Design elements to consider while creating a holiday campaign

The holiday season is the perfect time to connect with your audience and boost engagement through creative email campaigns. With inboxes filling up quickly, your emails need to stand out to capture your customers' attention and drive action. Designing a festive email that grabs attention while staying true to your brand can be a challenge.

To help you craft the perfect holiday email campaign, we've spoken to Zoho's in-house designers— Prabhu, Ananth and Senthil—and put together a list of essential design elements that will not only make your emails visually appealing but also enhance your chances of turning subscribers into loyal customers.

What makes for a great holiday design theme 

There are many elements that go into a successful design. Let's go through them one by one.

Why design is important

First impressions matter, and design is a great way to make a good one. A solid design goes a long way in capturing attention, engaging readers, and driving action.

"Design is a way to communicate what you want for a post or mailer," says Ananth Rhama Krishnan, a Marketing Designer at Zoho Campaigns. "If the written content is the verbal component, the design is the non-verbal component. I personally like minimalistic designs. In today's world of doom scrolling, people have a very short attention span. It needn't be something trendy; it just needs to work for the content you're presenting. The highlight should be what you want to communicate. 

What colors work for a holiday emailer

Colors play a major role in creating visual appeal, and according to Senthilkumar Eswaran, a Leadership Staff Member for Zoho Marketing Automation, the ideal color choice depends on the tastes of your audience—and can even be region- and culture-specific. "There are cool, warm, pastel, vintage, retro, and many more color palettes," he says. "Use warm colors to attract visitors for sales, or use pastel colors to satisfy business audiences. I recommend that you use multiple color combinations to appeal to a broader audience."

When you see the colors, at a subconscious level, you associate them with a given occasion. Prabhu Murugesan, a Creative Design Manager for Jambav, prefers to keep colors warm and subtle for holiday creatives. "It shouldn't be too bright, nor should the contrast be too high," he says. "Talking about colors, pastels work well and are easy on the eyes. They evoke a certain mood we associate with ribbons, snow, and gifts—images from our own pasts that evoke the idea of holidays in us."

Working out the right layout

The layout of a poster or mailer is important because it the structure guides users along a specific visual journey.

"When it comes to layouts," Prabhu says, "We test multiple iterations with different placements of the text, logo, CTA, and graphics. We check if the placement of the CTA works better in the top, middle, or bottom fold. It all depends on how the content is laid out. But you don't have to change things just for the sake of changing things."

Another point Prabhu thinks is important is to keep your design free of clutter. "White space is necessary in any design," he says. "In other words, just because there's blank space doesn't mean you have to fill it with some image or content."

Prabhu points out that the metaphors and elements you use should match your content as well. "The elements you use should be easy to identify," he says. "My suggestion would be not to make your layout too content-heavy; instead, lean more into visual elements, as users interact with them more."

Establishing a central theme and building on it can help a great deal, Senthil thinks. "Since the holiday is defined by a specific event, the idea can also move around its central theme and try variations within this framework."

Images and art

Who doesn't love to be told a story with pictures? The same holds true for marketers as well. Good visuals can breathe life into a creative, but Ananth thinks you shouldn't overdo it.

"Just as a lot of spice can spoil a dish, too many elements can spoil a design," he says. "While we can't use the same templates year after year—and also can't always change the basic template we're using—we can still add new illustrations and images. Today, animations and GIFs work well, so you can play around a bit with those."

Professional designers of multinational companies have to cater to cultures worldwide and find ways to cater to a diverse customer base. "As Zoho designers, we work on festive ideas for markets across the world," Prabhu says. "For instance, independence holidays commonly use flag imagery, but to stand out, we might try playing around with the shape of the flag. Our techniques change according to popular trends."

"While a lot has changed in technology, I feel not much has changed with the format of an emailer. In some cases, image loading is still an issue, so we need to be mindful of that and use low size images accordingly."

Senthil believes that users often find images or GIFs very engaging. "Sometimes, the same effect created by an image can be achieved with colors and typography. Visual balance is important. Sufficient spacing is required between each piece of content, image and CTA. In some email clients, the image is not visible by default, and the user has to click the 'Display Image' button to view it."

If you're keen to explore the topic of visual design in greater depth, read this blog.

Brand consistency versus design aesthetics

Brands consist of multiple design elements. "Font, color, and unique shapes are used as important tools to convey the idea of a brand. We need to combine both the brand and the holiday aesthetic," says Senthil.

If you're a startup or an evolving brand, you have more room to be creative when it comes to branding, but if you're an established brand, you need to stick to the design rules you've established. As a designer for Zoho Campaigns, Ananth holds the brand's logo sacrosanct. "Whatever design elements you add for the holiday season are there to support the core brand design and not to supersede it," he says. "Content and branding are the most important design elements of any mailer. Animation are like topping on a pizza; they serve to enhance the pizza's core flavor—not the other way around."

Talking about fonts

During holiday seasons, it's normal to get a little funky with your fonts, but it helps if you can be mindful of your brand messaging and your target audience while designing your mailers. "When it's a corporate poster, we go with our in-house font Zoho Puvi," Prabhu says. "We also try out handwriting-style fonts, but these can present readability issues, and we need to consider accessibility while using them. How you tweak your logo depends on your brand guidelines. At Zoho, we don't play with the logo."

Senthil thinks businesses should stick to tried and tested practices when it comes to fonts. "Sometimes certain email domains present limitations on using certain fonts," he says. "There are a few universal fonts, but it's mostly sans serifs that are suitable for businesses, as they look formal and are easy to read."

Mobile responsiveness

In today's world, people consume content across multiple devices, including phones, laptops, and tablets. Hence, it's imperative that webpages and emails adapt dynamically to users' devices, screen sizes, and orientations. "We try to keep our designs clean and simple," Ananth says. "Designs that look good on a PC should also look good on a smaller screen. Avoid elements that look good only on a particular screen. The key is to start with smaller screens and adapt them for bigger ones."

Not overdoing it is also the key to ensure your designs look good across devices and not to overdo the elements. "Responsiveness is extremely important these days," Prabhu says. "Use a single column or a two-column layout and don't go beyond that."

Email solutions like Zoho Campaigns keep these factors in mind while providing templates for your campaigns. Check out our blog to learn more about responsive design.

Designs we really like

When it comes to real-world designs he likes, Prabhu has a quick shoutout: "I usually follow reallygoodemails.com. They have multiple categories and good references and ideas to create good emailers."

Ananth gets his inspiration from Steve Jobs. "That's mainly because he's a good communicator," he says. "When the world was full of large telephones, he focused on the design. All of his products share a design language and stick to it. As a designer, try to create your own design language and your own style."

Quick tips to remember

• Make sure you only use images you have the right to use. Downloading random images from Google for your creatives can land you in legal trouble.

• Content is king; don't add anything that detracts from your content.

• People check headlines first to get a solid takeaway. They say one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but these days, the cover does matter, and your headline is maybe your only chance to grab their attention.

• Don't try to reinvent the wheel; use standard fonts because they're designed to be universal and optimally readable.

• Pay attention to the placement of your CTA button and don't let it get lost in the clutter.

• Play with colors, but only as the situation demands.

• Mobile responsiveness is non-negotiable. Opt for email solutions that handle this for you.

• Include the titles of any events you're throwing in the text of your email as well, even if it's displayed in an image; sometimes images don't load and the information gets lost.