These four letters are the nightmare of every email marketer.
How to avoid getting into this darkest pit of online oblivion?
Master the art of effective email design.
In this article, we’ll show you:
Generate leads for your well-designed emails
First things first—
Look at this stunning email design from Apple.
(You’ll know how to do the same by the time you’re done with this post).
This message from Apple could be the benchmark for modern email design:
Email designs like these sell.
You don’t have to have Apple’s budget to design high-converting, stunning emails. Stick to these email design best practices, and make people want to read your messages.
Below, we’ve put together an extended list of some of the best practices to make your emails nothing short of captivating.
Email preview is the first moment when you can draw the recipients’ attention.
Combined with compelling copy, proper preview design can convince them to open the message.
The preview consists of three parts:
Email Sender Name
This shows who sent the message. Use the name of your company, your own name or the name of whoever is responsible for email marketing. In some cases, it could be a campaign type, e.g., “Tidio Newsletter.”
Limit the sender name to 20 characters. This way, you can be sure it will always appear in full length on the recipient’s screen.
Email Subject Line
Keep your email subject lines under 50 characters. This length ensures a full display on all types of screens.
Email Preview Text
Add a message that “reinforces” the subject line by providing more context. How long should an email preview text be? Between 40 and 70 characters.
Need ideas for attention-grabbing subject lines to recover sales? Here’s the abandoned cart subject lines guide for ideas.
The emails you send must be both visually attractive and easy to navigate.
It all starts with choosing the best template layout:
Contains one or multiple content sections, each filling the width of the email.
Such a layout is perfect for focusing the recipient’s attention on an offer or a single piece of content.
This email design practice puts the content into two or more columns.
In this example, there are four columns to showcase more products from a new collection of clothes.
The hybrid email design combines the two previous email types. It contains a single column on the top and multiple columns below.
Consider this email from H&M. There’s a big header image on the top that emphasizes the main message—discount + free shipping.
What follows are different columns in a row. They’re website sections to make it easier for the customer to get where they want.
Images and animations are part and parcel of modern-day email communication. They help to define the structure, highlight offers, and make everything more appealing.
Take a look at the mailing designs below.
Which one is more pleasing to the eye—the one on the left or on right?
Chances are you picked the email design on the right. Most people would, too, simply because it’s visually appealing.
Your mailing designs need to include visuals to get more chances to engage recipients and sell.
Here’s a bunch of email design tips to keep in mind when creating high-converting messages with visuals.
And here’s the best news.
Creating great email designs with images is easy.
An email marketing tool with an editor such as Tidio Email Marketing is a good example. It has email templates you can customize and save tons of time.
Here’s how you add an image in Tidio’s email designer.
Think of these as “attention hooks.”
The main heading is for grabbing the attention right away, and the subheadings are for drawing the viewers in deeper.
What are the best email designs?
The ones that sell.
And no message will ever sell without a call to action (CTA). Your CTAs must be:
Here’s an example of a CTA button design that’s easy to spot and read, and conveys a clear benefit.
Email designs might have several CTAs to boost your chances of converting your readers.
Even the most compelling email campaign design will get ignored if the message is illegible. To avoid this, go for standard and readable fonts supported by all email providers.
And don’t go overboard with the font size. The “Goldilocks” proportions are 36 points for headings and 18 points for the body text.
Obviously, you can adjust these sizes in your email marketing tool and see how they work for your specific email design.
The best email template designs have three footer elements:
Take a look at this footer from WIRED.
Looks clean, organized, and is easy to read. Perfect.
Want to know how to create an email footer for a business email? We’ve got you covered with this professional email signature guide.
Now, let’s see how brands use email design best practices to sell.
This simple, single-column email layout design is perfect for creating a newsletter.
The dark section on the top summarizes the purpose well and has a CTA if the recipient wants to download the report right away. The text below is concise and also provides another CTA—one more chance to capture a lead.
This newsletter email design example is complex yet super clean.
It squeezes in multiple content types—a video, a few blog posts, and a product announcement while staying fairly readable.
This example exhibits one of newsletter design best practices—masterly use of white space.
Paired with the elegant Georgia font, it gives the message a nice, “classy” feel to it.
This email design puts a heavy emphasis on the headings and subheadings.
It’s a great technique to make offer details stand out. That also makes this email design a nice example of the “one topic per one message” rule.
This email design has a multiple-column design to showcase a range of products.
It captures the attention with the image on the top. Below, there’s a nicely structured design with a concise copy, a stand-out heading, and lots of white space.
Unique visuals are a good way to improve marketing email design.
Starbucks, for example, emphasizes quality visuals and colorful backgrounds. This email design decision helps to stay within their branding guidelines.
If your brand color palette is bright, check out this bright-colored email design.
The bright background makes the marketing message stand out and directs the recipient’s eyes straight to the content.
Simplicity at its best.
To promote a special product, this email design has only one image, one headline, one description, and one CTA button. This ingeniously simple yet strong concept keeps the reader focused on the main message.
The central focus of this email template design is the stunning imagery.
They’re doing a great job tempting the readers to check out the recipe. To encourage the reader to click even more, there’s a concise copy below the visual.
Overall, the email is imagery-based, which gives the design a modern and cool look.
This email design uses animation to focus the attention on the message.
A fun and creative animation beautifully conveys the offer. Combined with a memorable design, this email does a great job motivating the recipient to act.
This email design example perfectly balances text and image content.
The recipient first sees a stunning image with a heading describing the main value for them. Below the image, they can get more details about the offer. The most important proposition—“55 percent off 2 boxes”—is in bold to make it easy to notice.
Also, note a benefit-driven CTA with “Get Your Discount” as copy.
Although simple and minimalistic, this email design still manages to be inviting and interesting.
The graphic at the top is a unique touch and the brightly colored CTA button adds playfulness and dimension. Overall, the alignment of all elements gives this example a harmonious composition that invites the recipient to take a second to appreciate the design.
Want to get artsy in your email designs? This one is a good example.
A simple but inviting graphic at the top introduces the main message beautifully. The content sections are listed horizontally. This structure is a good design technique to display multiple messages at once, each with equal importance.
Simple and focused on the message—this is the theme here.
This email design uses a black background and a clear central focus on the offer. The text is perfectly aligned and placed in a way to differentiate messages.
Note how WIRED uses different font sizes and colors. This is a technique to help recipients understand what’s more or less important.
Beautifully designed, value-packed emails. This is the single most important thing to get more returns from your email marketing investments.
To create the best email designs, make sure to:
Now roll up your sleeves and get some practice in Tidio’s free email editor!
Generate leads for your well-designed emails
