Design can make or break your email's success
You start an email with a clear objective and write the content that will get your point across. The design is often an afterthought. Don't ignore the power of design. A beautiful design will capture your reader's attention, and a smart layout will ensure your readers can digest all the information quickly.
We might have great content ideas for our next email campaign, but don’t always know the best way to design it. Finding the right images and typography, picking a colour palette and laying out your content properly might seem daunting, but there are a few tricks that will help you succeed in creating a design strategy that works.
Email design can be broken into 2 important components:
The layout of the email campaign
The visual composition
In this article, we'll share some of the best approaches for layout and visual composition to help you design emails that your subscribers will want to read.
How to design an engaging email layout
You have approximately 8 seconds of your readers' attention before they lose interest. While your content must be relevant and add value, your first priority is to make sure people actually read it.
It doesn't matter if your text is Pulitzer-prize worthy prose. If the layout isn't inviting and easy-to-read, no one will take the time to engage.
But before we talk about your email newsletter design, let's agree that your subject line is important too. No one will see your beautiful email if they don't click to open the email. We suggest keeping it simple, use a preheader and continuously use A/B tests to optimise the open rate and find subject line formulas that make your subscriber base excited.
When thinking about your layout, consider these 3 design principles:
Don't go too wide
Make it scannable
Remember the power of three
Don’t go too wide
Keep your email or newsletter within 600 pixels wide. If your emails are too wide, the reader must scroll side-to-side which is really annoying. The reader is likely to skip the content if they can’t immediately see the entire width of the email campaign.
Make it scannable
Before someone will invest their valuable time in your content, they'll scan the entire email to see what catches their eye. Leverage this by using descriptive titles and bullet lists to break up your key points into sections. This allows people to know what your email marketing campaign is all about within a few seconds.
Remember the power of 3
There are usually 3 main sections to an email newsletter: headline, body copy, and CTA. These are the key elements of your content hierarchy. The headline sums up the main message. The body copy delivers the support points. The call-to-action seals the deal. Make sure these 3 elements are super easy to find.
What is email content hierarchy?
Beautiful designs look amazing, but if no one can make sense of the content, you won’t achieve your goal. Email content hierarchy is the process of placing the most important messaging where the reader can find it quickly.
Visual hierarchy is not as complicated as it sounds.
Start with the most important points that you want the reader to take away.
Use colour, contrast, position, and size to put more weight on those points.
Place larger typography on top and gradually go smaller with less important info.
Your audience is time-crunched, so create a hierarchy of importance that allows them to get the main points at a glance.
For a text hierarchy, use bold titles, sub-headers, quotes and varying typographies like italics to make your important points stand out.
How to enhance email with visual composition
Visuals play an integral role in your email design. Not only do visuals break up the copy to make the email more readable, but the right visuals should help advance the message. Sounds intimidating? Here are some fundamentals that will help you design emails that match your brand and message.
Choosing the right colours
Before you randomly choose colours that appeal to you, consider the power that colours have in communicating an emotion. Colour influences your readers' perceptions. Psychologists found that most people form their opinion about a company solely based on their colours. Each colour communicates a different set of emotions and moods that you can incorporate into your email design.
For example, red elicits passion (think Valentine's Day), yellow communicates warmth and green signifies health and peace. Whatever mood you are trying to convey, stay single-minded and keep it focused on one emotion.
Below is a colour chart to help you get started.
Beyond setting the mood of your email newsletter design, colour can be used to help draw the eye to certain content or make things easy to find. One technique is to use highlighted blocks of colour to make the content pop. By placing colour around your text, your email becomes much easier to read. Finally, if you are choosing a colour, it is a good idea to find a palette that matches. You want to make sure your colours are compatible so you don't distract readers.
Choosing the right imagery The right imagery can take your content to another level of engagement. Though using texts in the right typography can get your message across, pictures can communicate an idea or a story within seconds. Your images hold a lot of influence.
The first job of the image is to grab the reader's attention. Select images that complement or even enhance your text. The reader is expecting to learn something specific based on the image. Make sure the messaging delivers on the image.
For example, if you use an image of a pie chart with specific data points, the body copy should explain or tell the story of the data. Sounds obvious, but many make the mistake of adding visuals that don’t relate to the main message.
5 design tricks to accentuate your emails
Our customers have sent millions of email marketing campaigns, which gives us a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't. We've identified 5 design hacks that can improve engagement.
Please use these tactics in moderation. Too much of anything loses its appeal and could have a negative effect.
1. Animated GIFs Let's face it, GIFs are fun. For email marketing, GIFs also play a more functional role. Instead of overloading your newsletters with multiple images that slow download times, a GIF can help consolidate images to tell a story. Whether you have several products to feature or you need to explain something complex, a GIF gives you the freedom to be creative and fit it all into the email. You can make your own GIFs with tools like GIFMaker or GIPHY.
2. Videos
Video gives you the ability to tell a more dynamic story and engage your audience. The problem with video is that most emails won't accept video files.
3. Background patterns
If you don't have any eye-catching images to include in your emails, consider using background patterns or images. Interesting backgrounds will help the content pop.
4. Directional cues
A directional cue is a graphic that points the reader to a specific direction. Whether you want them to see a promotional deal or the call-to-action button, using directional cues is an effective way to emphasise the desired action. You can use visuals like arrows, lines, pointing fingers, or even an image that leads the eye towards the end goal. Don't overuse directional cues and keep them subtle.
5. Responsive design
More than half of your audience is opening your email on a mobile device, so it makes sense to always be thinking about other devices. Responsive design is a best practice for every email you create. It ensures your subscribers have a positive email experience on any device.
To consider:
1. ALT text Many people forget this, but we recommend you to add ALT texts to all the newsletter images you insert. The ALT text is an alternative text that's displayed when an image file cannot be loaded or when people use screen readers to read your email newsletter. It makes sure that your message still comes across, even when the newsletter design isn't fully displayed. 2. Email footer Sure, it's the end of your email but that doesn't mean the email footer doesn't need to be part of your newsletter design. You'd be surprised at how many readers scroll there. Keep it simple and concise. Most email footers contain the unsubscribe link, email preferences, social media links and contact information. Also, include a “view in browser” link to allow your subscribers to access the email in all its glory on their browser. You can add the browser link in the header of footer (or both).