The Dos and Don’ts of Email Marketing Design

This guide will help you understand what you should and shouldn’t do when it comes to email marketing design.

As we already know, email marketing is one of the most powerful tools for digital marketing. Yet if you’re not optimising your email campaigns for conversion you could be missing out on valuable leads and revenue for your business.

Firstly, decide what kind of email you want to send. Is it a newsletter? Marketing offer? Announcement? Every email should have one clear message, relevant to your campaign, to increase the chance of its success.

The Dos

Entice Your Audience

Start with the subject line. It’s the first thing your audience will read and is the difference between the email even being opened or not, so it needs to be tantalising.

The body of the email should be brief and intriguing. Don’t be afraid to use online content writing resources to help with the quality of the content. Personalising the email to your audience will help entice your audience. This might look like using their first name or including relevant content, as Spotify has done with their cosmic playlists adapted to different horoscopes.

“Create a hierarchy where the most pertinent information is at the top. Then break the rest into bite-size chunks, which helps the time-poor readers nibble at what they need to know.”

Perfect the Layout

A good rule of thumb is the “inverted pyramid” method. The largest section of the pyramid is the attention-grabbing top section, which works to build anticipation. This funnels down to the point of the pyramid, which is the CTA (call to action) at the bottom. Everything is working towards that click.

A busy or crowded email is unpleasant to read. Remember: white space is your friend. Something you may not have considered is the alignment. When using less text and a handful of images, align centre or use columns. If there is more information to consume, align left.

Make It Easy to Consume

It should be really easy for the reader to understand what the email is about, so create a hierarchy where the most pertinent information is at the top. Then break the rest into bite-size chunks, which helps the time-poor readers nibble at what they need to know.

Make your CTA clear, obvious, and with expectations. A good example is: “update your details for 20% off!”. It’s direct, enticing because of the discount, and clear about what needs to be done to receive it. In order to save space, include links out that your customers can follow if they are interested in learning more, like to your website.

“If you’re not optimising your email campaigns for conversion you could be missing out on valuable leads and revenue for your business.”

Put Your Stamp on It

It should be easy to tell who the email has come from, so make your branding obvious. Pick a colour palette that represents your brand. A clean palette with fewer colours will help your email look sleek and allow key assets to stand out.

If readers want to unsubscribe from your email, let them! If they’re interested and want to know more about you, make it easy! Be sure to include an unsubscribe link, physical address, and company name.

The Don’ts

Don’t be lazy with coding. It’s imperative that your email is easy on the eyes. Unfamiliar with responsive or hybrid coding? Try an email marketing platform like MailChimp to help craft your emails.
You want the email to load quickly and look good. If it doesn’t load, image alt-text is what the user will see, so don’t forget to include useful alt-text and suitable file sizes.
Be careful using video in an email— it’s clunky and takes forever to load. Instead, include an image from the video and add a dynamic “play” button that acts as a link to the video.
Don’t distract from the message with excessive images, copy, or buttons.
Have you optimised for mobile? This is a big don’t forget, as most people will open emails on their mobile.

Email marketing can be difficult to nail. There’s a lot to consider if you want fully optimised emails for a higher chance of conversion. Rather than spending time designing, strategising, and managing your business’ email marketing, let the experts do it for you.