How Anyone Can Design and Send Beautiful Emails

Should content be king, and strategy be the king’s advisors, then visual identity is definitely the queen.

Sure, the most important element in your email is your content since it has to resonate well with your target customers. Compelling content helps motivate your customers to do whatever action you need them to do, right? Whether it’s buying, referring or subscribing.

Now, for the great content to be engaging, it also needs to be sent strategically by optimizing it via personalization, timing and segmentation. These elements, as discussed in my video, “4-Step Checklist To Effectively Boost Your Engagement in Email Marketing”, help drive email engagement up and boost your sales over the long run.

But these aren’t enough. Visual impression of the email matters, too. This is why 51% of B2B marketers prioritize visual assets creation as part of their content marketing strategy.

In this week’s video, I’m going to help you design beautiful, engaging and great-looking emails. Spoiler alert: I’m definitely not a designer, so you can guarantee that these tips are for everyone who needs them.

1. Use a tried-and-tested email template that just works

I agree that custom-designed emails are amazing. They’re great tools to solidify your branding identity and keep your business at top of mind.

However, designing custom emails take up a lot of time and investment — resources that are better spent on growing your business and taking it to the next level.

Just think of the 80-20 principle: custom-designed emails don’t necessarily outperform templates by much, so why would you “improve” it when you can improve other elements of your business that are directly related to boosting your revenue instead?

You’re not sending a Christmas card to your family, so you don’t need to customize and overthink every single thing. You’re better off using a good email template, once that’s been stress-tested in multiple browsers and has a good design language, as your foundation for your email’s visual identity. If you’re still within the early stages of your brand’s growth, if it works (and it doesn’t have a significant impact yet), don’t stress too much about it.

2. Use better imagery in your emails

Now that your template is done, focus on the image you’re going to be using. As I’ve mentioned in my previous video, “One Action Rule”, the simple formula to create super-performing emails is a striking and related image + brief but consistent and relevant copy + one compelling call-to-action.

Since you’ll be using one image in your email, it needs to convey exactly what your content is talking about. This single image has the power to make or break your email so it has to be impressive to catch your reader’s attention and relevant to keep the momentum going.

This is exactly how Peloton applies this formula. Notice the great image, concise copy and compelling call-to-action?

HardGraft also practices this simple recipe into their emails. You can check out several examples of their appealing emails here — and when I say appealing, I mean it: after all, I am one of their customers! Observe how the images they use are striking enough to make an impression and appealing enough to encourage you to scroll down.

I’m leaving you with these two tips for today. Is there any other tip for creating beautiful images you’d like to add? Let me know in the comments below. Cheers.

Tweetables

Should content be king, and strategy be the king’s advisors, then visual identity is definitely the queen Click To Tweet

Here’s how you can create beautiful and great-performing emails. Good news: non-designers are very much welcome. Click To Tweet

A great email has good content, makes customers feel good, and also looks good. Here’s how you can apply this today. Click To Tweet

Photo by Neven Krcmarek on Unsplash