The Importance of Fonts in Email Newsletter Imagery

I am a huge advocate of email newsletters. It is a great way to keep in touch with your readers and customers and is proven to have much higher level of engagement than other means on contact e.g. through social media. For me, there are three elements that make up an impactful email newsletter:

  1. A catchy title that makes the reader want to find out more, therefore making them want to open the email
  2. Punchy text, in short paragraphs, with the most important content near the top
  3. Compelling images – people have short attention spans and striking imagery will keep them engaged

I’d like to focus on #3, specifically the use of fonts in email newsletter images.

As I stated, striking imagery is crucial – I like to overlay my images with text to add even more impact. A lot of the time the font used in these images can play second fiddle to the image itself. It’s definitely worth investing the time in finding appropriate fonts as they can make a huge difference to your email newsletter. One of the resources I use to source great fonts free is Font Bundles.

I mentioned investing time, and it really is a worthwhile investment… whenever I am creating a new image with text in it, I like to take the time to try out a variety of different fonts, even ones that don’t immediately appeal to me – sometimes when applied to the text in the image they come to life and work really well.

A great thing is that I now have a list of fonts that I always fall back on, but even now I still like to branch out and see what else is out there.

I’d like to share some principals that I tend to stick to when selecting fonts to use within my imagery in email newsletters:

I always ensure that the font I end up selecting is readable, although I often pick out key words and put them in a different, more elaborate font. Here’s an example of this:

As I touched on before, experimentation with different fonts to see what works the best is really important and can result in some really iconic imagery. Sometimes, clear, bold fonts add the most impact, and sometimes fancy fonts are what fit the bill the best. I personally use my own judgement, which is something that I have developed after creating many images.

Another simple tip that I use often is to use the same font throughout the text that I have added to an image but add impact by making certain words bold or in italics – you can of course do this very quickly by highlighting the appropriate text and pressing ctrl + b or ctrl + i respectively.

I’d like to conclude with one more tip: I like to ensure some level of consistency across the various images in my email newsletters. For me, this means using the same fonts across all the images that I use. I like to mix it up over different emails, but keep it consistent within each individual one. I feel that this consistency adds a professional, authoritative air to my newsletters.

 This is a collaborative post

 

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