Ep. 119- NEW: EMAIL DESIGN TIPS! ==> GUEST: Pierce Ujjainwalla [FOUNDER of Knak #1 Email Design Platform] Image Sizes? Fonts? and more…

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Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also, dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that. We are back. We're do this, not that.

And I have the greatest guest on earth. So Pierce Eugene Walla is here. He is the CEO and co founder of Knack. Now, if you don't know Knack KN a K, then you think, but you should.

NAC is the greatest platform on earth for email design, for landing page design, and you don't need to know how to code anything. And by the way, this is not a commercial for Pierce. But I use this platform all the time. But here's the other fact about Pierce.

Besides for being a really good dude, he is the first time ever repeat guest of this podcast. We were like, okay, who are we bringing back? Pierce was number one. Pierce is here. Welcome to the podcast, Pierce.

What's going on, Jay? Great to be back. Wow. I am honored that I'm the first guest back. That's a do this right? Do this is have me back.

No, everybody voted. We put out a vote. We said, who do you want back? And you came in like 43rd. But you were the only one that said yes that you were willing to come back.

How many people were they? Tell me. No, there's like seven votes now. More than 43 people.

Yeah. No, there was 44. Not bad.

Okay. Well, yeah, so welcome back.

So I'm excited today because we're going to talk about something that I think that you know more about than possibly anybody on earth. And that is design tips for the emails that you are sending out. And we're going to dig into this. I want to just jump right in.

Enough of this nonsense. All right, so let's get right into design tips for email marketing.

And the first one is something I know, I think zero about, which is how to make your images in your email be awesome. What. What should we be thinking about? What don't we know?

Yeah. So here's something maybe not everyone knows. Right.

So a lot of people know, hey, I need to have like a 600 pixel wide or an 800 pixel wide image at the top if you want to have like an image banner. Right.

But the thing is, when you someone looks at that on an iPhone or a really high res display Sometimes you might look at it and be like, why does that image look all janky right now? And that's really because you need to upsize your images. So let's say you have a 600 pixel wide banner.

Wait a minute, so you're saying I put in an image that's literally double the size and then when it shows up on my phone, it's going to show up the right size, but it's going to be just super high res.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, in knack anyways, you can kind of put your image in.

And so that's something I, I didn't know that either, you know, until our images weren't looking good. And, and then one of our awesome email developers enlightened me there and so that, that's one tip for sure to do.

And then, you know, make a, a great looking image. If you have a design team, work with them. If not, you can use Canva and just make something that looks really good.

I'm all about, you know, the, the inbox can be a boring place. So, so make it, give it some life, you know, show some cool images or cool colors. You know, you guys, that guru do a great job of that.

Just getting those colors to brighten up someone's day.

Let me ask something that we weren't going to talk about, but I want to just ask you because you're the guy, you're here. Animated GIFs? Yes. No. Especially in business emails. I know anime gifts and consumer emails is fine.

What do you say about animated GIFs and what are they exactly in business to business emails?

Yeah, I mean whether you're B2B B2C, you are marketing to humans. And I haven't met many people who don't like GIFs.

If you go on any social media website, they're everywhere and they're getting a lot of engagement because they're interesting. So in my opinion, I don't care what industry you're in, use the things that get engagement and gifts get engagement.

For me, it's, it's about subtlety though, Jay. You know, we're not out there trying to give people seizures with these things, make it subtle and make it relevant to your content.

So before we jump off of images for a second, I have a question. You all at nac, you do design of emails, you also do design of landing pages.

Do you believe that there's a correlation that you have your hero image, your primary image in the email, and then somebody clicks through and they go to the landing page? Is it important for the same imagery to be in your email and on the landing page to help with conversions?

Or can you design the two and be totally disparate?

Yeah, I mean, it's like if you saw a sign that said Gucci on an outside of the store and you walked in and it was a Walmart, right? Like, you don't want there to be any differences from that email to the landing page.

You want to have that consistent experience so that the person who clicked is like, oh yeah, I'm still in the right place. So they didn't like accidentally put the wrong link in there.

So I think it is very important you want the consistency from your email to your landing page.

I'm glad you said that because I think that's a fail by so many marketers. They, they just don't carry over that same primary image and they don't realize that that is actually hurting their response.

I mean, it's a subconscious thing. It's nobody's like, where'd the image go? But when they do see it, they get, they get more comfortable for sure.

Yeah, but you're adding, you're adding friction to the person's life, right? Like, it's already enough friction for me to click a link in and wait that millisecond for the page to load.

So want to reduce the friction as much as possible.

So, all right, now we're going to go into something I, I actually know nothing about, which is custom fonts. I don't even know what that means. What is custom fonts in email? Tell me everything.

Okay, so I'm going to give the real high level overview here. But on every machine, whether you have a PC or a Mac or. I don't know what other types there is, to be honest.

But you know, if you have one of these machines, there are fonts that are loaded onto your machine, these system fonts, right? So it's like the typical ones, Times New Roman, Verdana, Comic Sans, they all look horrible.

And, and these are like the default fonts that most email client editors have for you to make your emails. And these are also the fonts that are supported across all of the email clients.

So everyone out there, every email client, renders emails differently. But what you need to know is that some of them, about half of them, will support custom fonts.

And so these are like any type of fonts, right, that typically look a lot nicer. So Google fonts is a great option to use. They have like a million different fonts you can pick from.

And so for those 50% of email clients that can support the custom fonts, your audience will see a much nicer font. And fonts can make or break a design. Like, they can take your email from like, mad to like, amazing, depending on the font that you use. And so we.

I always recommend people use custom fonts. Worst case is that your audience gets the fallback font.

So if they're in a client that doesn't support the custom font, they'll get the fallback, whatever those system fonts are. But the other half will get a much better experience and have a better experience with your brand.

Dude, that is like, drop the mic type stuff. I don't think anybody's talking about or testing that enough. And I think in general, when.

When people hear only 50% can see whatever, they're like, I'm not going to do it, but 50% is 50%. I love that. I mean, come on, this is a win.

Yeah, Listen, I will hear the argument we hear all the time. Oh, but I want to have the same experience for everybody.

But it's like the way I look at that is why would I want half of my people to have a much worse experience when we could offer a much better one for the other half?

So we can't control what clients our audience are on, but let's control what we can, which is let's make it a better experience when we have that option.

Yeah, it's like going to the movies, and half the movie theater's got the awesome seats and half the movie theater doesn't. You're still seeing the whole movie. Just some of the seats are better. It's fine.

Get there early. Right?

Shove popcorn down your mouth. I mean, it's fine. Who cares? Oh, my God, I love it.

Yeah.

So wait, now let's get into the portion of this podcast that is totally ridiculous called since you didn't ask, we talk about nonsense. And me appears did not talk about what we're going to talk about. But I have a question. You should be nervous. No.

So you've been on the road, going to a lot of conferences. I see you online. You're at all these different conferences. Whatever. I want to know. Okay, you're in your hotel room.

You're going to order room service because you're tired. Whatever. What is your. What is the go to order from room service for Pierce?

Oh, man. Good. Great question. Honestly, this is so boring because I just. I drink water. I'm like. I drink the water bottle in the. In the room service.

I don't get room service. I always go out. Like, I don't care where I am. I will go to the one restaurant that's still open in the city and, like, sit at the bar by myself. Wow.

That's amazing. I'm all room service. All. I mean, I'm a turkey. I might as well put turkey club sandwich logo on my arm. Oh, yeah.

Oh, my wife does always make fun of me for getting, like, the same thing at restaurants all the time, and she will say exactly that. What'd you get? Oh, the club sandwich. Yep. Yeah, I don't. Yeah. When I know what I like, I stick with it.

Now, wait a minute. So you're Canadian, everybody. So if you didn't know that. Pierce. Canadian. Is this the dumbest question I've ever asked in my life?

But is the club sandwich like the go to in Canada, or is it called, like, the there's something else sandwich?

Yeah, you know what? I actually have seen, like, Canadian club, but I. I don't know what the difference is. I'm pretty sure there is, like, a Canadian club.

Now that I'm saying I hope there is, because I'm going to sound really dumb otherwise. But I don't know. It's like chicken, bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo.

Yeah. And then they shove in something weird like, you know, like a moose.

Canadian bacon.

Well, that I still. I still have not Googled what beaver tail is, because I know.

Google it. You need to come to Canada.

I'm gonna come to Ottawa, hang out with you. We're gonna have Beavertown. I don't know what that is, and I'm scared. All right, so let me. Let me tell everybody a few things here.

Number one, big announcement right here. Pierce doesn't know announce this huge announcement. Pierce is going to be speaking.

He's one of the few speakers that we're announcing early at the Guru Conference this year, the virtual free email marketing event. 20,000 markers are going to be there. Pierce is going to be dropping the knowledge at Guru Conference.

If you haven't registered for that, you got to go to guru conference.com. but more importantly than that, you need to follow Pierce on LinkedIn. This dude shares so much awesomeness it is fantastic.

So hit him up on LinkedIn and check out Knack KN A K the greatest design platform. Pierce, what else do you want to say to humanity?

I love email. Email is great. It's not dead.

Like Ringo Star. All right my man. Thanks for being here. See you all soon. Peace. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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