Email marketing design: A guide with effective examples

Key Takeaways
  • Responsive designs ensure that email displays well across devices where most users can engage.
  • Personalization increases email copy's relevance and helps get higher engagement and better user experiences.
  • For a better visual hierarchy in email marketing design, you can use headings, sub-headings, and high-quality images to help with information.
  • The minimalist email marketing template design with proper white space efficiently reduces clutter, helping users focus on the message and improving readability.

In the USA alone, over ten billion emails are sent daily. So, how can you make your email stand out from all your competitors’ emails? The answer, though, lies in your business’s effective email marketing design.  

A well-designed email captures the recipient’s attention faster and keeps the message clear and more actionable.  

In this blog post, we will explore the essential elements of email marketing design templates, visuals, and mobile optimization to ensure that emails leave with the impacts and impressions they deserve. 

What is email marketing design and why it matters? 

It is a process of creating visual and structural elements for an email to make it more engaging, easy to read, and appealing to the recipients, thereby attracting more engagement.  

The email marketing design plays a significant role in ensuring the recipients not only open but also interact with your content.  

The main elements of email marketing template design are colors, typography, images, and other interactive elements like animated GIFs and buttons.  

The main reasons why your email design matters are:  

  • A well-designed email grabs more attention to ensure recipients do not overlook your message.  
  • Your email is easily recognizable and trustworthy when you use consistent logos, fonts, and colors.  
  • Interactive attributes like buttons, animations, and others increase the target audience for better engagement rates.  
  • Guiding the users visually and maintaining email design can help turn casual readers into customers. 

How to design an email marketing campaign? 

Do you know that 61% of customers spend eight seconds viewing an email? That’s why email marketing campaign design should be proper and involve strategic steps that ensure your emails are engaging, targeted, and quickly achieve their goals.

For that, let’s understand the various designing tactics that should be taken care of with email marketing designing: 

How to design an email marketing campaign?

1. Set clear goals 

Firstly, it is crucial to know the purpose of the email marketing campaign:  

  • Is it to promote the product?  
  • To drive better traffic to your website  
  • Re-engaging the customers  

Setting the SMART goals (Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) is better to help guide the campaign.  

2. Build a targeted email list 

The opt-in and opt-out options must be included in your email subscriber list. Therefore, the subscribers who have opted in must receive regular communications from your side.  

Avoid adding members to the purchase list, often leading to poor engagement and higher unsubscribe rates. Instead, focus on growing your list organically through sign-ins from social media accounts, websites, and special offers.

3. Segment your audience 

Divide the email list into segments based on demographics, past purchases, and engagement levels. This will allow spending on personalized and relevant content in each group, helping improve the open and click-through rates.

4. Craft engaging content  

Create emails that attract the audience’s attention and resonate with them. Always try to write a catchy subject line with engaging and concise email content that grabs attention. REMEMBER! – to add an interactive CTA.

5. Mobile responsive designs 

Always create mobile-friendly email marketing design templates, as now most emails are read on mobile devices. Use a better mobile device responsive design with clearer fonts, and make sure the CTA is easy to tap into for smaller screens.

6. Test your emails 

Before the launch of your email marketing campaign, always test different versions. The A/B testing mainly lets you see the subject lines, images, or CTAs to perform their best email marketing design testing. It helps in optimizing your emails for maximum engagement.

7. Track email performance

When the campaign is live, try tracking email marketing KPIs such as open rates, CTRs, and conversion rates. Such data can help you understand its results and guide you toward improvements for future campaigns.

9 Email marketing design best practices to follow

The global email marketing revenue is projected to increase by 18.9 billion by 2028. Here is a breakdown of the 9 best practices for email marketing design to help ensure your emails are engaging, effective, and drive better results for your business: 

Email marketing design best practices

1) Interactive subject line  

No matter how creative your email marketing design is, if its content, like the subject’s, is better marked, then the recipients will surely ignore your email. 

That is why using compelling, curiosity-driven language or asking questions to spark an interaction can only grab the prospect’s attention. 

A good subject line should be short and actionable and hint at what to expect from the email next.

2) An attention-seeking pre-header 

After writing an interactive subject line, give a snippet that appears next to the subject line. It is a valuable opportunity to build up more curiosity. 

The snippets provide context or tease what to expect in the email. This increases email open rates by giving recipients more reasons to engage. 

Interesting read: Cold Email Open Rates: An All-Inclusive Guide

3) Be concise 

‘Less is more’.

This applies to creating engaging and precise email content. Besides, avoid overwhelming your readers with information. 

To improve your email engagement rate, stick to the primary message and convey your point in short, clear sentences.

4) Keep the email on the name of brand 

Every email sent should reinforce the brand’s identity better. Consistently using your brand’s colors, logos, and tone can build recognition and trust. Using an AI logo generator ensures that your brand’s logo is always professional and on-point, even if you don’t have a design team

It helps the recipients to immediately recognize the email, which increases the likelihood of opening and engagement.   

5) Layout to enhance your email experience 

A well-structured email marketing design can make your email easy to navigate using headers, subheadings, and bullet points.  

Also, ensure that the key message or CTA is “above the fold” so that recipients can interact without scrolling. 

6) Personalize every line of the email 

Email personalization can go beyond just naming the recipient and tailoring content based on their preferences, past purchases, or behavior. Personalized emails are more relevant and significantly boost engagement and conversion rates. 

7) Create unique content also use emojis 

Avoid generic content in emails, as it can increase bounce rates. Instead, focus on providing helpful information like exclusive offers or unique insights in email marketing campaigns. This will keep your campaign fresh and engaging for the recipients. 

Emojis can add a personality to your email, making it feel more friendly and professional. When used appropriately, emojis can make subject lines and content more engaging. However, don’t overuse it as it might feel unprofessional to the recipient’s receiving emails. 

8) Add CTA & unsubscribe button 

The calls to action (CTA) should be clear, actionable, and easy to find. Use buttons rather than text links and ensure your CTA stands out. 

Using phrases like “Shop now,” “Get started,” or “Learn more” works well, but ensure they align with the email goals. 

A clear and accessible unsubscribe button is essential for every email you send to ensure compliance and a better user experience. This shows respect for your audience’s preferences and can help maintain a healthy and engaged email list. 

9) A/B testing 

Before emailing the entire list, test the variations to see what works best for you. This includes testing subject lines, layouts, CTAs, and visuals. A/B testing helps optimize your email design for higher engagement.  

Email marketing design tips for your business 

Here are some of the best email marketing design tips for better campaigns that can help a business improve its campaigns:     

  • Optimize the layout for easy navigation and a clean user experience.   
  • Incorporate visuals like images, GIFs, and videos to enhance email retention.   
  • Ensure a responsive design so emails look great on all devices.  
  • Make your CTAs clear and compelling to drive immediate action.  
  • Always include an unsubscribe button to maintain transparency.   

Following these tips, you can create engaging and effective email marketing designs that resonate with your audience and improve conversion rates. 

10 Best Email Marketing Tips and Practices for 2025!

Top 4 email marketing design tools 

There are four effective email marketing design tools available in the market for your business: 

1) Salesmate 

Salesmate email marketing design

Salesmate can be the best email marketing software, as it offers a variety of key features like creating personalized, engaging, and high-converting messages for recipients: 

  • Drag & drop email builder: It provides an easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder that enables users to customize emails easily. Start from scratch or use pre-built templates to speed up the process. 
  • Smart emails: Personalize, automate, and connect effectively with your emails to take your email campaigns to the next level. 
  • A/B Testing: To optimize your campaigns, Salesmate enables A/B testing, allowing you to test different versions of subject lines, email designs, and CTAs to determine which performs best.  
  • Sequences: Automate all your emails and engage the prospects for better engagement of the business. 
  • Reporting & analytics: It provides detailed performance insights, including open and click-through rates, and boosts conversions, helping you measure the effectiveness of your email designs and make data-driven improvements.  

Salesmate is an ideal business platform to streamline and enhance email marketing designs.  

2) HubSpot 

HubSpot email marketing design

It can help with email marketing design by providing tools that allow users to easily create visually appealing, personalized, and mobile-optimized email campaigns.  

HubSpot also enables you to automate workflows, personalize emails based on user data, and conduct A/B testing to optimize your designs for better performance. 

With built-in analytics, you can track the success of your campaigns and improve based on data-driven insights.  

Features:

  • Drag-and-Drop  
  • Personalization  
  • Email template  
  • Automation  
  • A/B Testing  
  • Analytics 

3) BEEPro 

BEEPro email marketing design

The tool provides a flexible and user-friendly email marketing platform, allowing email marketers and designers to quickly create stunning and responsive emails for business engagement.  

BEEPro also supports advanced collaboration features, making it simple for teams to work together on email designs and maintain brand consistency. The platform emphasizes email previews across devices, ensuring mobile responsiveness.  

Features:

  • Drag-and-Drop  
  • Templates  
  • Collaboration   
  • No Coding   
  • Exportability 

4) EngageBay 

EngageBay email marketing design

EngageBay’s comprehensive CRM suite of tools simplifies the creation of professional, responsive emails. Its drag-and-drop editor allows for quick and easy design while also providing pre-designed templates that can be customized to suit the brand. 

EngageBay also emphasizes automation, allowing users to set up workflows and personalize emails based on customer behavior. 

The platform integrates A/B testing and analytics to optimize campaign performance. 

Features:

  • Drag-and-Drop 
  • Templates 
  • A/B Testing 
  • Analytics

5 Best email marketing design examples 

Here are five excellent email marketing design inspirations for your next campaign that can derive better business: 

1. Surreal 

Surreal email marketing design examples 

This playful and bold email design element by Surreal uses humor to engage its audience. It features a striking image of a cereal bowl and a quirky question to grab attention. 

The vibrant colors and dynamic imagery make the product stand out, while the catchy CTA (call-to-action) encourages immediate interaction. The limited-time offer further enhances urgency and appeal. 

2. Airbnb 

Airbnb email marketing design examples

Airbnb’s email design is clean, minimalistic, and highly engaging. It uses a one-column layout with ample white space and a prominent CTA. 

The hierarchy is spot-on, starting with a creative email marketing design of the headline and following with a strong message. The color contrast and simple design keep the reader focused on the action the company wants them to take. 

3. Grammarly 

Grammarly 

Grammarly’s email campaign tends to provide a personalized experience by showing users why they need to upgrade to the premium plan. 

The pastel color scheme and clean layout are easy on the eyes, making it simpler for users to navigate the content. This email is a great example of upselling by promoting the Premium version through data-driven insights. 

4. Starbucks  

Starbuck email design

Starbucks sends seasonal promotional emails featuring new or limited-time products, such as holiday drinks or summer beverages.  

These emails have a clean design with visually rich images of the drinks, combined with enticing copy highlighting the flavor or unique ingredients.  

For instance, when promoting their popular Pumpkin Spice Latte, the email would feature a warm autumn color palette and images of the drink surrounded by fall-inspired elements. 

5. Thinx 

Thinx email design

Thinx personalizes its email with targeted messaging and a minimalist design. The email focuses on user experience with a personalized greeting and a clear call-to-action. 

The visual hierarchy ensures the key message is conveyed quickly, making it user-friendly and engaging.  

These email marketing design samples highlight the power of personalization, visual appeal, and strong CTAs to boost engagement in email marketing campaigns.   

Top email marketing design trends to look for in 2025 

With various trends in email marketing design taking up the space, let’s study them in detail: 

email marketing design trends

1. Gamification in emails 

Gamification involves adding game-like elements to your emails to engage users. This trend uses quizzes, reward systems, progress bars, and interactive content to encourage recipients to interact with the email. 

Gamified emails are a great way to boost engagement and increase click-through rates. They create a more personalized experience, often leading to higher brand loyalty. 

2. Dark mode compatibility 

With more users opting for dark mode on their devices, ensuring your emails are optimized for light and dark modes is essential. Emails incompatible with dark mode can look broken or hard to read. 

Dark mode design uses neutral or darker backgrounds to ensure fonts and CTAs stand out. This makes emails more accessible and user-friendly across all platforms. 

3. Dynamic and interactive elements 

Interactive content such as polls, sliders, and clickable images within emails is becoming popular. Instead of redirecting users to a landing page, interactive elements allow them to engage directly within the email. 

These features enhance user experience and can lead to higher engagement. Including dynamic content, like personalized recommendations or location-based offers, keeps the email relevant to the reader.  

4. Cinemagraphs in email  

Cinema graphs are still images with subtle, repeating animations. They are eye-catching and add a premium feel to emails without the large file sizes associated with full animations. 

Cinema graphs can effectively showcase products or highlight key information in a visually appealing design, capturing attention quickly. 

5. Visual story telling 

Visual storytelling uses a combination of images, graphics, and text to tell a cohesive story through an email. This trend focuses on leading readers through a narrative, making the content more engaging and memorable. 

It’s an excellent way to connect emotionally with subscribers by guiding them through product stories, testimonials, or brand missions.  

6. AR experiences 

Augmented Reality (AR) in emails is an emerging trend where users can virtually engage with products or experiences through their devices. 

For example, brands might allow users to see how a piece of furniture looks in their room or try on a virtual accessory. 

AR provides an immersive experience, which can lead to higher engagement and conversion rates.  

Wrap up 

Email marketing continuously evolves, and staying on top of the latest design trends is key to maintaining high engagement and building strong customer relationships.  

Whether email marketing design adopts gamification to enhance interactivity, optimizes for the dark mode to accommodate user preferences, or incorporates dynamic elements and visual storytelling for an immersive experience, the possibilities are endless.  

As technology advances, tools like AR experiences and visual storytelling offer exciting new ways to connect with your audience more meaningfully and personally.  

A tool like Salesmate can be an amazing option for achieving this level of personalization and making your email marketing campaign successful. 

Start your 15-day free trial today!

Frequently Asked Questions

1) What makes a good email design? 

A good email marketing template design combines aesthetics, functionality, and engaging messages. Here are some key elements of an effective email marketing design template:  

  • Mobile first responsive design  
  • Clear visual hierarchy  
  • Skimmable content  
  • Strong branding  
  • Compelling CTAs  
  • Personalization  
2) How much does an email marketing design cost?

The email marketing design cost varies by its complexity and requirements:  

  • The freelancers charge between $25 to $150 per hour for email marketing design services, with flat fees for custom email templates ranging from $200 to $2,000 per email, depending on the level of customization required.   
  • Hiring an email marketing design agency can cost between $300 and $10,000 per month, with high-end agencies charging up to $50,000 for full-scale design email marketing template services.   
  • Using pre-designed templates or creating your templates through different platforms like Salesmate often includes only subscription fees, through which you can also take advantage of other features.   

The costs depend on the company’s geographical location, the complexity of the design, the volume of emails, and other factors.

3) How do you create an email marketing design that aligns easily with your brand identity?

Building a distinct identity with email marketing design to let recipients know that companies email arrived is crucial:  

  • Stick to your brand core  
  • Writing a clear and concise subject line  
  • Personalize your emails  
  • Include the visual elements  
  • Use responsive designs  
  • End with a CTA  
  • Add social media icons 
  • Include an unsubscribe button  
4) Which image formats are essential to use for different audience segments?

The universally used image formats in email marketing are JPEGs, PNGs, and GIFs. JPEG is considered to have the lowest image quality but can retain the colors. At the same time, PNG has more image quality but can take up more space.

Dhara Thakkar

Dhara Thakkar is a seasoned marketer at Salesmate. She thrives on trying new organic strategies to improve traffic & conversions, and has in-depth knowledge on how search works. When she's not working, you will find her travelling or binge watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S

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