6 Email Design Hacks to Help You Grow

Well, hello there, friend!

I'm Najmah Salam, and I call myself a Marketing Alchemist because I love mixing and matching existing elements to turn them into ✨GOLD ✨! This week, I'm taking over this month's edition of Mailmodo's Bulletin newsletter.

As a marketer and designer with over a decade and a half's experience, I've found some pretty ingenious email design tricks that will immediately elevate your emails.  

So, if you're ready to zhuzh up your campaigns, check out my 6 email design hacks below.

1. Remove backgrounds on images

This will make the image feel more integrated within the design and feel more organic. This is especially important when you’re featuring products since they should be the star of the show!

Plus, when your email is in dark mode, images on transparent backgrounds will still look consistent instead of having an image that has a different color background to the rest of the email.

Just make sure you’re testing in light and dark modes to ensure your email looks equally as good in both.

💡 You can use a site like remove.bg or a design program like Adobe Photoshop to remove an image’s background.

2. Design to encourage scrolling

Emails are a vertical medium; if you have a longer email, you’ll want to design your email to bring people further down.

You can do this with clever design by using arrows or design elements that lead the eye downwards. (Psst… I break down how real brands used some clever tricks to get people scrolling in their emails here.)

3. Make things asymmetrical

We often find symmetry pleasing, but too much can be boring. Mixing up your email designs with asymmetrical elements will surprise and delight your audience instead of delivering just the expected.

4. Scale it up

Thinking of a way to make your design look fresh? Scale things up or down in unexpected ways.

Large text as a design element literally makes a statement and can make your email designs look modern and fresh.

Larger images can help products shine and show every detail off to your customer, especially if their only touchpoint with your products is through a digital medium.

5. Skeuomorphism (make things look like other things)

By utilizing Jakob’s Law, or the law of familiarity, you can leverage your audience’s existing mental models to strengthen your designs.

In other words, by making your designs look like other things, you can create a sense of “aha - I totally get that!”

For example, this email that looks like a physical newsletter has a vintage, classic look.

Or by using images that look like Polaroids, you can bring up nostalgic feelings of past summer holidays:

Another smart way to use this concept is to make your email design an extension of your brand experience. As you can see, this Pinterest email looks exactly like a Pinterest board, reducing the mental friction - you immediately recognize the layout as a user.

6. Highlight numbers and stats

We’re often drawn to numbers in copy because they often help to tell a story by giving context or authority. An easy design hack is to highlight numbers instead of being buried in a paragraph.

For example, you can format a series of steps with big, easy-to-read numbers and let your audience know how to do things as easy as 1-2-3.

Or you can create design elements around important statistics so they’re eye-catching, and provide more information below.

I hope you enjoyed these email design hacks, and if you use any of them - let me know!

If you’re looking for even more email design inspiration, I host Email Breakdown, a web series dedicated to looking at fantastic email designs and breaking down exactly what sets them apart.

Until next time - happy designing, email geeks!

- Najmah

Email Edge: Turn Emails into Experiences

Opting for static emails in this age of interactivity is like asking your users to take the stairs when they can use the lift. It'll get them to their destination, but it's a much longer and slower route.

Instead, companies like foundit (formerly Monster), Musafir, BQPrime and more are turning emails into experiences that engage, intrigue, and leave a lasting impression.

Don’t miss out on the latest innovation in email.

Tune in on 23rd August, 8 am PST to hear from industry experts on the fundamentals, success stories and use cases of interactive emails.

🗞️ What's up with the marketing world?

• On 23 July 2023, Twitter's owner Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino announced the rebranding of Twitter to X. The Twitter bird logo is now being replaced with an “X” sign, and the tweets will be called “X”. 

• Learn how to create an ABM strategy that works 3X in our recent growth chat with Andrei Zinkevich.

• If you are new to the concept of interactive emails and don't know where to start, here are 22 AMP email examples to get your creative juices flowing.

Partner Shoutouts

Curated Inspiration by Email Love

Explore "Curated Inspiration," the weekly newsletter by Email Love brimming with handpicked email design and content ideas tailored for marketers, designers, and coders.

Subscribe here →

That's all, folks! I'll see you next month with more tips and ideas. If there is something we can do better for you, please let me know by replying to this email.

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