5 impactful ways to level up your email marketing designs

Turning to templates might seem the most prudent option when it comes to delivering eye-catching emails, especially when deadlines are fast approaching. However, as I’ve seen from working on thousands of campaigns for clients in every industry, bespoke email campaign designs are always more beneficial in the long term. 

From including interactive elements in your layouts to finding the right font, here are five things you can do to ensure you create every email campaign with optimal performance in mind.

1. Make it from scratch

Displaying your offers using stock-standard templates is tempting. There is a catch, though. What you save in time and money now doesn’t compare to what you’ll lose out on in a few month’s time.

Consider this: If you use templates, your competitors and similar brands will also use them. Your campaigns become indistinguishable from what others are sending out and your brand’s unique voice is nowhere to be found. 

Even if a template is perfectly suited to a specific product category, another brand in the same category is also likely to use it, which means you have no chance of standing out in your subscriber’s inboxes. Audiences are observant — they’re likely to notice how similar your look is to other brands.

Bespoke layouts give you the freedom to include elements like larger CTA buttons and eye-catching badges and stickers, all of which can increase engagement. What’s more, creating custom designs allows you to design desktop and mobile layouts separately, ensuring that each version is 100% responsive to give subscribers the best possible experience of your brand.

Dig deeper: Beyond ‘click here:’ 4 rules for better email CTAs

2. Remember, GIFs are great (however you pronounce them)

Want emails that pop? Integrating animated images into your layout will turn any humdrum email into a marketing event. These are most effective when placed in your campaign’s hero or header section. I recommend keeping your GIFs simple and clean. This way, they’ll draw attention without distracting from the messaging. 

In keeping with the idea of “show, don’t tell,” you can add playable GIFs to your email to show recipients precisely what to expect from your product or service. Just be wary of using links that send customers to YouTube or another site. There’s only one place they should be heading, and that’s straight to your primary website. 

3. Keep legibility ‘font’ and center

Designers spend more time thinking about fonts each day than the average person does in their entire lifetime. And the reasoning behind this is understandable — you want your email text to be as easy to read as possible. But it’s not as simple as avoiding one set of fonts or settling on another. Just as any brand has a unique voice, each font conveys a different feel and tone and finding the perfect font for your brand can be tricky.

You can also consider using different fonts for your titles and body content. Bold eye-catching options like Corbert Condensed Italic and Audrey work well for headers, while easy-to-read, simpler styles with a lot of “flow” are best suited to body content. It’s a technique employed by the world’s best brands and one that you should implement in your email campaigns.

Whichever font you choose, legibility is most important — people can only buy what you’re selling if they can read your offer.

4. Hue can do it

Using specific colors in your email marketing campaigns can have a huge impact on how subscribers respond to your brand. Certain hues can trigger specific emotions, which can influence whether a subscriber makes a purchase or not.

Another key aspect of using color is simplicity. Keep your design to the point and avoid overloading your audience with a jumbled rainbow of hues — they definitely won’t appreciate it.

It’s always worth A/B testing various colors to see what your subscribers respond to best. This can include aspects of your layout like the color of the CTA button, background color and combinations of your secondary colors. 

Once you’ve performed a few different tests, you can start implementing the results to optimize your email campaigns. 

You also shouldn’t be scared of white or single-color spaces — they can effectively guide the eye to important details while adding just the right amount of balance. Although this does come with a caveat: Your product on a blank background with black text is as minimalist as it gets, but does it show subscribers what your product does or how to use it? There’s a fine line between minimalist and vague.

This brings me to my last point.

5. Strive for balance

It sounds obvious, yet balance is often overlooked in email marketing design. When you look at effective email campaigns, you’ll notice a clever use of negative space, which allows the reader to take in the most pertinent information. 

You’ll also see a good juxtaposition between images and text, where one supports and enhances the other. Honest, easy-to-grasp phrasing and a striking, beautiful image are all you need to drive your message home. 

A beautifully balanced campaign is also one that, without even saying so, appears more sincere and authentic than an email where text and imagery are fighting for a subscriber’s attention. A good layout isn’t just more appealing to the reader. It also shows your brand in a better light. 

Better results by design

As professional email marketers who build and send thousands of campaigns a year, Alex and his team have seen firsthand the difference that thoughtful, custom design can make. Not only will it help your brand stand out, but a good email design is far more likely to get you the click rates and revenue you want.

As the saying goes, “It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it.” How you present your products, services and promotions is a huge part of the message you’re sending your subscribers. It may take more time and effort, but good design is always worth the investment.

Dig deeper: How persuasive email design can influence the ecommerce customer journey