1. Most retail email marketers (88% in fact) use a horizontal navigation bar because it is more visible, especially in the preview pane of email recipients.
2. On average, fewer navigation bar(s)/links are used in email compared to websites. The average number of horizontal navigation links used by retail email marketers is 8.1, compared to 8.9 in websites. Personally, I think this is still too much for email. You only have a short time to convince someone reading an email to take some sort of action – and by giving too many choices and requiring too much thought about the options, you’re cutting into that decision-making time.
3. 52% of retail email marketers include a Sale/Outlet/Clearance link either in the horizontal navigation bar or somewhere else in their email.
4. Only 8% of retail email marketers include a link to Gift Cards in their emails.
5. Highlighting the Sale/Promotion link in red can be effective in generating conversions and is used by retailers such as REI.
6. HTML Text links are recommended over Image links for navigation bars in email so that those links will be visible whether images are blocked by email clients or not. Currently, 28% of retail email marketers use HTML Text links in their horizontal navigation toolbars. Up from only 15% last year. HTML Text links are much more common in vertical navigation bars with 60% of retail email marketers using HTML Text for vertical spaces.

This is a good report to read if you are interested in re-vamping your email designs with conversions in mind. You can download the report from the Smith-Harmon website.