Email Design

This is the first messaging your subscriber sees when your emails hit their inbox, so they need to be engaging to encourage a strong open rate. Arguably, these are more important even than content within the email, as it’s rather hard to market your products if your emails aren't opened! Keep subject lines bold, succinct, and personalised. Inboxes automatically pull in the first line of text from your email as preview text if you don’t set it - don’t let this be your header categories or privacy policy wording.

Personalising your subject lines or preview texts with specific data is a surefire way to genuinely pique interest. Seeing your first name in your inbox automatically makes you more likely to click, and dynamic tags can also be used to pull in product names of items viewed or added to cart in order to create a sense of relevant urgency. Use them, but the trick is to not overdo this.

Your company name may differ from how you refer to yourself socially. Refrain from including ‘Ltd’ or other business terminology in your sender name. You want to arrive in inboxes sounding friendly and contactable as possible! You might even want to consider including a personal name too, for example ‘Lauren from Eastside Co’. This would prove beneficial for high end, luxury brands where consumers value significantly their personal relationship with the brand, or for small start-ups that want to communicate on a personal level.

Your aim across all emails, regardless of content, is to present them in such a way that they are undeniably your brand. Your subscribers will quickly come to expect a certain layout, functionality and style to your communications, so it's essential to invest time and resources into getting these right. Once your elements are set, they can be saved for future campaigns. This affords you freedom and flexibility to focus on your content. 

Whether we’re talking about campaigns, a welcome series or post-purchase flow, templates give structure and format to your messaging. They're a visual reminder of your brand, so don't need to be complicated, just considered. In addition to your key message, they provide:

Use high resolution imagery - To demonstrate quality in your brand, this is incredibly important. If producing this content is outside of your capability, give our creative team a shout! From product imagery to lifestyle shoots, they can work with you to create adaptable creative content. 

Minimal text - The days when subscribers were happy to receive a lengthy newsletter are gone. Most likely, they are expecting striking imagery - a picture really is worth a thousand words.

One main call to action - This is how your subscribers will engage with your message: it's the button in your email they want to click to find out more, or to buy the products you’ve just told them about. It’s important it is stylistically clear and easy to find. One key message within your email copy only needs one CTA.