10 Steps to Master Email Marketing Design (+ Best Examples)

In this highly digitalized world we live in, email marketing design is one of the core vitals for your business strategy. However, designing an email campaign is easier said than done. 

It requires a lot of time, effort, technical knowledge, and design skills. Whether you’re just starting out, or you already have some experience, we’ve got you covered in your email marketing design endeavors.

To help you foster and put into effect your email design ideas, we’ll share with you the top 10 proven email marketing design techniques, backed up by some real-life best email examples.

Before we get started, let’s first explore the basics of email marketing design.

What Is Email Marketing Design?

Email marketing design is the process of thoughtfully creating and designing an email that will grab the attention and interest of your target audience and current subscribers. This includes how you place your text, images, CTA buttons, and other visual elements. All these in combination will have a direct impact on the readability of your email – whether it’s easy to read, scannable, and catchy. At the end of the day, your email design is one of the most important components of your approach to email marketing.

Why Is Email Marketing Design Important?

A well-designed email will help you not only catch your readers’ attention, but also engage your subscribers, and eventually increase your conversion rates.

Nowadays, people don’t spend much time reading emails, but rather scan through your information. That’s why email marketing design is of utmost importance for your email marketing strategy.

Let’s dive into how to design emails that grab attention and boost sales.

How to Design a Great Marketing Email

As mentioned, creating a successful email marketing design is not an easy task. Here are some email design best practices that will help you greatly.

1. Start Using an Email Marketing Platform

Using an email marketing platform is a smart approach no matter whether you’re a beginner or more experienced in email marketing design. Either way, it will make your life easier and help you leverage all email marketing benefits for your business by saving you time, effort, and resources.

Here are the main features and capabilities that you need to look for in an email marketing tool:

• Templates & Layouts OR Drag-and-Drop Editor 

Most email marketing tools offer ready-to-use templates and customizable layouts, and an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor. With any of these, you can create an appealing email marketing design in just a few clicks and with ready-to-go email template ideas. You’ll be able to manage colors, fonts, headings, images, and other similar elements. On top of that, an email marketing tool allows you to craft a design that’s responsive on various devices.

• Emails Personalizations

An email marketing platform lets you personalize your emails with dynamic content, based on subscriber data. By using their first name in the subject line or body text, for example, or leveraging other information that they’ve provided you with, you’ll be able to better engage with your subscribers.

• Statistics and Analytics

Another important option is the ability to track email marketing metrics from your campaigns. This is extremely important for analyzing results and optimizing your future email campaigns.

• Automations 

An email marketing tool should allow you to perform email automation, ensuring that your beautifully designed emails reach the right audience at the right time without manual intervention. For example, if a new contact has subscribed to your newsletter, they need to receive a welcome email from you that can be an automated process.

Are you on the lookout for the right email marketing tool for your business? Check out SiteGround’s email marketing platform that offers premium features and functionalities to help you grow your business.

2. Be Consistent with Your Brand Guidelines

As a rule of thumb, your email marketing design should be in line with your brand guidelines. When the readers open your email, they should be able to recognize that it was sent by your business. In other words, your marketing email design should be branded.

Here are the main techniques you can use to achieve that:

• Use the same colors and fonts that you’ve implemented on your website and via other marketing materials.
• Mind your tone of voice and word choice by making them consistent and recognizable across your emails.
• Incorporate your logo and have it link to your website, and include links to your social media channels.

These will help you raise brand awareness, boost your lead generation, and eventually increase your sales.

3. Choose Your Email Marketing Layout

One of the key elements of your email marketing design is the email marketing layout that you choose for your campaign.

An email layout represents the structure of your email – the way you organize your email’s elements, such as texts, CTA buttons, headings, bullet points, images, or videos, so that they look aesthetically appealing.

There are different types of layouts. Based on the user’s reading pattern, layouts can include the following:

• Inverted pyramid – the most important information is at the top to catch the reader’s attention, and then it gradually narrows down the focus towards your CTA. Here’s an example:

• Zig-zag – follows the left to right reading pattern, where the most important information is on the top horizontal line, followed by the diagonal that leads readers to your copy, and the bottom horizontal line gives them the final copy and CTA. Here’s an example:

• F-pattern – the most essential information is at the top, followed by less important info on the shorter left sides below, including a CTA at the bottom. Here’s an example:

Let’s imagine that you need an email newsletter design, for example. A typical newsletter would use a one-column layout or two-column layout, which are perfect for introducing products or services, or listing articles and case studies. On the other hand, promotional emails would benefit mostly from an inverted pyramid layout, where you can have an appealing visual for your offer, followed by an engaging description of your promotion, including a CTA button at the bottom.

4. Write a Catchy Subject Line and Preview Text

The next step of your email marketing design is your subject line and preview text.

Your email’s subject line is the first thing that your recipients will see in their inboxes. That’s why it needs to be catchy, valuable, and informative. Let’s expand a bit on these characteristics of your subject line:

First, it needs to grab the reader’s attention. You can achieve this by adding their first name, asking them a question, using an actionable verb, or adding an emoji.

Second, your subject line should bring value to the reader, to spark their interest and desire to open your email. To address this, keep your subject line short and simple, yet smart and subtle enough.

Lastly, use your subject line to give your readers an idea of what to expect in the body of your email. Consider your subject line a short summary of your email content. Remember that this is your first and last chance to have your email opened.

Here are a few examples of catchy subject lines:

Next comes your preview text that appears right next to your subject line and is a preview of your email content. Have your preview text complement your subject line and still build curiosity in your readers. It’s also essential that you keep it under 50 characters, so that it’s fully displayed on most devices.

5. Add Call to Action Button(s)

One of the most crucial parts of your email marketing design is your CTA button. It should appeal to your email readers and make them want to click on it. The CTA button will bring them one step closer to converting – signing up, making a purchase, or another desired action. Actually, not using strong CTAs is one of the absolute worst email marketing mistakes you could make.

It’s crucial to consider where to put your CTA button, what copy and design it should have, and if you need more than one CTA. 

If you want to maximize the benefits of email marketing, focus on these three key guidelines for your CTA buttons:

• Incorporate short, concise, and actionable copy
• Use colors that contrast with the email background
• Make it well outlined and shaped to be easily clickable

Here’s an example for some email design inspiration:

In the example above, the first CTA is in the form of a play button for a video overview of their product, followed by a classic CTA button prompting readers to watch the video. The brand has three more CTA buttons after each section, in a logical order. The first one is enticing readers to install their product, the second one is a push to upgrade to one of their more advanced plans, and the last one is a CTA to join their community, which is a win-win for both the brand and the reader.

6. Include Visual Elements

When talking about email marketing design, there’s one thing that’s a must-have – visual elements. Don’t hesitate to incorporate images, GIFs, videos, or even emojis in your email body. Get creative and complement your content with appropriate visual elements. 

For example, if you’re launching a new product, you definitely need to include its image. Or let’s say that you’ve updated an existing service – show how happy your clients are with it by including a pie chart with their reviews. Then why not add an emoji in your subject line to generate more clicks?

However, there’s one strict rule to follow in regards to all visual elements you’re using: Do not overload your email with visuals. This can have a negative impact on your engagement and conversion rates, as too many visuals can annoy your audience or distract them from the main desired action. 

Here is one of the best email design examples:

7. Personalize Your Email Content

To make your email marketing design as engaging for your audience as possible, make sure to personalize the email content for them. That way every reader feels more appreciated and seen, as the message they get is tailored to their personal preferences.

Segmenting your audience is the first step towards successful personalization. You can divide your subscribers into different groups, based on their interests, purchase history, and their stage in the customer journey. Then, tailor your email content for the different audiences that you’ve identified. Remember to also send your messages at the right time for your groups, based on their location and time zone.

If all these best email design guidelines feel overwhelming, don’t worry. We’re taking one of the most difficult tasks off your shoulders – writing the perfect email content. Our AI professionals have already prepared a guide full of free ChatGPT email prompts that you can use to create engaging emails that convert into sales. Download them from the link below to get you started:

8. Incorporate Your Signature

Another smart way to raise brand awareness and increase click-through rates is to incorporate a signature into your email campaigns. This way the email seems more personal, just as if an actual person had sent it. 

Make sure your signature includes not only the first and last name, but also the job title and contact information of the person who’s going to sign the email, resulting in a more professional email design. This could be anyone that’s relevant to your audience. 

For example, if you’re sending welcome emails, you can use the CEO’s signature, or if it’s a promotional email, someone from your sales team can sign the email.

In terms of design, ensure that the signature is appealing. One way to achieve this is including a picture of the person that’s signing the email. You can also incorporate a link to social media professional profiles, e.g. a LinkedIn profile. Here’s an example:

9. Use a Mobile Responsive Design

Using a mobile-friendly email marketing design is perhaps one of the most overlooked email marketing tips. 

In 2024, it has been estimated that between 50% and 60% of email opens come from mobile devices. It’s a huge percentage that shouldn’t be overlooked. That’s why it’s essential to focus your efforts on crafting a mobile-friendly email marketing design.

When your email design is mobile responsive, it’s made to fit different screens and will be visible on various mobile devices without compromising user experience.

One way to ensure that your email is mobile friendly is to use ready-to-go templates that are optimized for mobile. Another way to make sure that your users have the best experience possible is to test the preview of your email on mobile devices, and fix any issues that you notice.

Most email marketing platforms offer both templates and preview options to spare you some time and technicalities.

10. A/B Test Your Email Design Ideas

Now that you have all that information, you probably have many email marketing design ideas. There’s no need to choose just one design and forget about the rest. 

What you can do is perform A/B tests. In fact, doing an A/B test helps you determine which elements of your design work best, which ones need improvement, and how to optimize them.

For example, you might want to test an email graphic design versus a more simple email design to figure out which one works better for your target audience.

Here are the main design elements that you can test:

• CTA button – experiment with the placement of your CTA button, whether above the fold will get you more click-through rates, or the bottom position.
• Images – test different image types to figure out which ones resonate best with your audience and drive more engagement.
• Content design – strategically create, organize, and place your email content in a way that will make people read your emails.

Once you have A and B versions of your email marketing design, you can send version A to 50% of your subscribers, version B to the other 50%, and then check the results in a couple of days. Analyze the data you get and optimize your future email designs accordingly. Don’t rely on assumptions – use this data to find out for yourself which is the most effective email design for your business and audience. Remember to regularly A/B test in order to be in line with the latest email marketing design trends.

Convert Better with Effective Email Marketing Design

Now that you know how to design a marketing email, you can go ahead and apply these tips in your next email campaign. 

For maximum results, build your next email with the SiteGround Email Marketing tool, which offers everything you need to send successful email campaigns.

Also, don’t forget to let us know in the comments below what email design worked best for you.