coming Back for More

If you want to increase your engagement with your readers, give them content that helps them in some way and keep it coming on a regular basis to empower them with information they can use. But first, if you want your digital newsletters to be opened, read, and responded to, you need a professional design that catches their eye and shows them you get them.

According to MailChimp, the average emailed newsletter open rate is between 15%-25%. That’s less than one person per every four people who will even bother to open your newsletter. Constant Contact (CC) has found that 20 lines of text or about 200 words results in the highest email click-through rate for most industries. Long newsletters almost always guarantee losing your readers before they get to the click though. CC claims an ROI of $36 for every $1 spent. This makes e-newsletters well worth your while if you follow a few design guidelines.

Your newsletter template should include a bold design masthead with the newsletter or company name, issue number, and date. The design area for a short headline can be emphasized with a larger or bolder font that is easily read with a personal or intriguing message for the reader that makes them stop and open it. Photos and videos are highly recommended to increase reader worthiness. A subhead banner or color call-out can help emphasize what you want the reader to know and can create sales leads with offers or notices of recent sales as well as educate and inform employees. Your reader may open your newsletter from their computer, laptop, tablet, or phone. Keeping this in mind, you can easily understand why designs that have only one column of text (not too wide) will be easier to read. Proven designs often include options of a few sentences, bulleted features, captions for any photos used, and an ending call-to-action sign-off with a click-to-website or downloadable files. And don’t forget to include links to your social media accounts at the bottom. Your designer can also create a series of newsletter templates for each type of news issue you need as well as divider icons and pointers to make your newsletter an enjoyable experience rather than a boring chore to read.

Once you’re ready to start your email campaigns, be consistent with delivery on the same day of every week, two weeks, or month. Wednesdays and Thursdays may be the best days to get the highest open rate when you are not competing with Monday and Tuesday’s email overload or the end-of-week catch-up or take-off for the weekend on Fridays and forget about sending on Saturdays or Sundays.

BP Designs (BPD) has been creating custom, professional digital (and print) newsletter design templates for clients’ internal and external corporate communications needs for over a decade. If you would like a freshening up of your existing newsletter template or a whole new look and/or series of templates, BPD can provide you with designs that will make your readers stop, look, and click. Let us show you how to keep your readers coming back for more.


LOGOS: Refresh Your Look or Rebrand?

Rapidly changing style trends and increasing competitors are making today’s marketing departments keep up by giving their existing logos a digital facelift. Today’s progressive companies need a clean, easily recognizable logo that is relevant, a fast read, and memorable to an ever-evolving global audience.

It may be time for a fresh face if your logo looks outdated, your services or products are changing and becoming more innovative and digital-focused, or there’s a need for a new business to increase sales. It is important to maintain a consistent look across your media platforms and changing every two or three years can create uncertainty about who you are. Instead, only change when there is a reason and stick with it.

A refreshed logo design needs to maintain some of its elements to remain recognizable by your clients. Updating an existing logo requires a design exploration of the logo icon, logotype, and placement with stylization, font options, colors, and adding or rewriting a more meaningful, benefit-driven tagline. Logo redesigns are more successful when properly introduced with a strategic launch campaign through email blasts to your existing clients and LinkedIn announcements with teasers leading up to the big reveal. Assuring your existing clients that you are still offering the same quality, but adapting to better serve them is key while attracting other untapped markets. 

Many companies rebrand every 7 to 10 years. We talked about rebranding in our March 30 blog. Rebranding requires more strategy and is often used to introduce name changes, mergers, dividing firms, breaking into new industries, adding locations or target markets, and more. 

BP Designs has been helping clients with their logos for over a decade and we’ll be happy to help you refresh your company logo when you’re ready.


GRAPHIC ICONS: Clarify Your Content with Less

Can you imagine living in a world with thousands of people who speak over 7,000 languages being navigated through airports, hospitals, train stations, and other enormous facilities without graphic icons? Graphic icon design has been used for over 40,000 years, dating back to Egyptian hieroglyphs and other ancient alphabets.

It’s simply a fact that images communicate faster than words both on their own and when included in the content. Otto Neurath, German native and inventor of the Isotype (picture language) method of pictorial statistics, summed it up perfectly when he said: “Words divide, images unite.” Today’s graphic designers continue to embrace this knowledge when transforming a complex directive into an easy-to-read-and-remember design solution.

Businesses rely on graphic icons to quickly convey information in their logo designs, branding materials, training manuals, infographics, animations, and all kinds of presentations for both internal and external communications. When creating a graphic icon, its success depends upon being delivered consistently across every platform. Graphic designers also want to have a thorough knowledge of symbols that represent various organizations or meanings that would distract from their intended message or offend the people who understand other meanings.

Before you begin your design, you want to step back and look at the big picture. Study the content provided or the briefing for the icon’s purpose so you can better understand how the new icon design can be implemented in the context of the messaging. This will help you plan ahead and decide if it needs to be accompanied by additional icons or even a family of icons. Once you know or conceptualize the graphic icon’s purpose or call-to-action, you can look at the hard and soft demographics of the audience the icon will be seen by so you get them and have a better feeling about what style would grab their attention. It also pays to explore competitive graphic icons so you don’t look like them. 

Only then does the fun begin with an exploration of fonts, colors, and styles, and reviewing existing brand manuals or creating them if rebranding. Will the icon be best received as simple line art or a more expressive illustration? Proceed with various shapes within shapes and continue to execute the designs until they clearly say what you need them to say with visual distinctiveness and precision.

At BP Designs (BPD), our clients rely on us to create and deliver visual acuity with fast turnaround especially when their in-house designers have more than they can handle. With over a decade of graphic design experience and multiple decades of combined designers’ advertising agency and corporate communications experience, BPD delivers far more than graphic icons. Let us show you how we can turn your big messages into exceptional solutions in small packages that say it all. 

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