Everest Design & Content Playbook: Beginner

• If you are a new Everest customer with no prior relationship with Validity, complete onboarding to ensure you are familiar with navigating and using Everest.   
• Ensure you have completed the Everest Basic Setup Guide. 

Important! Be sure you know the subscription allotments based on your service tier and plan according to your sending frequency and the size of your email database. You can find your subscription information by navigating to My Everest > Account Settings > Subscription. 

• Design & Content terminology 
• Common email design challenges 
• How Design & Content fits into your process 
• Important metrics related to effective email design 
• Preview the subject line and pre-header text for your next campaign
• Send a design test for your next campaign
• What to do next 

• Open rate: The percentage of email opened by your subscribers 
• Click rate: The percentage of subscribers that clicked on a link or call-to-action 

Common sender challenges associated with poor email design are: 

• We don’t know how our content renders at desktop and mobile devices before we send our campaign. 
• Some of our campaigns get high complaints and we do not know why. 
• We sent a campaign over the holidays that looked terrible in dark mode and performed poorly. The colors we selected did not work well together and were hard to read. 
• Our last campaign had a link that went to the wrong landing page and caused our customers a lot of confusion. 

By testing your email designs using Everest’s Design & Content feature, senders see improved results with: 

• Increased Open rates 
• Increased Click rates  

A traditional email marketing process consists of three phases: Pre-Send, In-Flight, and Monitoring. Using Design & Content within the pre-send phase helps to ensure your campaigns render properly across mobile devices and email clients. 

Pre-send 

• Inform your email campaign strategy with Everest’s Competitive Intelligence 
• Plan campaign 
• Select target subscriber list  
• Design campaign 
• Validate subscriber list using Everest’s List Validation feature
• Test campaign design using Everest’s Design & Content feature

In-Flight 

• Send campaign to subscribers and the Everest seed list 
• View your campaign’s inbox placement, spam, and missing results using Everest’s Inbox Placement feature

Monitoring 

• Monitor engagement metrics using Everest’s Engagement feature, your ESP, or internal sending platform. 
• Monitor sending reputation metrics using Everest’s Monitoring feature to understand the deliverability impact. 
• Monitor DMARC compliance to identify unauthorized use of your domain and brand using Everest’s Infrastructure feature. 

Tip: You can test your designs at any point in the pre-send process. Some design teams use the Design & Content feature to test various design ideas during the creative process or test the final design to identify potential problem areas. Be sure to plan how you use Design & Content based on your subscription allotment. 

Engagement  

Engagement data is visible in the Monitoring>Engagement section when using the Everest engagement pixel and integrating Everest with your ESP or sending platform. To get started, use the data provided by your ESP or internal sending platform. 

• Open rate: The percentage of email opened by your subscribers 
• Click rate: The percentage of subscribers that clicked on a link or call-to-action 

Remember to check your Design & Content subscription allotment prior to sending your design test. For your next email campaign, test your final design to identify potential problems. 

Check the Subject Line Previewer 

Test your subject line, emojis, from name, and pre-header text with different devices to ensure they entice the recipient to open your email. 

1. Login to Everest 

2. Navigate to Pre-Send and click Design & Content  

3. Click the Pre-Flight Checks tab and select Subject Line Previewer 

4. Enter your Friendly From name exactly as you have set up for your email campaign 

5. Enter your Subject Line and Pre-Header Text exactly as you have set up for your email campaign

• Add emojis by clicking the emoji icon 

6. Click on the iPhone 11/12 Pro device in Devices/Clients

• Is your brand recognizable in the friendly from name? One of the top reasons why email is marked as spam is because the recipient does not recognize the sender. 
• Are your subject line's important words or phrases (e.g. free shipping, 50% off sale, product activation code) cut off from view? Modify the subject line as needed if you think it needs to better capture the reader's attention.
• Does your pre-header text help entice the reader to open your email or does it just repeat what is stated in the subject line?

Tip: Use the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll through each device/client.

7. Repeat step 6 for the Gmail email client.

Talk to your design team and get access to the HTML for your next email campaign. You also have the option of sending a test directly from your sending system if you do not have access to the HTML. 

1. Login to Everest 

2. Navigate to Pre-Send and click Design & Content 

3. Click New Design Test 

4. Click Restore Default Renderers Selection to select the email clients you wish to render. All renderers are turned on by default, but you can choose which renderers are most important to you.

• If you update your renderers, scroll down and click Save

5. Enter your Subject Line 

6. Paste the HTML code from your design in the specified area and click Create Test 

If you do not have access to the HTML and can send a test from your sending system: 

• Click the Email Your Test tab and copy the specified address. 
• Send your test to the specified address and click I’ve Emailed My Test when finished. 

7. Locate your test on the Design Tests page and click the subject line 

8. Review the renders for all Desktop Clients, Mobile & Tablet Clients, and Webmail Clients. 

• Click the render box to see more detail for iPhone and Gmail.
• Does your content look as expected? 
• Do you see any visual problems with the design such as missing images, poor color combinations, and illegible text?
• Is your content mobile friendly? 
• Are call-to-actions easily located through design and color combinations to encourage clicks?

9. View the design dashboard at the top of the Design Tests page to identify invalid images or links.

• Invalid image and link results are marked as Invalid in the Result column 

10. Fix any identified content issues prior to sending the campaign to your target subscriber list. 

11. If your subscription allotment allows further testing, repeat steps 6-10 after fixing any rendering issues to be sure there aren’t any new issues that appear. 

Share test results with your design team (optional) 

Share test results to show your team a design problem with specific devices or email clients. Make sure your design teammates are set up as Everest users or they will not be able to see the test results. 

1. Locate your test on the Design Tests page and click on the subject line 

2. Locate the renders you want your team to look at and click the render image 

• To add comments and to flag the render for review 
  1. Click Comments to “On” 
  2. Click the Flag to indicate the content needs review 
  3. Enter your comment and click Comment 

3. Click Close 

4. On the Design Tests page, click on Settings and select Email Share Link 

5. Enter the recipients’ email addresses 

6. Click Send   

Your teammates view any flagged renders by clicking on the arrow in the Flagged for Review tile and opening the preview.

1. Proceed to the intermediate Design & Content Playbook.

• Everest Design & Content Playbook: Intermediate

2. Continue reading our other Everest playbooks to help take your email marketing program to the next level.  

• Everest Playbooks