Email Design

Email communications and newsletters coming from Cal Poly need to be properly branded and contain the proper information. 

Headers

Design your email header with the end reader in mind. Consider that readers do not understand Cal Poly's organizational structure, and different looks and header treatments from various divisions can be confusing. Keeping a consistent look across all outgoing campus emails strengthens the reader's trust in the mailing's Cal Poly connection.

How to achieve consistency:

• Header should feature the Cal Poly logo.
• The background can be either green or white.
• Lockups should not be used in the header. College, department or unit names can be placed as text within the header. 

Body Content 

Email content should conform to the Cal Poly Brand Writing Guidelines, the same as all other content, as well as meet best practices for email. On average, readers stay on a well-written email for around eight seconds. Therefore, your best chance at getting your audience to read your email comes when your copy achieves the following:

• Begin with a clearly defined goal.
• Address one, no more than two, subjects within the message.
• Has an easily found call-to-action that achieves your goal.
• Can be scanned or read within about five seconds.
• Only includes images if they support your goal.
• Optimize images to load quickly (i.e., are not overly large files).
• Include alternative text for all images.

Footers