Email design is becoming more important as people are beginning to sift through tons of emails every day. Did you know that the average person gets about fifty promotional emails daily? That’s why it’s so important to have a strong email design and stand out amongst the rest to help drive results.
If you want your emails to truly stand out, you need to master email design, and starting with these ten expert tips can help you. Whether you have a new email marketing newsletter you’re starting or if you’ve been in the game for a while now, these tips are essential to taking the next step in your email marketing venture.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that brands and businesses use to promote various things. It typically involves a newsletter and a strategy for email design to give information to the audience whether it’s promoting products, or services, or simply giving valuable information.
It allows businesses to segment their audience and tailor the content to their interests or demographics. It’s a great way to promote and engage with your audience on a more personal level and it brings more variety to your marketing strategy.
Top 10 Email Design Tips
Now that we know a bit more about email marketing and what exactly it is, let’s look at the top email design tips to create campaigns that won’t get sent straight to the trash. Here are the top things to consider when creating your email campaign.
Prioritize Mobile-Friendly Email Design
One of the biggest tips we have for email design is to make sure that it’s mobile-friendly. HubSpot found that 46% of all email openings are coming from mobile devices, which means if you’re not mobile-friendly then you are missing out on almost half of your audience. Here are a few simple tips we have for creating a mobile email design:
- Ensure you have a responsive design
- Use a single-column layout
- Keep headlines and text more concise
- Optimize images and use alt text
- Make touch-friendly buttons that are easy to reach when navigating on mobile (with just their thumb)
- Place the most important info at the top of the email
- Use shorter subject lines
- Test your email marketing campaigns on multiple devices
Have a Clear and Engaging Subject Line
Your subject line is the first thing that any recipient will see when they receive your email. This is why it’s important that whether you’re sending a newsletter, promotional email marketing campaign, or a free resource you start your email design with a subject line that grabs attention. Think of this as your “hook” and it’s what will bring the person to open the email. Here are three expert tips to get you started:
- Create a sense of urgency or curiosity
- Keep it short and direct
- Personalize if/when possible
According to Invesp, 47% of email recipients open the email based on the subject line alone.
Have a Minimalist Email Design
It might seem tempting to add all the effects, colors, and icons that you can add to your email design, but the truth is that these extra effects can make it difficult for people to read your email. This also has the potential to turn the person off from reading that current email and any others that you send their way. Here are some reasons you should opt for a minimalist design:
- Easier readability and focus for the receiver
- Ensures faster loading times
- Promotes professionalism
- Enhances responsiveness
Utilize Your Branding
Throughout your email design, you should use your branding, whether it be your font sets, color scheme, or logo. The idea here is to make it consistent across your email marketing campaigns so that the receiver knows the email is coming from you and aligns with your branding as a whole. Knowing that you spent your time ensuring the email aligns with your brand also builds trust in the audience. Here’s how you can ensure that your email design resonates with your branding:
- Use your branding colors and font sets
- Incorporate your logo where possible
- Keep your same branding voice and tone
- Add your custom graphics and images that relate to your brand
- Use branded templates
- Branded buttons or CTAs
- Include a branded footer
Use Strong Newsletter Layout
Think about the actual design of your email and the layout of where items are within it. You want to create a layout that helps to first draw the reader in and then guide them to look at every aspect of your email that you want them to look at. Here are a few of our tips to implement this:
- Have a clear header to start
- Prioritize the content you want the reader to see with visuals
- Use breaks and short sections
Utilize CTAs That Drive Engagement
Your call-to-actions are a huge factor in driving conversations and getting recipients to take action where you want them to. You must have clear CTAs placed in optimal spots on your email design to ensure that they are visible and clear. They should enforce action and on emails especially, they should have some sort of visual design to ensure they stand out amongst the text. Here are our email marketing CTA tips:
- Use action-oriented language
- Make it visually distinct from the text
- Make it clear and specific
- Optimize for mobile users
- Personalization in CTAs is a bonus
- Place multiple CTAs, but not too many
Use High-Quality Visuals
Use visuals that are eye-catching, high-quality, and optimized to ensure fast loading times. It’s important to have images and visuals within your design to make it stand out and to bring attention in necessary places, but it’s important to have visuals that are high quality, load fast, and go along with your email.
Create a Readable Design
When creating your email design you should prioritize the readability of it and make sure that it’s not overcrowded with information or visuals. The language should be easy to understand especially for those who are just going through their daily emails and are looking to get to the point of the email quickly. Here are some ways to ensure readability in your emails:
- Use a clear and legible font
- Maintain a good ratio between text and color
- Use short paragraphs and break up text
- Incorporate white space
- Limit visual distractions
Interactive Elements Can Elevate Marketing
Use interactive elements in email marketing to enhance engagement and increase conversions. It is a great way to make your emails more interactive and memorable for the recipient. You can use these elements to boost user experience and overall a more interesting experience with your emails. Let’s look at some interactive elements that you can add to your email design:
- Surveys and polls
- Carousels or image sliders
- GIFS
- Quizzes
- Personalized recommendations
- Accordion menus
- Countdown timers
Analyze Your Email Design
Ensure that you are analyzing your email design when possible to see what is working and what’s not working. It’s a great way to identify if your strategy needs adjusting or if you should continue to do certain things. There are multiple metrics you can look into when it comes to analyzing your email design. Here are some you can start looking into today:
- Open rate
- Click through rate
- Conversion rate
- Bounce rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- Read through rate
- Click to open rate
- Spam complaint rate
Email Design Pitfalls to Avoid
There are a few mistakes and pitfalls that you should avoid when it comes to your email design in email marketing. Take these into consideration when you’re choosing a design to use and creating your email campaigns or newsletter.
An Overwhelming Design
Avoid having a crowded and overwhelming design that is packed with text and images. This can look very busy and overwhelm readers which causes them to lose interest. It’s important also to ensure that your image and graphic sizes are optimal for desktop and mobile users and that they don’t overcrowd the email. Focusing on a clean design can help you get your point across and keep readers engaged.
Not Using Alt Text
This might seem like a simple thing but it’s important to use alt text for images for those who are unable to see them whether it be because of an impairment or if the images don’t load on their email.
Not Being Optimized for Mobile
Most people read emails on mobile, so without mobile optimization, you are losing out on a lot of your audience. Optimization is key and it should be a priority when you are designing your email marketing layouts.
Inconsistency
Whether it is inconsistency in branding, fonts, colors, or tone of voice – this inconsistency can turn readers off from your content. Your email campaigns should fall in line with your personal branding just as much as everything else.
Not Reviewing Before Sending
Always review your email designs before sending them off or scheduling to avoid typos or errors within the design. This can seem unappealing and unprofessional to readers. Pay close attention to detail before sending off your email to ensure that there are no mistakes and that it conveys professionalism through the email design.
Importance of Email Design
Email design is a huge part of your email marketing and without a good design, your emails could get sent right to the trash bin. You want to stand out among the rest and utilizing a clean email design that’s unflawed, and conveys a clear message is important when it comes to email marketing.
Remember, people get many emails a day and need to siphon through which ones they want to read; your design is key to ensuring they open your email and read it through and through.
As a business, your email design can speak volumes about your company and brand. That’s why Pixel True take into consideration all of these tips and tricks to give you the best chance of getting that email opened and getting conversions out of it.
Suppose you need assistance with email marketing and email design specifically. We are here to design an email campaign that represents your brand, conveys your specific message, and pushes your audience to take action.
Stop letting your emails get sent to the trash bin and let us take over the design process for a clean, professional, and converting email!
