We’ll spill all the design secrets, but first: let’s kill the fake news! A beautifully designed email does NOT mean instant success. 

Do you know what the most important part of the email is? It’s the message. This also means you don’t need an expert designer or an expensive software expert to get high-performing emails. The most important thing is to have a clear and consistent message for the audience. The message should be KISS (Keep It Stupid Simple), don’t add too much information. If you want to educate your audience with a looooooong email, you should make a designated page about it on your website and redirect the reader. But besides the message how can you elevate your conversion rate? Let’s dive into 6 best practices to design the emails that convert!

6 Best design practices

1. Lead the audience to the CTA

Ask yourself: “What do you want your reader to do?“ Your CTA (Call To Action) should be clear, pronounced and answer that question! But how do you lead the audience to the CTA button, using the design? 

You could use one of these layout methods:

• Inverted pyramid, using this method, the eyes of the reader are led to the CTA button at the end of the email. Be sure to use a straight-to-the-point headline. 
• Zig-zag is perfect when you want to implement more than 1 CTA button in the email. This way you keep it interesting for the reader. 
• Single column is the way to go nowadays. It’s the best way to make sure your email renders well across all devices. In this design, the image takes the lead.

TIP! If you aren’t sure what CTA works best, try A/B testing! You’ll be able to send out 2 emails with each a different CTA button and determine which works best for you by looking at the click-through rates.

2. Create a visual hierarchy

It’s important to make your emails “scannable”. Keep in mind people are busy bees, they usually don’t take the time to read your entire email. Keep all the important information ‘above the fold’, which means everything you see without scrolling down. Make sure you highlight parts of your email by using text size, colours and white spaces to your advantage.

3. Keep mobile in mind

We live in a mobile-first world, it shouldn’t be a surprise that one of the most important design choices comes to making a mobile-friendly design. As we mentioned before the single-column layout is perfect for this!

4. Brand consistency

Are you new to the email marketing universe? Then the first thing you should work on are templates. Templates create consistency and are your best friend! Make sure your hierarchy is consistent, always the same properties for titles etc. Put your logo in, the brand colours, choose your fonts and even create some tone-of-voice guidelines.

TIP! Klaviyo allows you to make universal blocks that you can use across different email designs. The biggest perk is when you edit the block, all will be updated at once.

5. Tell a compelling story 

3 key things to having a compelling email story:

• Your message should sound human. 
• 1 email should only tell 1 story
• Create a balanced mixture of copy and images

6. Personalise!

Last but not least. Make your emails as personal as possible. How do you get the info? Create sign-up forms with questions that can help your brand. But the most easy way is to use dynamic product feed blocks in Klaviyo. Another way to be more personal is to create segments, so you can target specific groups within your audience. Beauty brands are really on top of this best-practise! If you buy skincare products at Douglas, you’ll receive an email within a few months with the headline “Are your skincare products almost finished?”

Keep the 6 best-practices in mind while designing your emails. I know it’s a handful of information, but by now you surely know that the key to a well-designed mail is the message of the email! But if you know how to deal with email design, how do you make sure that your email gets delivered to your customers? Find out in our email deliverability article!

We wrote this article based an a webinar of Klaviyo. If you have any questions or aren’t sure about your design? Don’t hesitate to contact The Dot Society. We have a Klaviyo expert in house and an awesome creative team that’s always happy to help!