How to Design an Effective Email or Newsletter? Gil, our Creative Director, Gives You His Advice

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If I ask you “When was email invented?” , I’d bet most of you would be wrong by a few decades. As good 21st century internet users, we tend to assume that emails and newsletters have always existed… The truth is that this technology was first developed in the 1960s, with initially cumbersome systems before becoming, years later, what we know today.

At that time, emailing was a means of communication accessible only to users of university networks. The use of emails was later extended to various organizations before becoming accessible to private users only at the end of the 90s.

How to design an effective email or newsletter?

Our inboxes are a basic tool for our communication, but since smartphones have entered our daily lives, we can see that the rules of the game have changed. Access to emails is such that most of us check our inbox more than 20 times a day.

This is not the only change in this area, in fact, the possibility of scrolling the screen with the tips of the fingers – thanks to a technology unveiled by Steve Jobs for the first time at the launch of the iPhone 1 – has also changed our approach to emails and newsletters.

Initially, newsletters were designed to give recipients an overview as soon as they opened them on a computer. Now, anyone who wants to design a newsletter must adhere to the following motto: "Mobile First".

Now that the context is established, let's get down to business... What do you need to know to design a newsletter that will make people want to read it, while being easy to read and, above all, that will allow you to convert? Make yourself a cup of coffee and dive with me into the basics of newsletter design to achieve the best possible results.



Table of Contents
My tips for designing an effective newsletter or email
1. Prioritize your content
2. Standardize your email
3. Remember: Email is a cruel communication tool
4. Take care of your contrasts
5. Be Mobile Responsive
6. Use “Live” emails instead of image emails
Targeted tips according to the type of email sent
How to create effective email marketing?
How to create an effective newsletter?
My tips for designing an effective newsletter or email
1. Prioritize your content
A good newsletter involves both good design and good content. I recommend that you use no more than 3 different font sizes and that you take care of your outline: each text box should contain a headline, a subheadline, and a paragraph. As soon as you add other types of fonts or text sizes to your email, you will clutter your email, which could potentially confuse your readers.

prioritize your content

From a visual point of view, it is important to space out each of your text boxes and to prioritize them. How do you go about doing this in practice?

If it's an email with a single advertising message , you can design it holistically;
If it is a newsletter containing various information or news items with no apparent links to each other, it is better to dedicate a separate text area to each of the topics you write about.
Have you decided to use one of our newsletter templates ? Perfect! Just keep in mind that you need to choose a template that clearly prioritizes the different messages you want to convey and is visually versatile.



2. Standardize your email
Developing a logo that looks like you and reflects your brand image is essential, regardless of the size of your business. Your ultimate goal is to ensure that every message that comes out of your company allows your customers and prospects to immediately identify your brand. Developing your brand image also involves your emails and newsletters!

The best way to do this is to use a consistent color palette with 3 or 4 primary canada telegram phone number list and secondary colors that you will use for the call-to-action buttons embedded in your email. Also, always choose the same font in all your emails and the same font sizes for each of your parts or subparts.



3. Remember: Email is a cruel communication tool
Just like with advertisements, your Facebook, Instagram or Tiktok news feed, you need to manage to attract the attention of your recipients as they scroll through your newsletter quickly. You need to engage them enough so that they decide to stop for a moment to read you. If your email is not attractive enough or seems confusing, you should expect it to systematically end up in the trash…



4. Take care of your contrasts
Contrast helps to draw the eye. For example, if you place two images side by side, make sure that one is light, while the other is darker. This way, even if they are placed side by side, each of them will be highlighted. For another example, if you choose to use a particular color in the background, try to incorporate visual elements into the contrasting color so that each of the elements is sufficiently visible at first glance.



5. Be Mobile Responsive
“Mobile first”, remember? You absolutely must work on your emails so that they are “responsive design” – that is, they are equally readable on a computer as on a mobile.



6. Use “Live” emails instead of image emails
Live Mail is a system that consists of elements designed in our editing tools. The responsiveness of this type of email is higher because we designed it for this. Each recipient opens their emails from different devices – with different settings, which somewhat limits the control you can have over the final appearance. So I recommend that you opt for relatively neutral choices, which will work in all situations and in all cases. You probably receive many emails written in Arial font, because it is neutral, therefore safer to integrate.

In addition to live email, you can use new email trends such as image emails, which are composed exclusively of images – which allows you to control their final appearance. But this choice has a number of drawbacks:

The email will be much heavier because the images are heavy;
The texts contained therein will not always be clear;
Some messaging services implement image blockers, your email could end up in your recipient's spam folder...


Targeted tips according to the type of email sent
First, let's think together about the type of email you want to send to your recipients. There are two main types:

Email marketing : this involves sending emails that contain a short and concise message, such as a targeted promotional offer, a welcome message or even greetings on the occasion of national holidays.

The newsletter : it presents the latest news about your company: your new products, your new collection or your new products. It also relays the content that you publish on your website or on your social networks.

email and newsletter examples

Now that you've determined the type of emails you want to send to your prospects and customers, check out my tips for effective design based on the category you choose.



How to create effective email marketing?
If your email is intended to deliver an operational message, it should not be too formatted for 2 reasons:
Your message should be simple and clear,
Your message should be easy to send (you don't want to call your graphic designer over and over again, do you?)
If the purpose of your email is to inform, it is essential that the main message appears in its subject line. Also, don't forget to include the company logo so that your customers can identify you and understand who sent them the email.
If the message includes a call-to-action button, it should also be highlighted.
If, on the other hand, your message is intended to convey birthday wishes, for example, it is a relational email, which changes the game. In this case, I recommend that you unequivocally opt for a simple message accompanied by a relevant visual. Do not be too aggressive with your customer: inserting a simple call-to-action button is enough in this case.
In short, keep your email short and easy to read.



How to create an effective newsletter?
If you have decided to send a newsletter with "pure" content, you must remain vigilant about certain elements:

First, distinguish each block of text that makes up your newsletter: use titles, images or graphic elements. In a newsletter of this type, select images related to the topics covered. It is also important to ensure that your titles are standardized and, of course, to check the visibility of your newsletter on mobile (since the elements appear differently in the layout on mobile).
If you choose to send a newsletter that covers different topics and contains many references, I recommend that you ensure its uniformity. How? By separating each of the topics covered, by choosing a grid (the grid is the overall design structure of the newsletter) that is visually interesting. For example, make sure that each of your text blocks is the same length as the previous one and don't forget to incorporate clear call-to-action buttons. These will generally appear in the form of buttons displaying formulas such as "Continue reading", "Watch the video", "For more details", etc.