Complete guide to email design basics and best practices

“If it were easy, everyone would do it” - Loki Laufeyson

And email design is definitely not easy.

That's why we have spent precious time writing these articles for you, to make the design process easy for you.

Email Design Basics

First let's start with the basics of email design

An email design is a process of creating and arranging different email elements that resonate with your audience. In today’s time, email design has become crucial to the success of an email marketing campaign of an organization. Email design matters because of the following reason: better tracking of email metrics such as click-through rates. With Mailmodo, you can create a variety of email layouts such as: Single layout, Double layout, Triple layout, Tablets, Lists with icons, and Tablets with icons.

Then let's move on to all the different ways you can arrange your design elements

Email Design Layout

An email design layout is how images, content, CTA buttons, etc., are arranged in an email. It is meant to guide the viewer through the email and show them what they should see in order to read it. This orderly placement of information is known as the email design layouts. An email layout helps the readers consume the content of your email with ease and in the correct order. This article will discuss the different layouts used and how they work for different types of emails and their end goals.

Email design for HTML emails

HTML emails are formatted in HTML and inline CSS, using which email developers can incorporate formatting, layout, hyperlinks, etc., in the email. Plain text emails are less likely to get detected as spam because they do not contain malicious HTML code. HTML emails load faster as they contain different components and thus take longer to load. Not all components of emails render as expected and each of them renders them differently depending on the screen size, depending upon the size, size, color, and size of the email page. HTML email files are not supported on every email client and each email client renders HTML emails differently.

Email gifs to spice up your emails

GIFs are a bitmap image format (like PNG or JPEG) created by CompuServe in 1987. They are short voiceless animations created from video clips or images played in a sequence repeatedly every few seconds. GIFs can be a replacement for embedded videos, which are much smaller in file size compared to video, which makes them load faster and provide a good customer experience. They can also help guide the viewer's eyes towards the CTA placed below or near it, which helps increase the click-through rate. We'll tell you everything you need to know to start using GIFs in your email.

Dark mode emails - design for sensitive vampires

Dark mode in emails is a setting in email clients which displays the email's components of text, icons, and UI elements as light-colored on a dark background. The dark background in dark mode minimizes the amount of blue light and screen glare, making it easier for people to read your email even in low--light environments. It's up to you now as a business to create dark mode-friendly emails to help create a pleasant experience for your subscribers when they read your emails in the dark mode.

Email accessibility - design for everyone

Email accessibility is the practice of ensuring that your emails can be read and understood even by subscribers who are specially-abled. Email accessibility also becomes relevant when certain portions of the email become inaccessible due to technical compatibility issues. This guide will tell you everything about email accessibility and how to implement it. We will also discuss the best practices for email accessibility with a deep dive into different conditions to consider. The World Wide Wide Web Consortium (W.C) formed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) It includes the WCAG for global accessibility.

Email Design Best Practices

A well-designed email is not just about visual appeal; it has to be functional and help you connect with your audience, sell them your products, and improve your email marketing ROI. There are many components of an email that have to be designed appropriately to get favorable results. In this blog article, we talk about some email design best practices covering all the different components in an email. Make sure your email design is on-brand with the colors and fonts used in the email cohesive with the brand's visual identity.

Tips for holiday email marketing

Start your holiday email marketing campaign early with early bird offers for Black Friday, Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, and Christmas, nearly 50 days in advance. Use motifs and design elements related to the holiday to incorporate motifs, colors, and other design elements specific to the holidays and make it work for your industry. Make the design responsive for all devices and make sure that your website is optimized for mobile users. Set up automation based on user activity where the customers can check-out offers and complete their orders.

Email Design Examples

With a proper design, you can make the email easy to understand even with a quick scan, direct them to CTA, and achieve your email campaign goals. But it can be hard to choose which kind of design is suitable for your business and how to get promising results from your campaign using email design. In this article, there are 11 examples of email designs for different industries to help you discover the right design for your email marketing needs. These 11 email design examples include real estate, e-commerce, home and interiors, finance, education and fashion.

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