Using tables in emails can be a great way to help format and clean things up a bit, but when used the wrong way, they can take away from the visual appeal - taking your good idea and making it look like a sloppy, underperforming mess.
I got this email today from WEEI, a major sports radio station here in greater Boston. As of late, they have amplified their email marketing efforts and have been sending out a ton of pushes for offers through their various sponsors. As you can see, they used a two-column, five-row table.
However, I think this looks pretty bad and I'd argue the email would look a lot better if that entire right column was eliminated.
The main product push is the various offers on the left-hand side which is what should be gaining the most views>clicks>actions. You know what a restaurant serves, right? Yeah, so do I. So what's the point of overcomplicating things here?
And I love white space in emails (props on the background being white and the email being centered by the way), but in this case, the white space below those pictures is ugly and completely at the mercy of how much copy there is in the left hand column. This means no consistency with the various rows which makes for a visual nightmare. Yuck.
My suggested fixes:
- Eliminate the right-hand column.
- Format all of the logos so they're the same size.
- Word wrap around the picture and format the headlines and copy so they're a bit more consistent.
You'd get a better looking email and hopefully, a better-performing email because that's what ultimately email marketing is all about. Are you using tables? If so, do your emails look like this?