The first step in any email marketing campaign is to try to get new subscribers, right? This is because, without subscribers, there is no way to send content or attract potential customers to our brand.
There are many effective techniques for capturing subscribers; From popups inserted on the site, to the creation of paid advertising campaigns to increase visibility and the amount of subscribers.
Maybe because of the sector I work with, but i always love working with banners (and if the banner is creative, much better.)
Therefore, in this article I will share with you a series of basic notions about this, so you can also use creative banners to attract more subscribers interested in your business.
Today, we will see a lot of relevant information on this topic.
to design banners for attracting new subscribers? Just browse the internet and you will see a huge amount of banners waiting to catch our attention. However:
[su_quote]Each brand uses a different creative style, but all of them will include a number of basic elements with a specific goal or functionality.[/su_quote]
Surely you wonder how such a small image, can attract a certain audience and generate conversions.
So you need to know how to work with all the graphical elements and textual content in a creative and original way so that visitors can understand the message correctly in a matter of seconds.
The degree of creativity depends on the dedication of its creator, and also the communicative tone of each of the messages.
However, there is no basic structure, but there are features that can be found on all visually effective advertising banners:
- Visual Content: Remember that a banner is placed on a website made with different contents. To stand out with your banner, you will need to work correctly with the different aspects of the image. You can include illustrations, images, icons, symbols, drawings, etc.
- Title and subtitle: The title will be the most striking phrase of the banner and will capture the user’s attention. Therefore, you should write the message thinking about the essence of the advertising message so that it can be easily understood. The subtitle is where you will explain a little more about the main message.
- The promotional text: It is not recommended to overload your banners with lots of text. Therefore, you should try to summarize the message as much as possible. Nevertheless, the information should not be too concise. Users should understand what they are seeing and what you are offering.
- Call to Action: When creating effective banners, you should never forget to include a call to action. For instance, a button or a box that tells users what you want them to do. In this case, it would be a call to action that invite your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter.
Banners can include more items, however it will depend, above all, on the available space (it’s not the same thing to create a small banner as creating an Interstitial banner, as we will explain later.)
So before you start designing your first creative banner, you should be aware of the available space on your website to insert the banner and thus create a banner with the right size.
As explained before, when creating banners, you can try to achieve different goals. You may want to get clicks to a sales page or, as in this case, try to attract visitors to a subscriber form to work with an effective email marketing strategy. As with any marketing strategy, you will have to be sure about what you want to accomplish before you start working.
This is really important, especially if you decide to invest in paid Banners.
Now that you know how important it is to have a specific objective, which will be reached or not, depending on the creativity of the design and layout of the different elements in the
Banner, let’s see some of its features:
- Attract traffic: While there are many other ways to get visibility and online traffic, banners are a very good resource for this purpose. I guarantee that having creative banners on your site can significantly improve your brand image.
- Contact details: Do you want to attract users For your contact forms? With striking and well-designed banners, with a link to your contact page, you can do so.
- Promote: Invite your users to sweepstakes, to take advantage of offers and promotions, creating promotional banners.
- Getting followers: When you create new social profiles, it can be difficult to expand the follower community. Creative banners can be a big help in this task.
- Attract subscribers: This is what we want with this article, and it is a very good option when we are trying to increase the mailing list with a correct email marketing strategy.
When they are placed on your own website and on other pages, the Main goal when creating banners, is to convert users, through a call to action (or one of the other goals mentioned above.)
In addition to web banners, you can also try to create banners for social networks or your own newsletters. The location you choose, will depend on the type of marketing strategy you are preparing.
New formats come up every day when creating banners. Typically, we use the term banner to refer to any type of creative advertising that we see on the Internet, but actually, the word banner refers only to an illustrative image.
And, these pieces of online communication are evolving at the same pace as the web pages. However, there are certain sizes, and templates that have resisted since the first banners were created, and they are still valid today.
It is the most basic banner of all and is the most commonly known. It has an elongated and horizontal shape, simulating a flag. It is about 4480×60 pixels.
Originally, it was created to be inserted at the top of the web pages, but this format gradually fell into disuse.
Although it may seem the opposite, it is the less flashy format of all and most webmasters don’t use it anymore.
Here is an example:
It has a size of about 234×60 pixels (about half of a classic banner) and they are only created to be inserted in places of limited space.
However, this will often catch the eye of many visitors due to its simplicity and originality. It is recommended for websites with limited space, or for pages overloaded with other larger images.
This is a banner that is starting to adapt more to the current websites, that is, with larger images. Although the average size is 728×90 pixels, generally the width is changed to fit the entire page, so its size can be changed depending on the website where it is being inserted.
In addition, these types of banners often include video or more than one image, which means having to triple its height in some cases.
►Takeovers
This is really the classic format, which is what most of us remember when we think of creating a web banner. It is practically square, with an average size of 300×250 pixels, although today it is possible to find other sizes.
This type of banner is easy to find on almost any webpage. They are created with a static format or as a gif (with several images that are merged).
An example would be this:
► Skyscraper
With 120×600 pixels, it is stretched vertically, like a skyscraper. Typically, you can find it on the sidebar of many pages, especially on media pages.
Another example:
In addition to these classics, with the evolution of different web pages and online channels, other banner formats are emerging. It is becoming more normal to find this type of banners on new websites.
If you are creating banners for your email marketing strategy, it will be important to know these formats because they are the most flexible and those that leave more room for creativity. They are not important due to their size, but due their interactivity.
►Interstitial
It is a very intrusive banner, which guarantees its visibility. It appears superimposed on the page that the user is visiting, occupying all or most of the screen.
In addition to having a close button, it usually contains videos or images with which the user can interact with without leaving the banner.
► Pop-up
It appeared before the interstitial banner, and is an intermediate banner between a traditional banner and a modern banner. It is also placed at the top of the website, but with a somewhat smaller size.
This type of banners don’t have a good reception among users, for being too intrusive. This is because many webmasters abuse of this type of resource, and when they use too many banners, the navigation is almost impossible.
►Floating Banner
These banners, of any size, don’t have a fixed position on the website and will accompany the visitor as he is reading the page.
In these cases, good creativity is essential, as it will follow the user, if the banner is not attractive, it can have the opposite effect and make the visitor angry.
►Expandable
They will increase in size, usually when the visitor Hover over the banner. It is common that, as a small banner, creativity is reduced to a call to action that invites the user to see more.
Now that we understand the theoretical part, I would like to show you some banners created by my team. They are of various themes, but I’m sure they will help you to find ideas for creating your own banners.
In fact, our customers, when they hire us for a job of this type, need to see other banners to get an idea of the final style they will give to their banners.
Check out these 4 examples! I would love for you to leave your comment at the end of this article about your opinion and if you liked these banners.
Conclusions
There are a lot of graphics and creative features for creating advertising messages on the Internet. Some are more flexible than others and specifically banners are one of the ones which offer more display options due to its different measurements and features, as well as graphics and text elements.
In this article, we saw one by one the different creative banners which you can include on your site and even in other online marketing strategies.
Different variants of banners have been created, from classic formats with standard measures and limited uses, to advanced designs that follow web trends, such as using larger images.
Of all the functions or goals you can try to achieve while creating a banner, the idea of capturing quality leads to increase your mailing list is good to improve the results of your next email marketing campaign.
And you ?What do you think of the use of creative banners to capture subscribers? Have you used a banner to improve your email marketing strategy?