Email Marketing for Beginners: Designing Emails (3)

We have already discussed in detail what email marketing is and why to use it in your eCommerce strategy. Then, we focused on segmentation and list creation to direct our campaigns.

It is time to focus on the creation of the emails themselves. We are going to give you some important tips on structure, content, and, to make everything as clear as possible, we will also provide some examples for inspiration.

Before diving into how an email should be structured in email marketing, let’s take a short but important moment to discuss email types.

The mechanics are the same for building any type of email, but the content and structure itself depend on the function and objective of each message.

It is clear that, an informational email like a newsletter is very different from a transactional one like an order confirmation.

Let’s summarize:

Each of these cases requires a different design, but it should keep a certain uniformity in terms of tone, message, and design. This is particularly important when we understand each email as part of a flow or journey.

We will discuss this topic in detail, but the email marketing strategy, by definition, is more complex than sending an isolated email.

Thanks to current tools, we can create email chains that are sent automatically, based on the outcome of the previous message. It has been proven that this is when they are most effective because they enhance their impact and reinforce each other.

Actually, the technical aspect of the matter will depend on the tool you use.

It does not make sense to waste time reviewing each interface, but here is what matters: good eCommerce tools are characterized by having a simple and intuitive editor.

They generally work by dragging and dropping blocks and elements (text boxes, images, bullet points...), something that anyone capable of making a PowerPoint presentation can handle in minutes.

For this reason, I always recommend using a platform. There is no sense in coding HTML at this point. Not to mention other practical advantages such as ease of managing mailings, improved delivery by using "clean" servers, automation, statistics...

Although it may seem complicated, the truth is that, as we have seen, tools facilitate what we could call the "mechanical" task. However, choosing a particular design is a much more strategic and deep decision.

To make it clearer, let’s go through each of the elements separately, and I will give you specific advice. Let’s get started.

This is the small line that introduces the "subject" of our email.

Although it is not part of the email's visual design, it is extremely important. It is the first impression, the summary of what we are offering, and ultimately, what will make the recipient decide whether to open our email or not.

It must meet the following criteria:

This combines various elements, primarily copywriting (written content) and multimedia, which can always be a bit delicate.

Starting with the written part, the main principle is to be persuasive, maintain the brand's communication tone, and, of course, be very clear about the message’s goal for the audience that the email marketing campaign is targeting.

Regarding Images, the most important thing is that images should align with the written message, representing the brand's values and the virtues of the product, the technical aspect is also crucial: Ensure fast loading speeds, avoid consuming too much data.

This last point has a lot to do with something essential in the way we check our email, which is that it is increasingly linked to mobile devices.

Keep this in mind when designing your email marketing, both in terms of content and in terms of structure and design.

We know very well how well aspirational marketing works. In this case, we see how an adventure brand effectively leverages it in its email campaign.

This is an example from Puma’s online store. It’s a few years old but still relevant, proving it was well-conceived, though it could use some tweaks today.

Now let’s look at a bold approach, which, in my opinion, meets several key requirements for an email.