If you want your emails to get noticed, opened, read, and clicked, you need good email design. Here are seven best practices that will help you craft emails like a marketing pro.
Most marketers will tell you they often spend more time on their subject line than any other part of the email, and for good reason: Your subject line is the first thing a user sees and it’s competing with everything else in their inbox — nailing the subject line is the crucial first step to getting someone to engage with your email.
Here are a few tried-and-true tips for strong subject lines:
Keep it clear and concise. Users tend to scroll past vague or verbose subject lines. You can stand out by keeping your subject line short, sweet, and pointed. Leave no room for guesswork, and be clear about what you’re sharing in the email. A subject line like “25% off my new digital course” will undoubtedly perform better than “A great deal for online learners.”
Share a valuable (and, preferably, proprietary) insight. We’re hardwired to wonder what information we’re missing out on. Sharing a statistic, forecast, or trend can pique a user’s curiosity and prompt them to open your email. The same goes for advice or ideas from industry leaders or subject matter experts. Bonus points if you’ve got a data set or interview no one else has — proprietary information helps you position yourself as an authority in the minds of your audience and thus stand apart from your competitors.
Touch on your audience’s most pressing pain point. Nothing sparks us to action like finding a possible solution to what’s bothering us most. If you’ve done your homework, you know what’s keeping your readers up at night. Use your subject line to let them know you can ease their fears or solve their problems and you’ll see your open rates skyrocket.
Don’t be afraid to add some personality. You don’t need to sound like you’re “all business, all the time” to achieve your marketing goals. Without straying too far from your brand’s voice and tone, challenge yourself to have a little fun with your emails. Can you share a humorous or controversial take? Would your audience appreciate a relevant GIF or meme? Test to find out what tickles their fancy.
2. Captivate your reader with a strong hook or lede
Once your subject line has done its job and teed up the email, don’t disappoint the reader with drab content. Craft an opening that will get them excited to come along for the ride. Journalists call this a lede, marketers call it a hook—whatever you call it, just make sure it’s downright riveting.
Luke Ferris, Contributing Editor at Foundr, says, "Engaging hooks, ledes, pitches, and pickup lines all need to quickly help your audience understand why you're relevant and why they should stick with you." He likens the first few lines of an email to the opening scene in a movie: “You want to absorb readers into your story so they get pulled into the narrative and don't click away."
3. Make your email easy to read
Even the most valuable content will be overlooked if it’s cluttered or complicated. Artful email design helps the user easily navigate, comprehend, and take action.
Here are a few pointers for providing a top-notch email experience:
Aid reader comprehension by breaking up text into short paragraphs of 3-5 lines. This is especially useful on mobile so readers can easily keep their place while scrolling.
If you’re sending out a newsletter, use subheads to summarize each section (and help skimmers spot the sections they’re most interested in).
Use color and styling to make links and buttons stand out.
Use gifs instead of videos to ensure that your whole message is conveyed clearly. Many email clients won’t load videos but most will render gifs.
4. Use consistent branding
We can recognize the world’s biggest brands long before we see a logo — Coca-Cola, Nike, and Apple maintain a distinct look and feel throughout their marketing. This consistency prompts familiarity, and familiarity prompts trust. When paired against an unfamiliar option, we’ll choose the brand we know time and time again.
Use this concept to your advantage and create a visual identity for your brand. The colors, fonts, and imagery you choose should reflect and reinforce your brand’s overall voice. If your brand is quirky and carefree, bold colors and playful cartoon imagery may make sense. If your brand takes more of a luxe approach, a sophisticated neutral palette and swirling subhead fonts may suit you well. And so on…
5. Improve conversion with calls to action
Many a marketing asset fails to convert because someone overlooked the call to action. A user’s logical next step may seem obvious to you, but it may not be so apparent to them. Eliminate the guesswork by clearly prompting the user to move forward in their journey.
And if you really want to rev up conversion, tie your call to action to a value proposition or ideal outcome.
Here are some examples of value-focused calls to action:
Sign up now and get 25% off your first month
Schedule a no-obligation call for 30 minutes of free advice
Download our report to see the 2024 industry forecast
6. Don’t forget accessibility
You don’t want to leave out any part of your audience. Incorporate accessibility best practices into your email design to ensure users with disabilities like vision impairment can still read and enjoy your emails.
Provide a more inclusive experience by following these best practices:
Assistive technology devices like screen readers often can’t decipher tables, so avoid them if you can—opt for columns or lists instead.
Use a high degree of contrast between text and background colors. (Pro tip: Use a color contrast analyzer to see if your email passes the test.)
Use sans-serif fonts like Arial, Helvetica, or Tahoma, and use a font size of at least 11-12pt.
Add alt text to embedded images so the meaning or information contained within them can still be understood when the images aren’t displayed.
7. Preview your email on desktop and mobile before hitting send
Never underestimate the power of quality assurance. Even the best marketers have forgotten to update a link or add a call to action. And mobile stacking can often cause an email that looks lovely on desktop to look a little odd on a cell phone.
Before you send that unchecked email to hundreds or thousands of people, send a test to a few colleagues with fresh eyes and ask them to thoroughly review it and point out anything that may need fixing.
Use this quick quality assurance checklist:
Is the subject line clear and concise?
Does the email start with a strong hook or lede?
Is the email easy to read?
Does the look and feel of the email reflect your brand?
Did you update or include all relevant links?
Are call-to-action buttons obvious and easy to click?
Have you incorporated accessibility best practices?
Does the email render well in both light and dark mode? (Pro tip: While survey results vary, it’s estimated that 50-70% of users employ dark mode.)
Did you remember to include contact information and an unsubscribe link in the footer?
We’ve got one more tip for you: Choose an email marketing software that can guide you every step of the way.
SendGrid has pre-built, customizable templates that enable you to create polished, professional emails in minutes. And you won’t need to hire a graphic designer or empty out your wallet.
