Email Design Best Practices

Email marketing provides a direct line of communication with your customers, and it allows you to keep track of their engagement with your brand. Email marketing also allows you to build relationships with your customers over time, resulting in more sales in the future. 

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Today, marketing emails should provide more than just text to impress a reader. It’s important to make sure that your emails are not only well-written, but well-designed to increase user interest and engagement. Keep reading for some tips on email design best practices.

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Grab Attention Early On

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For email marketing to be as effective as possible, users need to open what you send! To grab attention early on and encourage your subscribers to open your emails, create subject lines that are catchy and compelling. 

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Depending on your brand voice and the nature of your email, this can be accomplished in many ways. You might try to be humorous, shocking, enticing, friendly, or straightforward. When creating a subject line, using emojis, personalization, a clever play on words, and terms related to your brand are all good practices. 

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Stay On-Brand

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Email design is an important aspect of how brands communicate with their customers. It can reiterate a brand’s message and promote products and services more effectively. As you’re designing your emails, be sure to consider if your choices correctly represent your brand image. For example, if you are a graphic design company known for your out-of-the-box ideas, let that shine through in the way you set up your emails.

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Create Great Email Copy

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Email design is one of the most important aspects of an effective email marketing copy. In 2022, the number of daily emails sent globally is estimated to be about 333 billion. Considering how many emails are circulating at every moment, it’s essential that you stand out.

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Among those billions of email recipients is your target audience. Learning how to convert this audience into leads and then into paying customers through email marketing requires great email copy. Some tips for writing great copy include: 

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• Nail your subject lines.
• Incorporate brand keywords.
• Keep things sweet and simple.
• Make sure your content is relevant and helpful.
• Clearly state your value.
• Create a sense of urgency and tap into FOMO (fear of missing out).
• End with a prominent call to action.

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Use Images Strategically

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The look of an email can heavily influence the number of clicks and responses it gets. To increase the visual draw of your emails, try using images. The best-designed emails have the best quality images, so it's important to use formats that tend to retain image quality, such as .jpeg and .png. 

Another key detail to consider is the amount of text vs. images your email includes. Having a good text-to-image ratio can be the factor that takes your email campaign to the next level. Combine your great email copy with one or two high-quality images to break up the text and make your emails more enjoyable to look at.

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Use Video to Drive Engagement

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Inserting videos into your emails when appropriate is a great way to drive engagement. Videos allow users to be more interactive with your emails. Add an embedded link to a new product demonstration, the new webinar you’re releasing, or a behind-the-scenes look at what’s going on in your business. Videos are enticing and can hold people’s attention longer than text.

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Pay Attention to Hyperlinks

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This is simple in concept and vital in practice—your links shouldn’t be taking your prospects to a place they aren’t expecting. Make sure every hyperlink acts as a convenience for your leads to get where they need to go faster. Using email to drive leads to a customized landing page is great practice in email marketing. 

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These links within your emails should save time and energy for the client. Additionally, including a hyperlink in your email allows you to track how many people clicked on it, which can help you gauge your marketing campaign’s effectiveness.

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Don’t Neglect the Footer

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Another key detail to creating successful emails is the footer—that little area of copyright information at the end of your email. Including a footer in your email is important for branding purposes and allows you to keep your logo and contact information visible to your customers, which helps build trust and credibility. 

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There are many ways to creatively customize your footer to drive more engagement. For example, promoting various platforms for your business is a good idea, such as websites and social media.

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Make Your CTA Prominent 

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When sending emails in a campaign, it’s important to make sure your call to action (CTA) is prominent. According to WordStream, emails that included a CTA in their campaigns increased clicks by 371%. It’s often recommended to place the CTA above the fold (visible on the screen immediately after opening), so it’s one of the first things people see when they open the email.

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Make Your Emails Personal 

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Personalize your emails by customizing them to each user. Add their first names in your greeting, send them happy birthday emails, offer them coupons based on their purchase history, etc. Users shouldn’t feel like just another name on your email list—they want to be recognized as individuals and addressed as such. Giving your emails this personal touch can help customers connect with your brand.

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Wrap Up

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Beyond the words you use in your emails, the way they’re designed can significantly affect your audience’s receptiveness. Follow the best practices above to elevate your email design and contact Madak to talk to marketing experts that can help you build your campaign from start to finish.