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hello hello everyone and welcome back to flowbeam podcast I'm your host Vera satellac and today I'm joined by a very special guest Kristen Maslow Kristen is actually our designer um she works here at phloem and I specifically invited her to discuss some exciting um design Trends with us specifically email marketing design Trends so say hi Kristen hi thank you so much Vera I'm excited to be here and discuss some industry Trends right now oh yeah definitely it's going to be a fun one but before we go there Kristen I have this little like this or that q a questions just to get to know you better okay okay cool let's do this Photoshop or illustrator oh that's a hard one I think I'd have to go with Photoshop though okay Windows or Mac Oh Mac all the way yay same here okay shopping online or shopping offline always online almost always online yeah I don't remember the last time I even like ordered my grocery online honestly so it's like I'm like 100 online what was the last thing you purchased online um so it's Prime day is going on right now and yes um my cat knocked over my TV the other day and completely shattered it so I was able to get a good deal um and I Amazon Prime myself a new TV get for good for you and good for your cat I guess I don't know new TV in the family that's exciting okay uh dark mode or like or light mode as a designer I don't want to say dark mode because that can make my life a little bit harder but everything I have is set to dark mode it's just easier on the eyes fair enough fair enough okay um if there was a song playing every time you entered the room what would it be oh my goodness that is so hard um this is so hard I am going off of my Spotify top 100s and the song that makes it on every single year is Drop It Like It's Hot by Snoop Dogg so I I okay that is the classic classic amazing that's a good one I wish that the music was playing right now as we were speaking yeah cool okay so let's talk about like juicy stuff let's talk about all of the uh design Trends and stuff like that guys those of you who've been with us for a while you know that normally we record it as an audio only but since it's a very visual topic we decided to record it as Audio Plus video so we will be posting our video on our video on our YouTube channel and also all of the references that we will be discussing in this blog or sorry in this podcast you will be able to find in our blog so we'll try to explain what we're seeing on our screens as close as possible but you will still be able to um go ahead and check everything out yourself okay guys so one of the biggest trends that we are seeing across the industry is the amp in the emails amp for emails is probably like one of the hottest Trends these days it's to explain it in simple terms it's basically something interactive in your inbox so like directly in your email so basically you've probably seen this some brands have this like little games in the emails some brands are doing the interactive abandonment cards some Brands include The NPS surveys so basically amp is the framework that allows you to include that interactive content into the emails yes it requires a bit of a coding it requires a bit of a like a lot of work on your design teams and but it's so worth it so uh definitely try using one of those amp emails so here are some good examples uh one of the brands that I follow they actually do this NPS survey and those of you who are watching us on YouTube right now you should be able to see this little like an NPS survey screen where the customer can basically pick whether or not they like the brand and they will be able to say whether or not they are satisfied with the company and we with a brand and it's really cool you can do it with a type form as well but in that case you're sending your traffic out of the email so probably the conversion for that survey will be much much lower the really fun way to use this amp emails is games or art games I guess um I really love this I think it was from Sephora actually scratch and win oh no it was from Guinea B so it was like scratch and win so basically you were able to like scratch one of the three coins that they had on the hero image of the email and under those like coins there was like uh discount code so you could use like different discount codes depending on how lucky you are I guess um some of the brands are also doing this like Wheel Of Fortune or how do you call it I don't know it's like um that's how we called it in in Ukraine anyways so um you have to like spin the wheel and you you'll be able to um to win the offer or like to win some some sort of like a discount code or like a freebie or something like that um so these are like the fun ways to use their um amp emails uh the card recovery is a big one as well so basically some brands are using this amp for abandonment card emails so instead of sending your traffic directly to the abandonment card page you can actually recover that you're purchased directly in the email so directly in the email they will be able to pick the product if the product has variations they will be able to like pick the color um they will be able to I don't know like um add change quantity and stuff like that uh to pay though they will still still have to go to um to your website but it eliminates that like extra step so everything can be done in one space um so yeah it's a very very powerful tool cool um definitely use it especially if you have this like technology there are like a ton of apps who that can help you to develop this like amp emails um and yeah there's like a ton of information on our blog and we will actually be sharing the link to the blog about AMP emails that we have on our phloem blog so yeah and that was the trend number one Kristen Trend number two tell us about it so for Trend number two it's actually my personal favorite way to spruce up emails and that's animated gifs email marketers are increasingly turning to animated gifs in email to provide that extra visual interest in their messaging and actually according to the 2020 State of email data 51.28 of marketers said they're using animated gifs at least sometimes in their email marketing so I don't know what that other almost 50 percent of people are doing but they're definitely missing out um but more importantly gifts can and be animated and you can take videos from your marketing materials and turn them into gifts to use in your emails which is really cool again one of my favorite things to do so similar to how an old-fashioned flip book Works gifs rapidly display a series of images to produce the illusion of motion so it's not a video but it looks like it is and then in the internet's early years gifs and things like the Marquee and blank tags were the primary method of adding movement to a web page so I don't know about you but I remember coding my MySpace back in the day like way back with the blink tags and things like that so A lot has changed since then and since the flip books from the 1990s so animated gifs are enjoying a Renaissance both on the web and within email marketing yeah so while there's still some debate as to how you actually pronounce GIF the gift gift GIF yeah I'm a I'm a gift team but I know like a lot of people who say GIF and I'm always like confused used it's like no I'm always like insecure I'm like am I wrong but I'm also team um GIF so maybe in the comments you guys can let us know how you pronounce it um but no matter how you pronounce it you can most people will agree that it's just an excellent marketing tool all around so what are the benefits of an animated gif within email so adding the animation in email with a gif is just a great way to grab your subscribers Attention Point them towards the action you want them to take or to keep them scrolling to make sure they get through your whole message so we have a few great examples here the first example is Ilia Beauty and this is what I was talking about where you can turn a video into a gif so for those out there who can't see what we're seeing right now this is a beauty brand and in their hero image they actually have um they're showing how your product or service works and they have real people using the product which is so nice little eye-catching at answer there's any questions and it's just really good for subscribers to see it in action yeah especially if the product has like some specific way to like use it for example like I had no idea how to properly apply that like makeup you know and they in like that shirt three seconds video they actually show you like where to put it how to put it how to blend it so cool um I love when they are doing that yeah it's very helpful yeah no this is such a nice clean email I love it um and then for the next example this is one of my favorite companies to get an email from every time I see them pop up in my inbox I get excited to see what they came up with which I mean is an awesome way to make someone feel um It's Magic spoon so this is a really good example of using the gifts in the body instead of using the GIF and the hero so using it in the body of your email Like This is Gonna Keep subscribers scrolling It's Gonna Keep Them engaged so then you'll be able to give them your entire message um so here you can see they're showing their awesome packaging which is also another plus and they're different flavors and it's keeping you really engaged so this is just amazing use of color and using a gif in the body of the email yeah and I think that's awesome that they used it here because they pretty much like showed their entire selection of products and they have like quite a few of those products but they were able to show it in one image so instead of making like this super long email that possibly might get clipped they basically fit everything into that like one image I think it's super cool yeah no that's a really good point when you mentioned clipping too this is a great way to kind of condense what you want to into a shorter version love that email and then the next example is from headspace which I have to just say I love this color scheme so much they're using like a muted blue gray a darker gray brighter yellow and a coral color um so if a picture is worth a thousand words then an animated picture is probably worth even more and using an animated gif like this to illustrate it to illustrate a complex idea or show your subscribers things that are um it makes it easier and it makes it shows them that it's easier than they think this is just a really eye-catching one to use in the hero and it's really unique I don't see a lot like this so this is a good example yeah I love how they try to explain like a difficult Concepts in this like um in this like images you know like for those of you who are not uh watching us but like listening to us basically the headspace is the um look at the app for meditation and stuff and they show this like guy like this little dude who's like sitting and meditating and around him is this like thunderstorm is happening yet he's like very chill and and composed and stuff like that and I just love how just like you said Kristen the picture can say a thousand words yeah it's such a beautiful little concept here yeah definitely that's a really good good one well thank you so much yeah and that animation it just like adds that little like aspect of uh interactive emails almost into your into your emails as well for those of you who don't want to or can't use the amp emails for now um this is like an excellent way to make your emails a bit more like Dynamic I'd say yeah cool okay the next Trend it's a big one you may love it you may hate it but designs optimized for black mode is definitely a big thing dark mode has taken the world of technology by storm and I actually read the stats and it seemed it sounds like incredibly high but uh did you know that actually almost 82 percent of users or people use dark mode on their phones 82 the number sounds crazy but when I think about it I use dark mode my husband use dark mode you use dark mode all of my friends use dark mode so yeah and and actually I also read that almost like 65 percent of people they kinda expect websites and emails to have a dark mode obviously because that's that's what they're using on their in their day-to-day um why do people love dark mode so much just like you said Kristen it's probably because it's like easy on eyes I heard that it saves battery life I don't know if it's true or not but that's the reason why I like switch to dark mode at some point of my life and also I just like the aesthetic of it it's just like looks better for some reason I don't know yeah yeah it's just like I I love it I use it on all of my devices however they're like still a lot of like confusion on how to optimize for dark mode and how to create those emails for dark mode it can be a bit challenging so here are some brief recommendations from phloem that's what our designers have been doing Chris and you'll probably have like more recommendations because that's what you're doing on your um on daily basis um but yeah we we definitely do recommend optimizing for dark mode it's not a it's not an if question you do you do have to do it these days and once you do that uh try using transparent pngs um that's very important maybe you can even add a stroke border or background to dark logos if your logo is like in blackish or like darker color so your logo does not like disappear you know um on the email um then you can also reduce the size of your PNG photos PNG pngs they are actually great for solid things like icons Stacks shapes and stuff like that but when you're saving a photo as a PNG it can be it can get very heavy very big so be careful with that so your email does not get clipped also very important is to choose the right colors if you're using a background color make sure to use the color that is like bright enough or like dark enough to appear on a dark background so bright colors all the way and of course testing testing is Big we normally we test our emails on like that with the different tools they're like platforms like let Miss where you can or like email melon acid where you can see how your email will look on like different devices in light and dark modes and stuff like that so yeah so that's basically that's a very big Trend these days and here are two great examples of how you can use dark mode the first example is when they made it as an image without the color change and example number two is where is where they use the color invert logic so basically they change the color of the background but also the color of the phones were changing the color of the ctas were changing and stuff like that so basically like a color invert happened here um Kristen do you have anything to add here what what have been like the biggest challenges for you guys um like creating designs for black mode yeah no I mean the worst feeling is whenever you create a beautiful email and then you send it on to email on acid or another testing so service and you see like that's not what I designed that looks so funky so it's really important to always keep that top of mind when you're designing because like you mentioned you have to like it's just not a choice at this point um I know I use the outline a lot um adding a stroke onto my elements um something else that I do sometimes is I'll add like I had this section the other day of about me is what it said and I added like a white swash behind it so whenever it's normal mode you didn't see it but then on dark mode there was kind of a graphic behind it that made the font pop so there's little things like that you can do to kind of cheat around it but yeah like you mentioned this is just something that especially nowadays you just have to do um but it's kind of fun it's kind of like a little puzzle for designers a little puzzle for designers I love how you look at things uh you guys we do have this like big article on our website um that's like literally it's called how to optimize for dark mode and yeah we'll link all of the all of the resources that we mentioned in this podcast we'll link them in the description box so you can just like scroll in and enjoy them okay cool Kristen that was the next big thing and the email marketing design so um the next Trend that we're going to cover is negative space which is also known as white space to some people and using negative space helps give breathing room for design elements and it's just another big Trend right now with a lot of Brands so it helps subscribers and your customer base quickly digest a message to complete the desired action it doesn't give them too much information it gives them exactly what you want to give them as quickly as possible so an example is like if you want them to shop the annual sale or if there's a sale going on for a limited amount of time it's a good way to get them that information as quickly as possible so it's what negative space or white space is it's the area of the layout that is left empty simple enough so it may not only be around the objects but also inside the objects or between them just ways to space them out it's kind of just a breathing room for all the objects on the page or on the screen and then specifically in email design negative space is a really big doctor for High usability and navigability um for the interface and it's important especially in email marketing like I said just to give the user exactly what they want as quickly as possible so just to kind of give you a visual here I guess a visual imagine yourself coming into a room it's fully packed with various staff members there are shelves boxes bags piles of books just a cluttered desk so will you be able to concentrate in those conditions or do you really need all of that right now and more importantly how long will it take to actually get what you need done done so that's pretty much the same as what users feel opening the page or screen when there's not enough negative space it can quickly become overwhelming and you might lose a customer or they might just look out of your email because it's just too much and I know I've definitely done that before and as a designer it is hard to use negative space because we want to design and we want to add all these elements I know that's probably my biggest challenge is always keeping that in my mind like I need breathing room here it doesn't have to be all at once in your face so that's definitely my biggest challenge but it's a huge Trend right now so it's really important to kind of keep that again top of Mind presence yeah no surprise Apple has been nailing negative spaces in their emails and their marketing consistently pretty much forever um but all of their communication rides on simple fonts eye capturing images and very clean designs which people really like right now so we have an email up right now that is no exception it's an email for their airpods Pro you can see how the image of the airpods stand out making the product seem aspirational and really fancy and the negative space underneath has been used smartly too because it creates a contrast and packs in the message all above the fold so you can see it all right where you want it and it gives a great clear visual hierarchy and it just tells the users what they need to focus on so they don't have to think about it it's just right there and their brain's just gonna understand mm-hmm yeah such a cool example yeah I think every time I think of the this like minimalistic clean design apple is obviously the first example that comes to mind they are nailing this trend totally yeah definitely and then we have another great example um from a brand called moment so you can see here they're also providing ample negative space to give breathing room for these really cool design elements they kind of have a little wavy font at the top a really cool kind of hero image um it almost looks like it's cut out of the background it's really interesting and again this just really helps your customer base to quickly digest the message so in this one it is shopping the annual holiday sale um I also love the color scheme here too yeah my favorites very beautiful very beautiful I love this trend and that's like the thing in the industry right now tell me if you agree or not but I'm seeing like two kinds of like big trends one of is this like minimalistic uh clean group of emails you know with like a lot of like negative spaces a minimum of text like big images and stuff like that but I also do see like this colorful bright emails with like funky typography and stuff like that it's almost like they're like two big trends at the same time that are exactly like contrasting each other so yeah no I totally agree um I have a few clients right now one really gravitates towards uh in your face bright colors and that is my favorite one to design for but then the other ones have this nice clean imagery and I really just think it depends on who your target audience is and yeah your consumers are but both are great but yeah I totally agree it's like split completely cool want to discover how much money your email marketing can actually bring you is that the case let our team of email marketing experts show you how with our free email marketing audit we'll conduct a comprehensive analysis of your email marketing efforts provide you with action plan and show you how to effectively segment and convert your audience simply go to flovium.com audit and book your audit today yeah and I feel like the next Trend that I will be talking about it's very connected to what you just covered uh floating product blocks um this is like a big Trend that I'm seeing in the industry as well and giving that on average only like uh 20 like 30 of the emails get even open let alone red images they carry that very important role of like communicating the message right away and like capturing the attention and uh basically like explaining what the product is all about in in this like one quick uh short image so and in order to make those images even more effective designers they started experimenting a lot with like product blogs um and um this uh style of product blogs that are floating in the mid-air is a very popular these days and this style is actually a good way to make sure that the product blog is the most important piece of the content so basically all of the focus goes to the product block directly this type of this type of content block is really good for Featured emails or a featured product uh campaigns and stuff like that and even this products are even if it's like impossible to make them actually levitate a lot of a lot of designers and a lot of brands are actually using the 3D rendering um but still there's product blocks they look very realistic for example this is actually one of our one of our brands that we worked with better brand I really love how they added this like image of the bagel bagel is their hero product and they make it look like it's like levitating in the air but it's just fun it's just like fun looking you can see what the product is about right away if you scroll down you can obviously have like the product description like a short copy and stuff like that but I feel like um this like product that almost like floating is in the air it's like the most important piece of the information actually I'm just getting hungry looking at this uh can you say that too yeah it looks so good I think our designers actually did a really good job with this one um so yeah a better brand a better brand Bagels they're so good try them they are amazing uh we are not affiliated with them or anything uh but we might be biased since they are our client Okay cool so that's the first example and the second example is uh for watch brand uh and they actually did a really good job like showcasing different kinds of um different kinds of products but the fact that instead of like having like a plain uh product blog that you can pull from Shopify they made it look like the product is like flow floating in the air it's just like looks funkier and it brings your attention directly to the product it's I think it's a really good way for those very like visual Brands to represent themselves so yeah this is like a little Trend and I feel like this floating prior blocks are really connected with that like negative space uh Trend that you just discussed but I think it's a really good way to bring customers attention directly to the product yeah no I totally agree I love both these hero images it really gives like a personality to the product like I almost feel like those watches are dancing and like the book is jumping you know like it really it's eye-catching and like you said even if um the customer is not getting to the block of text you know exactly what this company does and what they're selling so I agree this is just awesome cool okay the next one I'm kind of excited I I know what you will be talking about so I'm really excited about this one because this is like definitely one of my uh favorite trends that we will be covering today yes no I totally agree um so this is nostalgic designs and bold typography so retro design is making a comeback and it's actually one of the top email design trends of 2023 and this wave of retro designs includes elements from Art Deco the 90s and it even though it pains me to say this 2000's Nostalgia because yes people we have two thousands Nostalgia now it's a thing but a simple explanation as for why these Trends keep coming back even the ones that we wish might not is just simply Nostalgia people really crave to relive the simpler times when they didn't know what the future would hold and their worry seem small and as marketers and designers we have the power to use design to evoke that same feeling of nostalgia and it can create warmth and calm and hopefulness and I just think that's really cool that we kind of have the power to make people feel so good in that way just by creating beautiful eye-catching emails and copy so what does this mean for us as email marketers um for one really simply put making your readers happy is always a plus so when your readers connect with you they're more interested in your content and they'll continue to read and look forward to what you're sending next kind of like how I mentioned with magic spoon I look forward to your emails and getting ones from Brands like that um so they're also more likely to take action on what you're asking from them whenever they feel that way about your emails so even if it doesn't get that far and they're not making a purchase or something like that you're still guaranteed to make a lasting impression because of how you made them feel like they might not exactly remember what your email looks like or what you're selling but they're gonna remember the feeling and that's so important and that's kind of like one of the goals as an email marketer is getting to that point um yeah so if you have fond memories of the 80s and 90s you're definitely not alone Nostalgia is taking the design World by storm influencing everything from product design to website Graphics really if you do go to the mall still and go into stores in person you'll see it everywhere it's it's really cool and kind of kind of trippy at the same time that's super weird I I think um what what was the brand well h m has a lot of like stuff from from 2000s um and like I mean it's it's like so weird seeing like this 12 year olds or like 13 year olds wearing the stuff that you were to high school and it's just like look how cool this is it's like I knew that was cool 15 years ago right yeah yeah um but this is really just all about blending the past and the present to create something new and unique so this trend is characterized by the use of vintage inspired elements like typography um you can use images or patterns but add like a modern twist to it so the result of doing this it is a design that feels familiar but also fresh which is kind of a hard thing to achieve so Nostalgia makes that possible yeah yeah and then we have a couple great examples here so just in general color is going to play a role in how people feel react and make decisions about the brand and your products so in this case color is the easiest way to communicate and illustrate an era to evoke that Nostalgia so for example if you think of the 80s other than leg warmers and leotards you might think of bright pinks or blues or neon greens um I know I definitely do whenever I think of the 80s or like when I think of the 90s I'll think of that Lisa Frank ish bright rainbow colors with sparkles so there's definitely a way to use color to bring your subscribers to a moment in time which is really cool so fonts is also really important and it really helps to bring that Nostalgia aspect it's just as important as color so we have some really great examples here yeah let's let's review them so this first one you can see how they use um it's from rtro and they have what looks like a handwritten font so that's really personable so that makes you feel like it's written just to you for your inbox and then underneath that personal handwritten font they have kind of like a typewriter-esque font which is a really cool contrast those two kinds of fonts together and it kind of brings you back to like an earlier time even though this is a brand new email it gives you that feeling of like I don't know maybe the 80s or 90s and then they also use great colors in here as well so they're really just kind of nailing The Nostalgia on this one all around yeah I love that they are using this like instant photos filter or how you call it it has that like looks from the 90s or 80s that from this like cameras that we were taking on the instant picture with and by the way this trend is back as well so I mean we knew a thing or two about the trends back then um so yeah it just like looks good it almost reminds me of this like even like the first fonts that we were using uh for like uh computers back in the day it's just like had that very like distinct like 90s Vibe and I think it looks great and it works really well with the with the topic of what was the theme of what they are selling I guess with the products that they are selling and then our next example it this is just I love like the colors of this make me feel good which is exactly what we were just talking about um this is a really fun way to show the colors and typography working together so you can see there's kind of those bright colors um they also let me see here they have some like outlines that look like their hands thrown on there but they're obviously not um this is just another great example of feeling nostalgic this I would say would be like I don't even know maybe early 2000s um yeah yeah I love this one so much I love the little Sparkle graphics on there I just think this is a great example of how to make something new um feel familiar and fresh but also new this is a great way to do that totally and then our last example here old pal I love the color blue they used on this and I was looking at it they also utilized the typewriter font um and then up in the hero where it says old pal which is the Brand's name instead of doing a stark white on blue background they have almost an off-white giving it like that vintagey feel I thought that was like a great um decision on their part but yeah this reminds me and this is more of like a 90 90s I would say vibe to it but I just I love how they executed it here and then the call to action is bright and eye-catching which is always important yeah I like that like bolt uh fonts and um this font that look that looks almost like a typewriter phone um I think it's very appropriate here as well yeah I've actually added like one more example here Grist and honestly I'm not a fan of this um particular style but I've never was a fan of this style even when it was a very like in you know it's from the Red Bull it's like a holiday pack email Where They are promoting their holiday pack and they brought back this like font from like 90s I'd say uh but this is like one of the classic phones that we are even seeing in some um like super old book from I don't know like Middle Ages or whatever I guess it just like works really well with the topic of the email um it's very like hard to read so you should be careful when using these phones when you're using a very active um like hero image font I would probably recommend staying away from it in the actual um body of the email in the in that like main copy section what do you think Kristen what are your thoughts on this one no I totally agree um it's great for a hero but if you make it too small it's going to be too hard to read but this font it's I don't know if this is specifically Old English but that's the font that is used a lot and this is for Red Bull and I feel like for their target audience this is kind of perfect I used to do a lot of designs for college age kids and a lot of like fraternity and sorority designs and I would use Old English for fraternities because that's something they love and yeah it's crazy like you would never think that this font would come back but it's it's coming back and it's popular right now so yeah awesome okay cool the next Trend uh it's an evergreen Trend I feel like uh but it's a big one it's a big Topic in the industry and we even have um recorded a podcast about this um so we will be talking about the accessibility in emails um so if you want to learn more about the Strand go to episode number 88 email accessibility um in this podcast we are talking about how to make your emails more accessible um what elements you need to like change to make them more accessible and stuff like that but one thing I didn't realize and it this number is they sound crazy to me I didn't realize that one in 12 men and one in 200 women experience some sort of some form of color blindness can you imagine like 1 in 12 men and one in 200 women I didn't realize that the number was so hard but it's just like it just shows you how important it is to make sure that your emails are accessible because you want to be able to talk to as much people as possible and also I didn't realize that um there is like five to ten percent of population in the world who are like dyslexic so you want to make sure that your emails are like super easy to read to read that you have like proper phones for them and stuff like that um and other crazy number is that 65 percent of people who experienced uh who experience hearing loss they are actually under retirement age so even if your brand is serving I don't know like a audience of like 30 year olds Millennials who are into makeup or something it's still be sure that your emails are still like accessible for them because it's not only for like people uh who are around the retirement age apparently it's like a bigger issue so accessibility is one of the founding pill dollars of using experience for email marketers what can you do to make sure that your emails are accessible again it's a very big topic and we have this whole big episode recorded about it but there are like some things that you can do to make sure that your emails are easy to read for everyone the first big thing is the contrast so contrast is a very very big thing especially for people who have some sort of some form of color blindness so here's a good example of like contrast that are bad for accessibility and some like good examples of contrast so make sure that your emails are very contrast they are very easy to read another important thing is to use um like a lot of white spaces especially for people who have trouble uh with like understanding the written information so for dyslexic people it's very important to have the this like white spaces sometimes you know so they have so they can consume the information in like small blocks and even for people who don't have that problem you still want to give them information in like smaller blocks for them so it's like easier to consume for them right I know that's how I read anyways um and uh yeah um alt text is another big thing so for people who have some visual impairment they very often use this technology that basically reads an email for them that's why we always try to include the alt tags so even if they don't see an image say you've like added an image of like a cute puppy in your email even if they can't see the image of the cute puppy when they will be reading that email or when the technology will be reading an email for them they will be able to hear that this is the image that you've used there so that's yeah that's very important they're like a ton of different uh a ton of different ways to improve email accessibility like using the right fonts there are some fonts that are like easier to read for people who are dyslexic for example or um yeah or like using larger fonts is also a big one so we don't recommend going like under a fund like 14 points it's like it's pretty small for emails so we don't recommend to going under but these are just like some common practices um that we recommend uh doing and one thing I didn't realize is that um when a person is like color blind it does not necessarily mean that you don't see like all colors sometimes it just means that you can see the red or green and these are the most popular forms of color blindness which makes me think about all of this like red green and white Christmas emails that we are designing right so when you were having some like import important information or like some text hero image text or stuff like that try to stay away from like using one of those like colors like red or green or yeah mostly like red red or green um try to make sure that the contrast is good the font is big and the colors that you're using are like easy to to read even if the person has some sort of color blindness yeah so that's a that's a big Trend yeah cool uh what do you see uh in the industry uh Kristen have you seen any like uh popular Trends around this accessibility um is there like anything that we internally do in to make emails more accessible um I know here at phloem that's a huge priority for us is making sure the emails are accessible for everyone in the audience um so I know for a designer these things they take minutes maybe like to add alt text or just to kind of be mindful of the colors you use and it really does make a difference to whoever is getting the email you don't want to leave anybody out because I mean for one you don't want to lose a customer or a subscriber but you also don't want to make them feel different you know like you want them to be able to enjoy the email just as much as anyone else and to get the information that you want to so it's just it's something that for the design side it doesn't take that long on our end but it can make a world of difference to somebody so it's definitely something that's important and it probably always will be so yeah yeah that's a big one um cool and I feel like our last um our last trend is getting more and more popular um this year anyways um it's about colors so Kristen tell us what is what is that last trend so the last trend is neon colors so kind of opposite to what we were just saying right there's a way to use them though and to still make it accessible but emails are just getting brighter with neon colors and they're definitely making a comeback um I'm all for it I don't know how do you feel about the neon colors are you here for it depends on the brand I guess like I would never wear like a neon collar like to my everyday life right but although I will be wearing like bright pink pants to a Barbie Premiere so I'm gonna go I'm gonna watch a Barbie movie like when is it like 22nd or 23rd so yeah me and my girlfriends we have this whole thing we're gonna make our nails done and like pretty pink and um where all this like neon colors just because it's appropriate I don't love it love it in my everyday life but sometimes it's fun and sometimes I enjoy seeing them in the emails as well yeah no that's a great Point um the Barbie movie is huge right now and that's also tying back to the Nostalgia and the bright colors is amazing they they've just done a fantastic job with that so that's a super good point um but neon just adds that upbeat happy feel to your emails and well some brands do play it safe with their color palettes this kind of helps you stand out as a fun youthful brand especially um so if your target is younger Millennials or gen Z this is just perfect um but like we mentioned before you can have too much neon and it become it can become a little bit overwhelming so balance is essential there's this thing um they call it like when colors vibrate off each other so if you have two super bright colors on top of each other it's it's really hard for anyone's eyes especially um thinking of accessibility so it's just something to always keep in mind and use it as kind of an accent to highlight what you want but not too much um so yeah just use them sparingly neon colors stand out really well on dark background ground so we have a few examples here they use the neon color in their call to action which is just 10 out of 10 an amazing choice because you're not going to miss it you're going to read what's in that call to action and then also in the images here they have some brighter colors so this is a good way of using neon colors very sparingly so I like this email as an example I would maybe add a few more colors in there but that's just me um and then we have another example here this is like I love this so I know we were just talking about having too many Neons on top of each other but this is nice because the only true neon color in this example we have here is the neon green yellow the other colors are almost neon but not quite so I I love this this is like a great example of a bright fun email that's not hard to look at so great use of neon colors here yeah I'm curious to hear what you have to say about it I really like it it definitely makes you feel a type of way this almost gives me um like a Grateful Dead 90s feel as well but like a more muted version so I think that's just the coolest graphic um for those of you who can't see our screen it has like a butterfly and two eyes and some skulls and almost looks like a lava lamp that's kind of what I'm getting from it like a lava lampy Vibe so this is fun I I like this one yeah it's fun it's it's not necessarily like neon again it's like more like saddle collars uh but it still like gives you that like reference to the 90s or like the 80s yeah yeah I love it I love it it's like they just turn the saturation down a little bit but yeah no I love this example yeah no it's a good one wow we had covered a lot honestly Kristen and I feel like some of this Trends they are connected like nostalgic designer designs and like neon colors uh and like floating blogs and uh like this minimalistic designs and stuff like that um they are kind of connected and it all comes down to understanding who your customer is and what will work well for them um because I know for some of my brands that like minimal clean look might not convey the message as well as the bright busy email even so yeah you it always comes down to like delivering the right message to the right person I guess and understanding who your customers are yeah yeah that's a perfect way to put it I think there's there's space for all of this in the design world you just have to know where to utilize it so that's greatly definitely awesome it was so fun having you on our podcast Chris and we should do it again someday yeah no this is awesome thank you so much for having me cool yeah guys if you all as always if you like what we do please um send us a review leave us a review screenshot your review Send us the email with your review and we will send you um like a freebie from phloem it's a really it's a really good one yeah um and next week we will be talking to our partner from just Uno who actually will be talking about all of the exciting ways to optimize your opt-in strategy and how you can get the most out of your opt-in strategy um so yeah definitely come back next Tuesday we'll be talking to just una um and thank you for listening to our podcast we'll see you next Tuesday bye hey if you're watching this and you like what you see please hit subscribe and hit the Bell because it helps us grow our Channel