Designing your emails
Templates are the designs your campaigns are built from. Start from a ready-made one or describe what you want, then edit it like anything else.
The short version
- Templates are under Emails, then Templates.
- Start from a ready-made design or describe the one you want.
- Edit by clicking, the same as a page.
- Email is not a web page. Keep it simpler than you would a site.
- Every template keeps a version history.
Starting a template
The ready-made designs cover the shapes most businesses send: an announcement, a newsletter, a promotion. Pick the closest and change it.
Or describe the email you want and have it drafted, then edit from there. Either way you end up with something you own and can change.
Email is not a web page
This is the thing worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on a design that arrives looking wrong.
Email is read in dozens of different programs, and they disagree about almost everything. Layouts that are ordinary on a website are unreliable in an inbox. What travels well is simple: one column, generous type, clear headings, obvious buttons.
The ready-made designs are already built this way. The further you move from them, the more you are relying on somebody's mail app being generous.
Images in email
Many people have images switched off, and some mail apps refuse to load them until asked. So your email has to make sense with no pictures at all.
Never put your main message inside a picture. A promotion whose entire offer is text inside an image is invisible to a good share of the people you sent it to.
Buttons and links
One clear thing to do, near the top. An email with six links gets none of them clicked.
Say where the button goes: "See the new menu" rather than "Click here". People decide whether to click from the label alone.
Reusing a template
A template is a starting point, not a one-off. Build the one that looks like you, then use it for every campaign, changing only the words.
That consistency is worth more than any individual design. People recognize your mail in a crowded inbox by its shape before they read a word of it.
Always send yourself a test
Send it to yourself and read it on your phone before it goes anywhere else. Most people will read it on one, and it is the only chance you get.