“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,†as some people would say. But often, we can all agree on something that isn’t beautiful. For example, the zombies from Walking Dead, that strange conjoined twin thing from Total Recall, and a really poorly designed email. You may think that an email couldn’t be in the same realm as the first two examples, but in reality, people’s eyes divert faster from a bad email design than the other forms of visual stimuli mentioned. This is because the average individual spends less than a few seconds judging if an email is relevant, important, or trustworthy – with design playing the biggest factor. In cinema, you are compelled to keep watching, even if it grosses you out.
So what makes a bad email design? Well, there are a lot of elements that create visual confusion or disgust. But let’s focus on the biggest elements that you can change to make your emails more compelling and soft on the eyes so they don’t look like this:
White Space
White space is often referred to “negative space,†but shouldn’t be seen in a negative way because it is amazing. Remember when you were learning how to write and you’d put your finger in between words to make sure that you spaced out the letters? It is kind of like that. It gives you breathing room between elements, such as graphics, columns, images, text, and margins.
And even though our examples below use actual white space, it can be any color – black, blue, magenta – except for brown. No one likes the color brown. See how the spacing between columns, text, and colors below in Designer News’ & Medium’s onboarding email are well spaced? Even without divider lines, you can clearly see where a content element starts and stops.
A designer’s main goal is to make an email look simple and to un-clutter the visual frenzy that often pollutes the message. This can be done by stretching it out and not trying to fit it all “above the fold.†So while you are thinking about what’ll go into your message, develop layouts that are easy on the eyes and that make people want to keep reading. The simpler the better when it comes to white space.
Need a clean template with plenty of white space ? Check out Cyclone.
Hierarchy
Like white space, creating clear groupings will establish a hierarchy that is easily scanned. The best way to think of this is establishing a primary message and a secondary message. For example, in this post, primary messages use a larger, bolder font, while the supporting (secondary) message is typed in paragraph format. You are probably thinking that this is where it gets boring, but it this is the most important part of an email because the sizes and colors you use will help queue your readers’ minds into what is important and what can be skipped (kind of like what you are doing right now). So before I lose you, here are some more examples to the point.
Why is this email great? It shows that hierarchy isn’t always text. This uses a bold image, then moves into a larger header, a smaller supporting paragraph, and then to an orange Call-to-Action (more on CTAs below). With such a bright color CTA, you would think that your eye would go straight to that, but it naturally flows downward as it should.
Looking for a good hierarchy email template? We like this one called Appi1 on Creative Market.
Clear Layouts
How many columns should your email have? 2? 3? 7? Definitely not 7. And actually, 3 is pushing it. We are fans of the 1 column approach, but see plenty of 2 column layouts that look great. And sometimes you can trick people and make them think that it is 1 column, but it is really two. Take the one below:
As you look at it, the rows are very apparent due to the background image changing colors. But more subtly, the switch between image and text is how this email is laid out. It uses the famous Z pattern, where your eye starts at the top left, moves right, and then is horizontally reversed the next row down (alternating between images and text). The content isn’t too heavy either, allowing the email to look uniform.
Tons of different layouts with this template called Angelica on Creative Market.
The receipt has a few different columns: the billing and payment columns and then service and price columns. Just because you have multiple tables, that doesn’t mean the widths have to stay the same from one table to another.
Avoid Contradicting Fonts
Any designer will tell you to not even mention the Comic Sans font – not even in a joke. That’s how bad the font is. It is kind of the Voldemort of the font world. But there are a lot of other good fonts out there. Where people go wrong is when they use too many fonts or font styles. Be mindful of leading, kerning, and font sizes. There’s a really in-depth article from Anna Yeaman on the use of fonts in email if you are interested. Again, this is where a good squint test comes in.
When it comes to size, our general guidance is size 16 (depending on font) or higher. Also think about your visual hierarchy when aligning and sizing your text. Reading distance is a key consideration when choosing font sizes. On the desktop, with an arm’s length between me and the monitor, larger is usually more comfortable while considering how many characters exist on one line and the what the leading line height is (around 60 characters and 1.5x the font size respectively).
Compelling Images
To use another clichéd term, “an image is worth a thousand words.†But often, especially with bad stock imagery, the phrase is closer to “this is a boring image worth a thousand worthless words.†If you are going to put an image in an email, make sure it is supplementing the message and make sure you didn’t just download it from some stock website that everyone uses. If you aren’t making it rain in dollar bills, chances are that you also don’t have the budget for a photographer or high-end photoshoot. There are many places to grab free, awesome images – like Stocksy, Death to the Stock Photo, Unsplash, and many others.
As you’ll notice, when you have a great image, you don’t need to use that much text. The image here is a high impact statement, supplemented with a few words and a contrasting CTA.
You can also take a boring, lifeless product and create a design that speaks well for itself. For example, take this one from Apple:
- While we hate using the term “best practice†(because we are strong proponents of testing everything), these are some pretty unanimous recommendations of what to do with your images in your email:
- Your email should be between 600 and 800 pixels wide. Anything wider and the kids will probably make fat jokes about it. (Also, many clients have this as a standard.)
- Don’t design an email that is just one big-a** image. Even slicing that image down into smaller images doesn’t perform as well. Try to add in some text in there to break it up.
- Account for fat fingers on mobile devices – allowing for ~ 46×46 hit areas for links
- Add support text to all images to help your email get through spam filters
- Gmail clips emails after 20540 characters of code, or roughly 20kb of size. So make sure your email is smaller than that, including images.
Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)
Just like how your email needs a purpose, so does your CTA. What do you want your subscribers to do? How will they know what you want you to do? Why should they do it? Emma has a great reference guide if the points below are too short for you.
- Design: Keep these buttons big enough for big thumbs like ours to click on them (Apple suggests 44 pixels) and give them spacing from other elements (images and text). You’ll want to place the most important CTA early (from our tests, the first CTA is clicked on the most) and provide enough contrast from the background and other text that is apparent that they are focus points. The color doesn’t really matter, but we do a monthly roundup of great CTA button colors in our top 10 blog posts if you are interested.
- Language: The biggest mistake is using a weak, passive call to action. The classic example is: “click here.†There’s no incentive and there’s no indication of what will be waiting for them after they do (if they ever do). So what you should be doing is including some active verbs that describe the benefits or create some urgency. But at the same time, keep an eye out for “high commitment†CTAs, such as “Buy Now.†Do you really think that someone is going to buy something just because you sent them a few sentences and an image in an email? Maybe. Even better, use low commitment CTAs that doesn’t infer a high amount of time, stress, or money. Think along the lines of “learn more†but something a little more interesting than that.
- Image vs Code: If you don’t know how to code, then using a button image will accomplish what you need to. However, the main problem with image buttons is that many email clients block images automatically. This means that your CTA (the most important part of your email) won’t be seen. So we encourage using a “bulletproof†button – which is a small snippet of HTML and inline CSS that creates dead-sexy buttons that render well across email clients even with images disabled. This is why we also campaign to use text outside of your images. While the email below from InVision is a little longer than what we usually suggest, their CTAs are indisputably the most exciting we’ve ever seen.
It Isn’t a Horror Film
In the movies, the storyline keeps us glued. In the inbox, nothing keeps us glued. However, when you start to bring the elements above together, you create reasons for people to look and interact with your emails. And that is the entire goal for a good design. So whether you are using a template or designing your own email, remember the elements above to make for a great experience that doesn’t scare your readers off.
Besides his 60 seconds of fame as an American Idol contestant back-up signer, Mike Nelson has devoted his time and energy building an unnaturally popular site called ReallyGoodEmails.com which showcases the best email designs and tactics. His boring professional life has been in online strategy for international CPG companies including an INC 500 & IR 500 company.
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