MARKETING
11 Email Marketing Design Tips to Drive More Revenue
When you think about what factors and processes are needed to get the most out of your email marketing campaigns, you might consider these first: more sophisticated personalization, leveraging first-party data more effectively, or more precise targeting and timing.
While those are all important, there’s another more fundamental aspect of email marketing that’s just as critical to success: email design.
With more than 333 billion emails sent and received every day, and adults logging more screen time than ever before, it’s never been more crucial to have well-designed emails that can quickly cut through the overflowing inbox clutter, capture recipients’ attention and compel them to take the desired action.
Whether you’re looking to supercharge your email newsletter or inject new life into your lifecycle email campaign strategy, here are 11 email design tips and examples that can drive site traffic, purchase intent, conversions and revenue.
“All aspects of email design – including accessibility, readability, layout and responsiveness – have a huge impact on open rates and conversions. In reality, email marketing design is the gatekeeper to campaign success.”
— Samantha McGrady, Tinuiti Strategist, Lifecycle Marketing
Essential Elements of an Email
You might not consider all these quote-unquote “design” components, but they all play a central role in how an email is perceived and consumed.
- Subject line
- Pre-header text
- Header/headline
- Logo
- Color scheme
- Images
- Body copy
- CTA(s)
- Signature and footer
- Unsubscribe button
The Eleven Keys to Effective Email Design
All elements of an email come together to create an overall design. Whether that design is cohesive or advances the objectives of the email depends on how well the individual elements are executed. Here are 11 tips for making email design work for you.
1. Responsive Designs Pay Off
Mobile-friendly email design is a must. While the exact percentage of emails opened on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets vary by source, it’s estimated that over half of all emails are accessed on mobile. That means ensuring an email displays correctly and can be read easily across devices, screens and resolutions are essential. If an email displays poorly, it’s likely to be deleted in under three seconds.
Utilizing a responsive email template will automatically adjust your email to fit the screen it’s being viewed on, whether that’s a desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet. Most drag-and-drop email builders feature built-in responsive design templates, but you’ll also want to keep mobile formatting in mind when considering image size and the length of copy blocks within the email.
2. Keep Accessibility Top-of-Mind
One key aspect of email design that goes hand-in-hand with responsiveness is accessibility. Accessibility refers to an email’s ability to be received and understood by persons with disabilities or using assistive devices. So just as responsive design ensures that emails can be accessed across device formats, good accessibility practices preserve an email’s usability regardless of the recipient’s circumstances.
An accessible email will have a logical flow and high readability in terms of descriptive subject lines, links and headers, and larger and well-spaced typefaces. It will also use high color contrast and utilize alt-text liberally. Perhaps most importantly, an accessible email will not lean too heavily on visuals or hide information in images, as adaptive tools like screen readers can struggle to convert them.
Keeping accessibility top-of-mind is important for reaching the maximum percentage of your subscribers or target audiences and contributes to good overall email marketing usability.
3. Customize Your Pre-Header Text
Pre-header text used to be an afterthought, and many marketers defaulted to the first few words of email body copy. Now, because of the way emails are displayed in mobile and desktop inboxes, pre-headers are widely recognized as the second-most important text element after the subject line. Pre-header text indicates to the reader what the email is about; it’s essentially a visible meta-description of the email.
As such, the pre-header text should complement the subject line and reinforce the critical call-to-action within the email. It should, like the subject line, entice the recipient to open the email and keep reading while also reading while offering an informative preview of the email itself. And it needs to accomplish all of this concisely in an abbreviated space.
Crafting a compelling subject and pre-header pair can feel like writing poetry, but getting it right can significantly impact open rates and conversions.
4. Use an Effective Layout
The layout is the most recognizable aspect of email design and likely what most people think of first when considering the design elements of an email. Layout determines the flow of your content and the order in which your readers consume information. The most basic principles of email layout are maintaining organization and logical consistency, capturing attention through aesthetics, and manipulating the recipient’s eye where you want it to go.
- Organization: In essence, this means establishing a clear visual hierarchy. Try to display the most important information and convey essential details early on (higher) in the email.
- Aesthetics: incorporate white space to give your content breathing room and lend a more elevated look. Clutter and “walls” of text are difficult to read and lead to email abandonment. Instead, utilize negative space to accentuate key points and keep the recipient reading.
- Guiding the eye: Use directional cues to draw attention to the most essential part of your email. Effective layout templates leverage natural reading and eye movement patterns to focus the recipient on desired email elements.
Many email templates use the following common layout patterns, each of which guides the reader’s attention in specific ways:
- Z-pattern layouts place a zig-zag of content within the reader’s typical sight line, starting at the upper left corner.
- F-pattern layouts emphasize the left side of the email, inviting readers to return their eyes to that side for most information.
- Inverted pyramid layouts, perhaps the most familiar layout, load critical information at the top and create a visual funnel toward a CTA at the bottom.
These principles are laid out in the following two wireframe examples of common email layouts. Notice how both lean on the reading path of the human eye while maintaining a recognizable hierarchy and putting vital information up top:
Remember to rotate your design layout to avoid using the same framework repeatedly – otherwise, your emails will be perceived as stale by your subscribers.
5. Choose Colors Strategically
Color scheme is an essential element in any design, and emails are no exception. The right combination of colors – or the strategic limitation of a color palette – can elicit emotion, direct attention to important content, reinforce brand image or distinguish a single email from a series or campaign.
There is plenty of room for experimentation with color in email marketing. Still, good general rules of thumb are to avoid clashing colors or using too wide a variety of colors, use bright colors sparingly, and stay consistent with color usage across branded marketing assets. And as with accessibility and responsiveness, it’s also important to consider how an email is being viewed; for example, if being read on a mobile device in “dark” mode, pure black text can appear illegible.
It’s important to remember that color isn’t limited to graphical elements or iconography in the email; the text color used and dominant color in embedded images or photographs should also be considered. These colors should work in harmony to support your content, brand and the purpose of the email.
6. Use Clean and Clear Text
An organized layout and strategic use of color will go a long way toward making an email readable and effective. Ultimately, though, the information you want to communicate stems from the email copy itself. One hard and fast rule for text in an email is to be clear and concise.
Remember the 333 billion emails sent and received last year? Your target audience received some of those, and they almost certainly didn’t read every word of every email they received. So many of those emails were probably never opened, thanks to poor subject lines.
Emails should draw the eye with an attractive design but be easy to skim. Get to the point quickly, or risk ending up in the trash.
When in doubt, follow these guidelines:
- Maintain a good text-to-image ratio
- Keep the headline to two lines or less
- Keep text on a simple background so that it’s easy to read
- Bold or highlight keywords or phrases
“Reduce the cognitive load. We really want to create our emails to be clean and concise.”
— Sammi Nutsongtat, Klaviyo Design Specialist
7. Treat Email as a Brand Opportunity
Of all the potential touchpoints a recipient might have with your brand, the email you just sent them is unlikely to be their first. That makes it very important to keep email design consistent with your overall brand design.
Incorporating strong branding – not just a logo or a tagline, but brand-specific colors, imagery, typography and content tone – helps email recipients identify the message’s source and provides a more cohesive experience from the inbox to the landing page. That can reduce your bounce rate as users interact with your brand across different channels.
A good branding evaluation question to ask: If I removed our logo from these email designs, would our subscribers identify our company?
Your brand’s identity tells your story, so it’s important to be conscious of your email branding. Branding should remain consistent across all channels, whether email-to-email or email-to-website.
8. Your Typography Style Matters
Using a consistent typeface in email design can reinforce your brand image and identity, though, like color, there is some opportunity for experimentation. The most important thing to remember about typography is that it should be easy to read at a skimming pace and shouldn’t detract or add confusion to the message.
Emails can also contain more than one kind of typeface, for example, one font that looks better at a larger size for headers and another that looks cleaner for entire sentences of body copy. That said, too many different fonts in an email can make it hard to read. A limit of three fonts per email is a good common-sense rule. Again, a drag-and-drop email builder usually has several typeface options and suggestions for specific email elements or sections.
9. Personalize Elements of Your Emails
Personalization is one of the dominant themes across the marketing and advertising industries right now, as technological advancements and the rise in importance of zero- and first-party customer data have made true one-to-one, brand-to-customer engagement possible. Email marketing, which was perhaps the first marketing vector to make widespread use of basic personalization (think mail merge and auto-filled salutation lines), can also incorporate more sophisticated personalization techniques – and should.
The goal of personalization should be to make an email meaningful and valuable to the recipient. That means incorporating bespoke, custom content blocks based on customer data, including insights like purchase history or position in the customer lifecycle or buying journey. Narrow segmentation can help target specific customers, and personal touches like incorporating profile information or preferences can help humanize your brand and create stronger relationships.
In short, you should seize every opportunity to include more personalized elements in your emails.
10. Always Use a CTA
This might seem like email marketing 101, but no list of email marketing optimization tips would be complete without addressing calls to action or CTAs. Usually rendered graphically as a button, a good CTA should concisely describe the exact action the email reader can expect upon clicking and be placed at a point in the layout where the next step is logically implied.
Effective CTAs typically appear at the bottom of a section in a contrasting color to the email’s overall color scheme. Multiple CTAs can be used – some research suggests that having more than one CTA increases click-through rates – but only where the natural progression of the content suggests they appear. As with many of the design tips presented here, CTAs should be used in a cohesive, consistent manner.
11. Avoid Abrupt Design Changes
Consistency isn’t just important within an email; it’s also important across campaigns. Design shock, or suddenly presenting drastically different creative to an existing audience like your subscriber base, can impact the success of an individual email or an entire campaign.
When updating your email designs, consider rolling out the changes in an iterative fashion or testing the new creative out on a small group of subscribers before rolling it out to your entire audience.
As the example above illustrates, gradually transitioning to a new layout while keeping many other design elements consistent helps minimize the effect of design shock. Keep this in mind as you embark on new email campaigns or make universal changes to your email marketing approach.
How to Use A/B Testing to Improve Your Email Design
You can put as much thought and preparation into email design as possible, and the email might still fall short of performance expectations. The only way to ensure a successful campaign and maximize conversions is to engage in A/B testing by sending slightly different versions of an email to distinct segments of your audience. It’s a straightforward process that many email platforms support, but sadly, nearly 42.9% of marketers don’t know what to test.
When assessing an email design’s impact on an audience, there are various things you can test to help drive higher clicks, conversions, or overall performance. These include:
- Call to action button styling
- Overall layout
- Number of products featured
- Lifestyle vs. product imagery
- Cheeky vs. simple copy
- Animation vs. static
Once you know what to test for and have identified what you’re trying to prove, run a few test emails to sample groups, isolating one variable at a time over a series of weeks. Evaluate which works best for reaching, resonating with, and converting the most recipients, and you’ll gradually improve your conversion rates.
Resources & Tools to Improve Your Email Design Game
There is no shortage of email design tools available to help you get the most out of your email marketing strategy. Some are full-service email-building platforms, while others are helpful stock image sites or graphics libraries. Here are a few of our favorites:
Klaviyo
Klayvio is a well-established, full-service email marketing platform optimized for ecommerce and featuring sophisticated personalization tools. Klaviyo’s robust library of customizable, responsive templates, support for A/B testing, and dynamic content capabilities can help users of all levels put email design optimization tips into action.
Tinuiti Performance Creative
Need a more comprehensive and data-driven approach to email and lifecycle marketing? Our own Performance Creative offering is based on moments that matter and features integration with multiple channels and touchpoints throughout the customer journey.
Adobe Stock
It’s perhaps unsurprising that one of the biggest names in design software also has one of the most robust stock image catalogs available. Adobe Stock allows users to search for specific image types or browse by category, ensuring you’ll find the perfect photos or images for your email campaign.
Figma
Any design process – including email design – can be collaborative. Figma provides a platform to facilitate that collaboration that includes several email-specific features, including a library of visual assets teams can build themselves.
Final Thoughts
Design is a central aspect of email marketing performance, and getting it right can be the difference between a positive ROI campaign and a forgettable brand encounter. You can probably think of several marketing emails in your inbox that slapped a basic template together with uninspiring (and uninspired!) copy and called it a day. Or maybe not, because you deleted them without getting past the subject line.
Your email campaigns can help solidify customer relationships and prospects through accessible designs that embrace solid layout principles, on-brand typography and images, a concise and catchy subject and pre-header, logical CTAs and compelling copy. You’ll ultimately generate more opens, leads, conversions and revenue for your company, too.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published by Greg Swan in August 2019 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.
MARKETING
Navigating the Video Marketing Maze: Short-Form vs. Long-Form
Are you torn between using long-form or short-form videos for your small business marketing campaign? Well, you are not alone. Despite 89% of consumers wanting to see more brand videos, there is no one-size-fits-all answer about the ideal video length.
However, this should not deter you from creating an effective video strategy. In 2023, people watched an average of 17 videos per day, highlighting the influence of video content in today’s digital landscape.
Both short-form and long-form videos offer unique advantages and come with their set of challenges. Join me as I uncover the benefits and limitations of each video format to help you make informed marketing decisions.
What are Short-Form Videos?
Short videos typically range from 30 seconds to less than 10 minutes long. They are popular on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.
Short-form videos deliver brief yet engaging messages that quickly capture the viewer’s attention. Here are some popular types of short-form video content.
- TikTok Challenges
- Instagram Reels
- Snapchat Stories
- YouTube Shorts
- Twitter Video Ads
Benefits of Short-Form Videos
A previously cited report shows that 39% of marketers find short-form videos, ranging from 30-60 seconds long, more successful. The same study reports that 44% of customers prefer watching a short video to learn about a brand’s offerings.
So, it is evident that short-form videos have their benefits. Let’s take a closer look at some of them.
Attention-Grabbing
Short-form videos capture attention quickly, making them ideal for the fast-scrolling nature of social media platforms. Your audience is more likely to watch them in their entirety compared to longer content.
Cost-Effective Production
Creating short-form videos requires less time and resources compared to longer videos. As a small business owner with a limited budget, using short-form videos can be cost-effective.
Increased Engagement
Short-form videos engage viewers due to their crisp and concise nature. This results in more likes, comments, and shares that boost your content’s visibility and increase brand awareness.
Integrating short-form videos into your influencer marketing campaigns can further amplify your reach to new and diverse audiences.
Highly Shareable
Short videos are highly shareable. This makes it more likely for your viewers to share them, increasing their virality.
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There are multiple benefits of adding video to your website including increased engagement, improved SEO, and enhanced user experience.
Limitations of Short-Form Videos
While short-form videos offer many advantages in content marketing, they also present some challenges.
Limited Message Depth
Due to their brief duration, short-form videos may struggle to convey complex or detailed messages. Longer videos might be more suitable if you need to communicate intricate information.
Competition for Attention
Standing out on platforms flooded with short-form video content can be challenging. You must create content that stands out to avoid becoming lost in the sea of other videos.
Shorter Lifespan
Short videos may lose their relevance with time. They can quickly get buried in users’ feeds, leading to a shorter visibility and engagement period than longer, evergreen content.
This means you must consistently create short-form videos to maintain audience interest over time.
Limited SEO Impact
Short-form videos may be more challenging to optimize for search engines than longer, more keyword-rich content. This can affect the discoverability of your content outside the social media scene.
What are Long-Form Videos?
Long-form videos are typically longer, ranging from a few minutes to several hours. They extend beyond a few minutes to several hours, providing ample time for in-depth topic exploration and detailed content.
These videos are particularly suitable for educational content, product demonstrations, and narrative-driven storytelling. Long-form videos are common on platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. Common types of long-form video content include:
- YouTube Series
- Webinars
- Educational Tutorials and Courses:
- Behind-the-Scenes Content
- Interviews and Conversations
Advantages of Long-Form Videos
Long-form video content is the fastest-growing segment, with videos above 30 minutes experiencing tremendous growth over the years. Let’s explore some of the benefits behind this growth.
Establishes Expertise and Credibility
Long-form videos allow you to provide in-depth information about various subjects, establishing your brand as an authority. Potential customers will likely trust and rely on your insights when you consistently deliver valuable content.
Builds Strong Audience Connections
The more your audience watches your videos, the more they become familiar with your content and brand. This consistent engagement promotes trust and loyalty, helping you create deeper connections with your audience.
Provide SEO Optimization Opportunities
Long-form videos keep your audience engaged for a longer duration than short ones. This signals search engines that your content provides value, resulting in higher rankings and increased visibility.
Besides, these videos provide opportunities to optimize for relevant keywords. This Attrock guide offers more insights into the value of SEO for your small business.
They Are Sustainable
Unlike short videos, well-produced and valuable long-form videos have an extended shelf life. They can continue to attract views and engagement over an extended period, contributing to a sustainable content strategy.
Instagram reels are also a part of short videos and you can get benefits from this platform by integrating it with your website. You can learn how to embed Instagram Reels on websites and get extra benefits from your Reels.
Drawbacks of Long-Form Videos
Despite their benefits, long-form videos also have certain limitations, including:
Attention Span Challenges
Between distractions, juggling tasks, and information overload, user attention span quickly diminishes. Viewers may lose interest and disengage from your long video before its conclusion.
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Complex Production Process
Creating high-quality long-form videos requires more resources, including time, equipment, and skilled personnel. This can be disadvantageous, especially for small businesses with limited budgets.
Platform Limitations
Some social media platforms and video hosting sites may limit video length, making it challenging to distribute long-form video content. You may then be forced to repurpose your content to suit various platforms.
Short-Form or Long-Form Videos: Which Are Better?
Now that you know the benefits and limitations of each format, which one should you choose? Short-form or long-form videos?
Well, it all boils down to considering several factors, such as:
Content Objectives
What do you want to achieve from your video marketing campaign? Short-form videos are highly effective for quick brand exposure and generating buzz. Long-form videos, on the other hand, contribute to a more in-depth understanding of the brand.
Target Audience Preferences
Audiences with short attention spans likely prefer short-form videos, while long-form videos appeal to those seeking a more immersive experience.
Similarly, short-form videos may appeal more to younger audiences, while older demographics may prefer the depth of long-form content.
Platform Dynamics
Various platforms support different content formats. Short-form videos are well-suited for platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. On the other hand, platforms like YouTube and Vimeo are better for hosting longer videos.
Industry Type
Short-form videos would be ideal if your industry thrives on trends, entertainment, and quick messages. However, long-form videos are effective for industries requiring in-depth explanations or educational content.
Bottom Line
Ultimately, choosing short-form or long-form videos depends on your business’s specific needs and goals. Since both formats have advantages and limitations, making a choice may prove difficult.
However, it doesn’t have to be an uphill task. The key lies in recognizing when to incorporate each video format into your marketing strategy. Understanding your audience and its needs allows you to combine both formats strategically, maximizing the benefits of each.
Continuously analyze performance metrics and adapt your video marketing strategy accordingly to ensure optimal engagement and conversion rates.
MARKETING
The Current State of Google’s Search Generative Experience [What It Means for SEO in 2024]
SEO enthusiasts, known for naming algorithm updates after animals and embracing melodrama, find themselves in a landscape where the “adapt or die” mantra prevails. So when Google announced the launch of its Search Generative Experience (SGE) in May of 2023 at Google/IO, you can imagine the reaction was immense.
Although SGE has the potential to be a truly transformative force in the landscape, we’re still waiting for SGE to move out of the Google Labs Sandbox and integrate into standard search results.
Curious about our current take on SGE and its potential impact on SEO in the future? Read on for more.
Decoding Google’s Defensive Move
In response to potential threats from competitors like ChatGPT, Bing, TikTok, Reddit, and Amazon, Google introduced SGE as a defensive maneuver. However, its initial beta release raised questions about its readiness and global deployment.
ChatGPT provided an existential threat that had the potential to eat into Google’s market share. When Bing started incorporating it into its search results, it was one of the most significant wins for Bing in a decade. In combination with threats from TikTok, Reddit, and Amazon, we see a more fractured search landscape less dominated by Google. Upon its launch, the expectation was that Google would push its SGE solution globally, impact most queries, and massively shake up organic search results and strategies to improve organic visibility.
Now, industry leaders are starting to question if Google is better off leaving SGE in the testing ground in Google labs. According to Google’s recent update, it appears that SGE will remain an opt-in experience in Google Labs (for at least the short term). If SGE was released, there could be a fundamental reset in understanding SEO. Everything from organic traffic to optimization tactics to tracking tools would need adjustments for the new experience. Therefore, the prospect of SGE staying in Google Labs is comforting if not entirely reliable.
The ever-present option is that Google can change its mind at any point and push SGE out broadly as part of its standard search experience. For this reason, we see value in learning from our observations with SGE and continuing to stay on top of the experience.
SGE User Experience and Operational Challenges
If you’ve signed up for search labs and have been experimenting with SGE for a while, you know firsthand there are various issues that Google should address before rolling it out broadly to the public.
At a high level, these issues fall into two broad categories including user experience issues and operational issues.
Below are some significant issues we’ve come across, with Google making notable progress in addressing certain ones, while others still require improvement:
- Load time – Too many AI-generated answers take longer to load than a user is willing to wait. Google recommends less than a 3-second load time to meet expectations. They’ll need to figure out how to consistently return results quickly if they want to see a higher adoption rate.
- Layout – The SGE layout is massive. We believe any major rollout will be more streamlined to make it a less intrusive experience for users and allow more visibility for ads, and if we’re lucky, organic results. Unfortunately, there is still a decent chance that organic results will move below the fold, especially on mobile devices. Recently, Google has incorporated more results where users are prompted to generate the AI result if they’d like to see it. The hope is Google makes this the default in the event of a broad rollout where users can generate an AI result if they want one instead of assuming that’s what a user would like to see.
- Redundancy – The AI result duplicates features from the map pack and quick answer results.
- Attribution – Due to user feedback, Google includes sources on several of their AI-powered overviews where you can see relevant web pages if there is an arrow next to the result. Currently, the best way to appear as one of these relevant pages is to be one of the top-ranked results, which is convenient from an optimization standpoint. Changes to how attribution and sourcing are handled could heavily impact organic strategies.
On the operational side, Google also faces significant hurdles to making SGE a viable product for its traditional search product. The biggest obstacle appears to be making the cost associated with the technology worth the business outcomes it provides. If this was a necessary investment to maintain market share, Google might be willing to eat the cost, but if their current position is relatively stable, Google doesn’t have much of an incentive to take on the additional cost burden of heavily leveraging generative AI while also presumably taking a hit to their ad revenue. Especially since slow user adoption doesn’t indicate this is something users are demanding at the moment.
While the current experience of SGE is including ads above the generative results now, the earliest iterations didn’t heavily feature sponsored ads. While they are now included, the current SGE layout would still significantly disrupt the ad experience we’re used to. During the Google I/O announcement, they made a statement to reassure advertisers they would be mindful of maintaining a distinct ad experience in search.
“In this new generative experience, Search ads will continue to appear in dedicated ad slots throughout the page. And we’ll continue to uphold our commitment to ads transparency and making sure ads are distinguishable from organic search results” – Elizabeth Reid, VP, Search at Google
Google is trying to thread a delicate needle here of staying on the cutting edge with their search features, while trying not to upset their advertisers and needlessly hinder their own revenue stream. Roger Montti details more of the operational issues in a recent article digging into the surprising reasons SGE is stuck in Google Labs.
He lists three big problems that need to be solved before SGE will be integrated into the foreground of search:
- Large Language Models being inadequate as an information retrieval system
- The inefficiency and cost of transformer architecture
- Hallucinating (providing inaccurate answers)
Until SGE provides more user value and checks more boxes on the business sense side, the traditional search experience is here to stay. Unfortunately, we don’t know when or if Google will ever feel confident they’ve addressed all of these concerns, so we’ll need to stay prepared for change.
Experts Chime in on Search Generative Experience
Our team has been actively engaging with SGE, here’s a closer look at their thoughts and opinions on the experience so far:
“With SGE still in its early stages, I’ve noticed consistent changes in how the generative results are produced and weaved naturally into the SERPs. Because of this, I feel it is imperative to stay on top of these on-going changes to ensure we can continue to educate our clients on what to expect when SGE is officially incorporated into our everyday lives. Although an official launch date is currently unknown, I believe proactively testing various prompt types and recording our learnings is important to prepare our clients for this next evolution of Google search.”
– Jon Pagano, SEO Sr. Specialist at Tinuiti
“It’s been exciting to watch SGE grow through different variations over the last year, but like other AI solutions its potential still outweighs its functionality and usefulness. What’s interesting to see is that SGE doesn’t just cite its sources of information, but also provides an enhanced preview of each webpage referenced. This presents a unique organic opportunity where previously untouchable top 10 rankings are far more accessible to the average website. Time will tell what the top ranking factors for SGE are, but verifiable content with strong E-E-A-T signals will be imperative.”
–Kate Fischer, SEO Specialist at Tinuiti
“Traditionally, AI tools were very good at analytical tasks. With the rise of ChatGPT, users can have long-form, multi-question conversations not yet available in search results. When, not if, released, Google’s Generative Experience will transform how we view AI and search. Because there are so many unknowns, some of the most impactful ways we prepare our clients are to discover and develop SEO strategies that AI tools can’t directly disrupt, like mid to low funnel content.”
– Brandon Miller, SEO Specialist at Tinuiti
“SGE is going to make a huge impact on the ecommerce industry by changing the way users interact with the search results. Improved shopping experience will allow users to compare products, price match, and read reviews in order to make it quicker and easier for a user to find the best deals and purchase. Although this leads to more competitive results, it also improves organic visibility and expands our product reach. It is more important than ever to ensure all elements of a page are uniquely and specifically optimized for search. With the SGE updates expected to continue to impact search results, the best way to stay ahead is by focusing on strong user focused content and detailed product page optimizations.”
– Kellie Daley, SEO Sr. Specialist at Tinuiti
Navigating the Clash of Trends
One of the most interesting aspects of the generative AI trend in search is that it appears to be in direct opposition to other recent trends.
One of the ways Google has historically evaluated the efficacy of its search ranking systems is through the manual review of quality raters. In their quality rater guidelines, raters were instructed to review for things like expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (EAT) in results to determine if Google results are providing users the information they deserve.
In 2022, Google updated their search guidelines to include another ‘e’ in the form of experience (EEAT). In their words, Google wanted to better assess if the content a user was consuming was created by someone with, “a degree of experience, such as with actual use of a product, having actually visited a place or communicating what a person has experienced. There are some situations where really what you value most is content produced by someone who has firsthand, life experience on the topic at hand.”
Generative AI results, while cutting-edge technology and wildly impressive in some cases, stand in direct opposition to the principles of E-E-A-T. That’s not to say that there’s no room for both in search, but Google will have to determine what it thinks users value more between these competing trends. The slow adoption of SGE could be an indication that a preference for human experience, expertise, authority, and trust is winning round one in this fight.
Along these lines, Google is also diversifying its search results to cater to the format in which users get their information. This takes the form of their Perspectives Filter. Also announced at Google I/O 2023, the perspectives filter incorporates more video, image, and discussion board posts from places like TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and Quora. Once again, this trend shows the emphasis and value searchers place on experience and perspective. Users value individual experience over the impersonal conveyance of information. AI will never have these two things, even if it can provide a convincing imitation.
The current iteration of SGE seems to go too far in dismissing these trends in favor of generative AI. It’s an interesting challenge Google faces. If they don’t determine the prevailing trend correctly, veering too far in one direction can push more market share to ChatGPT or platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
Final Thoughts
The range of outcomes remains broad and fascinating for SGE. We can see this developing in different ways, and prognostication offers little value, but it’s invaluable to know the potential outcomes and prepare for as many of them as possible.
It’s critical that you or your search agency be interacting and experimenting with SGE because:
- The format and results will most likely continue to see significant changes
- This space moves quickly and it’s easy to fall behind
- Google may fix all of the issues with SGE and decide to push it live, changing the landscape of search overnight
- SGE experiments could inform other AI elements incorporated into the search experience
Ultimately, optimizing for the specific SGE experience we see now is less important because we know it will inevitably continue changing. We see more value in recognizing the trends and problems Google is trying to solve with this technology. With how quickly this space moves, any specifics mentioned in this article could be outdated in a week. That’s why focusing on intention and process is important at this stage of the game.
By understanding the future needs and wants SGE is attempting to address, we can help you future-proof your search strategies as much as possible. To some extent we’re always at the whims of the algorithm, but by maintaining a user-centric approach, you can make your customers happy, regardless of how they find you.
MARKETING
How to create editorial guidelines that are useful + template
Before diving in to all things editorial guidelines, a quick introduction. I head up the content team here at Optimizely. I’m responsible for developing our content strategy and ensuring this aligns to our key business goals.
Here I’ll take you through the process we used to create new editorial guidelines; things that worked well and tackle some of the challenges that come with any good multi – stakeholder project, share some examples and leave you with a template you can use to set your own content standards.
What are editorial guidelines?
Editorial guidelines are a set of standards for any/all content contributors, etc. etc. This most often includes guidance on brand, tone of voice, grammar and style, your core content principles and the types of content you want to produce.
Editorial guidelines are a core component of any good content strategy and can help marketers achieve the following in their content creation process:
- Consistency: All content produced, regardless of who is creating it, maintains a consistent tone of voice and style, helping strengthen brand image and making it easier for your audience to recognize your company’s content
- Quality Control: Serves as a ‘North Star’ for content quality, drawing a line in the sand to communicate the standard of content we want to produce
- Boosts SEO efforts: Ensures content creation aligns with SEO efforts, improving company visibility and increasing traffic
- Efficiency: With clear guidelines in place, content creators – external and internal – can work more efficiently as they have a clear understanding of what is expected of them
Examples of editorial guidelines
There are some great examples of editorial guidelines out there to help you get started.
Here are a few I used:
1. Editorial Values and Standards, the BBC
Ah, the Beeb. This really helped me channel my inner journalist and learn from the folks that built the foundation for free quality journalism.
How to create editorial guidelines, Pepperland Marketing
After taking a more big picture view I recognized needed more focused guidance on the step by step of creating editorial guidelines.
I really liked the content the good folks at Pepperland Marketing have created, including a free template – thanks guys! – and in part what inspired me to create our own free template as a way of sharing learnings and helping others quickstart the process of creating their own guidelines.
3. Writing guidelines for the role of AI in your newsroom?… Nieman Lab
As well as provide guidance on content quality and the content creation process, I wanted to tackle the thorny topic of AI in our editorial guidelines. Specifically, to give content creators a steer on ‘fair’ use of AI when creating content, to ensure creators get to benefit from the amazing power of these tools, but also that content is not created 100% by AI and help them understand why we feel that contravenes our core content principles of content quality.
So, to learn more I devoured this fascinating article, sourcing guidance from major media outlets around the world. I know things change very quickly when it comes to AI, but I highly encourage reading this and taking inspiration from how these media outlets are tackling this topic.
Learn more: The Marketer’s Guide to AI-generated content
Why did we decide to create editorial guidelines?
1. Aligning content creators to a clear vision and process
Optimizely as a business has undergone a huge transformation over the last 3 years, going through rapid acquisition and all the joys and frustrations that can bring. As a content team, we quickly recognized the need to create a set of clear and engaging guidelines that helps content creators understand how and where they can contribute, and gave a clear process to follow when submitting a content idea for consideration.
2. Reinvigorated approach to brand and content
As a brand Optimizely is also going through a brand evolution – moving from a more formal, considered tone of voice to one that’s much more approachable, down to earth and not afraid to use humor, different in content and execution.
See, our latest CMS campaign creative:
It’s pretty out there in terms of creative and messaging. It’s an ad campaign that’s designed to capture attention yes, but also – to demonstrate our abilities as a marketing team to create this type of campaign that is normally reserved for other more quote unquote creative industries.
We wanted to give guidance to fellow content creators outside the team on how they can also create content that embraces this evolved tone of voice, while at the same time ensuring content adheres to our brand guidelines.
3. Streamline content creation process
Like many global enterprises we have many different content creators, working across different time zones and locations. Documenting a set of guidelines and making them easily available helps content creators quickly understand our content goals, the types of content we want to create and why. It would free up content team time spent with individual contributors reviewing and editing submissions, and would ensure creation and optimization aligns to broader content & business goals.
It was also clear that we needed to document a process for submitting content ideas, so we made sure to include this in the guidelines themselves to make it easy and accessible for all contributors.
4. 2023 retrospective priority
As a content team we regularly review our content strategy and processes to ensure we’re operating as efficiently as possible.
In our last retrospective. I asked my team ‘what was the one thing I could do as a manager to help them be more impactful in their role?’
Editorial guidelines was the number 1 item on their list.
So off we went…
What we did
- Defined a discrete scope of work for the first version of the editorial guidelines, focusing on the Blog and Resources section of the website. This is where the content team spends most of its time and so has most involvement in the content creation process. Also where the most challenging bottlenecks have been in the past
- Research. Reviewed what was out there, got my hands on a few free templates and assembled a framework to create a first version for inputs and feedback
- Asked content community – I put a few questions out to my network on LinkedIn on the topic of content guidelines and content strategy, seeking to get input and guidance from smart marketers.
- Invited feedback: Over the course of a few weekswe invited collaborators to comment in a shared doc as a way of taking iterative feedback, getting ideas for the next scope of work, and also – bringing people on the journey of creating the guidelines. Look at all those reviewers! Doing this within our Content Marketing Platform (CMP) ensured that all that feedback was captured in one place, and that we could manage the process clearly, step by step:
Look at all those collaborators! Thanks guys! And all of those beautiful ticks, so satisfying. So glad I could crop out the total outstanding tasks for this screen grab too (Source – Optimizely CMP)
- Updated content workflow: Now we have clear, documented guidance in place, we’ve included this as a step – the first step – in the workflow used for blog post creation:
Source: Optimizely CMP
Results
It’s early days but we’re already seeing more engagement with the content creation process, especially amongst the teams involved in building the guidelines (which was part of the rationale in the first place :))
Source: My Teams chat
It’s inspired teams to think differently about the types of content we want to produce going forwards – for the blog and beyond.
I’d also say it’s boosted team morale and collaboration, helping different teams work together on shared goals to produce better quality work.
What’s next?
We’re busy planning wider communication of the editorial guidelines beyond marketing. We’ve kept the original draft and regularly share this with existing and potential collaborators for ongoing commentary, ideas and feedback.
Creating guidelines has also sparked discussion about the types of briefs and templates we want and need to create in CMP to support creating different assets. Finding the right balance between creative approach and using templates to scale content production is key.
We’ll review these guidelines on a quarterly basis and evolve as needed, adding new formats and channels as we go.
Key takeaways
- Editorial guidelines are a useful way to guide content creators as part of your overall content strategy
- Taking the time to do research upfront can help accelerate seemingly complex projects. Don’t be afraid to ask your community for inputs and advice as you create
- Keep the scope small at first rather than trying to align everything all at once. Test and learn as you go
- Work with stakeholders to build guidelines from the ground up to ensure you create a framework that is useful, relevant and used
And lastly, here’s that free template we created to help you build or evolve your own editorial guidelines!
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