How to Design Emails with Localization in Mind

How to design emails with localization in mind
The success of an email marketing campaign is affected by several factors. Among them include your audience’s permission, deliverability, timing, nature of the content, and email localization. To improve the chances of success, outlined below are some email design tips for the best-localized emails.

With the current global economy, entrepreneurs should consider expanding their B2B email marketing strategies to more countries. Email marketing is becoming a surefire marketing strategy, with more than 280 million (open in new tab) emails being sent every day globally with demonstrated success in several brands, such as Fruit Slot (open in new tab). But to get the most out of email, businesses need to utilize email design strategies, especially email localization to provide more relevant content to your users.

Making the right impressions to your global customer base requires that you modify email designs to suit different customer cultures and languages. Interestingly, 76% of customers (open in new tab) prefer purchasing products with information in their local language. That said, consider the following email localization tips for a great design.

1. Work around language and cultural barriers

The first step towards engaging a global audience through email newsletter design is overcoming the common language and cultural barriers. While it may seem an obvious email localization design tip, most people don’t achieve the email design perfectly. Google translator is often an easy option but might not be the perfect solution. Therefore, find multilingual copies to achieve a successful email marketing design strategy. You can work around this by hiring local writers in the desired geographical location.

Some key areas to consider for a perfectly localized email design copy include the following.

The Message

Marketers should consider language and cultural differences when designing localized email campaigns. For instance, the western culture design prefers direct conversations with respect to every party’s opinion. However, this is not the case with African cultures. In the African region, a clear expression of disagreement or different opinions with an elder is considered disrespectful. Consider this in your designs.

Subject Lines

As mentioned, there is a direct association between subject line language and your customers’ likelihood of making a purchase. Even though the subject line is among the basic things when learning how to design an email, ensure that you localize the subject line to pitch your customer in their local language. As part of email design best practices, ideal subject lines should be around 50 characters in English. However, localized German and French designs may have up to 70 characters.

The same email design concept should apply to pre-headers as well. For a normal email template design, pre-headers should be around 22 characters; you can adjust them. Always consult localization professionals and expert translators for this. They can suggest appropriate subject lines that suit your target audience.

CTAs

Calls to action are a popular email footer design that most marketers leverage. However, consider tweaking the CTAs of your localized email design to suit subscribers across the globe. Note that even a simple CTA with three words can mess the fixed-width elements or extend to several lines after translation. Therefore, ensure that your CTA has widely accepted words and perfectly fits your email design.

RTL and LTR Design

RTL and LTR are key considerations outlined in all responsive email design tutorials. As such, you shouldn’t generalize your email localization strategies. For instance, Middle Eastern countries write their languages, such as Urdu, Hebrew, and Arabic, from right to left. On the other hand, European and English languages are scripted from left to right. Therefore, when reaching out to your subscribers in different countries, consider mirrored designs.

2. Consider time zones

Most people check their emails during the week in the morning hours. Emails also have low open rates on weekends. Therefore, for a successful localized email design, send your messages on weekdays. While you should conduct several split tests to find the best time for your market, sending them between 10 and 11 AM is better. Ensure that the emails reach your target customers by mid-morning. Emails arriving late at night or non-peak periods may receive little or no engagement, even with localized designs.

Additionally, you shouldn’t assume that regions with similar time zones and cultures will respond to your localized messages in the same way. For assured success, run multiple tests, experiment with response rates from different regions for different days and times. However, remember that this can be affected by several factors, such as major holidays and weather seasons, which vary from one country/region to another. For instance, there is no point in drawing the attention of your subscribers to winter clothing when their country/region is experiencing summer. 

Time zone clocks

3. Consider local email regulations

Another important design element is minding regional laws guiding electronic messaging. Note that internet privacy laws vary from one state or country to another. Therefore, you should know your limits with your subscriber’s information to avoid legal troubles when sending emails globally.

Some basic online marketing rules include asking permission from your subscribers and allowing them to unsubscribe willingly. Some regulations also require that marketers add a prefix to subject lines and honour unsubscribe requests in a timely manner. The regulations include:

  • CASL – guides opt-in consents for subscribers
  • CCPA – is a state of California Consumer Privacy Act
  • CAN-SPAM Act – guides sending electronic messages within the USA from US servers
  • Australia’s SPAM act
  • China’s Regulation for Internet Email Services

4. Understand every country’s culture

Relevance should be a key consideration considering email localization. You might lose subscribers and potential customers by failing to align your localized message according to their culture. Some tweaks to ensure that your email remains relevant to your recipients include:

  • Use the right currency symbols and date formats – readers will take a keen interest if you change currencies, date format, and other specifics of their language.
  • Use relevant slang, idioms, and cultural references – an easy way of observing your customer’s culture is using references that they can easily understand. This emphasizes the importance of working with local translators, as it avoids such costly mistakes.
  • Understand the importance of your product to a specific audience – your design should focus on a narrow audience and not the general audience. Tailoring your design to fit a specific audience leads to high open and engagement rates.
  • Leverage local testimonials – using local endorsements and testimonials in your localized email designs is a great marketing technique.
  • Tie to local events – it is beneficial to keep track of ongoing local cultural events. Mentioning local news and events can increase your open rates.

While observing cultural sensitivity, watch out for cultural insensitivity in your email designs. For instance, while prideful commentary with strong words might be sales assets of your region, other regions may have reservations about such tones. The use of colours and symbols also passes varying information in different cultures. Also, be knowledgeable about the uses of various emojis. Not all cultures might have similar meanings or acceptance levels. This article might help – The Do’s And Don’ts Of Using Emojis in Email to determine what you can include.

Therefore, ensure that your emails present the intended message to your audience. Fortunately, noting these mistakes is easy. If analytics from your audience show low engagement rates, you might have gotten wrong with your cultural symbolism design. As mentioned, working with local specialists who speak native languages can increase your chances of success.

Bottom line

Distributing email content relevant to your target audience through localized email designs increases your engagements and conversion rates. Evidently, several design details and intricacies contribute towards ensuring a foreign-friendly email design. Therefore, if you plan on venturing into foreign cultures for new customers, incorporate the above-mentioned email design tips.

If you are an avid email marketing expert, share any other missing email localization design strategies in the comments.

About the Guest Author
Thomas Glare

Thomas Glare

Thomas Glare is a Business Analyst. He has been in technology for over 7 years. His career as a technical journalist began in Computer Geeker magazine in 2015. Since then, he has written extensively on corporate IT, innovation and technology convergence.

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