In advertising circles it’s often said that the art of email marketing and the science of email marketing are separate but, in truth, one influences the other and vice versa.

The art of email marketing refers to such things as its layout and design. The tactics employed to make sure that emails are delivered, clicked on and acted upon, as well as how they are tracked to measure engagement, is the science.

What this means is that your analytics department and your creative department, if not working together directly, must at least be sharing knowledge, something that in the case of many businesses simply isn’t being done.

Frankly, in most cases your creative team could probably use a bit more analysis and your analytics team might benefit from being a little bit more creative. A look at the suggestions below about what constitutes excellent email design should help.

First, because of the emotions associated with a brand or corporate identity, these should be respected at all times by both teams.

Making the content of your emails easy to understand, engage with and consume is absolutely vital. This content must also, more importantly, push the overall goal of better communication between consumer and business as well as motivate the consumer to take an action.

Excellent email design also relies on keeping messages between both departments brief, detailed and as comprehensive as possible using the fewest number of words. Put differently, try to keep in-house messages from boring either team to sleep.

Also keep in mind that statistics and analytics, while an excellent foundation, can never truly embrace the true emotion and subjectivity of the creative process. In other words, use the numbers to enhance the creativity process.

With the advancements in today’s technology the creation of fresh, engaging email templates has become much simpler. Arranging content and message in order to improve results, and acknowledging that rearranging those things might be necessary, is vital to the success of any email marketing campaign.

If you find that your email marketing isn’t providing the ROI than it used to, and that your analytics and creative team aren’t exactly working together, it might be time to hire a creative director to bridge the gap between the two.

With someone to facilitate a new and enhanced working environment, it’s a good bet that your email marketing will start bringing in the results necessary to make their hiring, in retrospect, seem like a no-brainer.