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A little while ago we mentioned the email design changes at 37signals, and the thinking behind those changes.

Today I came across another post with similar ideas, but this time from the email recipient's perspective. Rowan Simpson is a lead developer at New Zealand's Trade Me and has written a couple of posts about email he has received.

He first mentions his frustrations with the email notification of his energy bill. The key information about the bill is not in the email, and the link goes to a non-specific landing page instead of right to the bill.

Rowan followed up with a more positive example of his phone bill which actually does include all the important information, and also links directly to the bill.

I don’t have to visit the website because the email contains all of the information I’m most likely interested in - the amount I owe and the date that the payment is due.

As long as that looks right, I’ll delete the email and move on. If not, the most prominent link takes me straight to the online bill, rather than dumping me in a maze of a marketing site.

Often in web application development the emails are left as a last minute exercise, with all the focus of time and design placed on the web front end. As Rowan points out though, email notifications can be responsible the first impression each time your application is used.

A poorly thought out email can colour people's perceptions of the whole application. On the other hand, a great email can mean people appreciating your application even though they may not need to use it!

So some quick tips on application driven emails:

• Make the email as useful as possible: Can you get enough into the email so that reading it is enough, and no click is needed?
• Make your links as specific as possible: If you do need a link, make sure that the one click gets your reader right to where they need to be.
• Simplify as much as possible: Pull out unnecessary elements from your email. That may mean less design elements, shorter sentences or less copy.

The desire to use email as an effective marketing tool needs to be balanced against the need to impart information as quickly as possible. Rowan says that the Telecom email's good user experience has made him more receptive to future marketing messages.

That might be a great tool to use if your marketing team are tempted to overwhelm your emails with copy!