How to Design an Email Newsletter: Maximize Engagement
Try Publicate For Free Today
Start Now
Whatever industry you’re in, an email newsletter is a sure-fire way to stay connected with your audience. Done well, a newsletter becomes an invaluable sales tool.
Luckily, you don’t need to be a design whizz to know how to design an email newsletter that looks stunning and gets results.
All you need is this article, packed with step-by-step guides, design best practices, and advice about streamlining the process with smart email design software.
An email newsletter is an email regularly sent out by brands or individuals to a subscriber list.
That list has explicitly signed up to receive your emails, which could be a combination of news and events, tips, blog posts, and promotional content.
.webp)
Here for a step-by-step guide to creating a newsletter? You’re in the right spot.
This is the best way to write an email newsletter, with a design focus to make your emails even more engaging.
Before diving straight in, ask yourself some questions. What’s the goal of your newsletter? What sort of content will you include? How regularly will you send it? What are your readers hoping to get from the newsletter?
A well-planned newsletter is great for brand awareness and conversions, so spend some time on this step.
Consider who would want to receive your newsletter. That’s your target audience.
This usually encompasses past and potential customers, or a particular demographic that aligns with your brand and the value you are offering.
When you know who you’re targeting, you can start building up your subscriber list. Don’t just add people to your subscriber list without their permission – this is actually against the law in some countries!
In the US, you don’t legally need prior consent to add users to your mailing list, but it is mandatory that you provide them with a clear way to opt out.
If you don’t know how to design an email newsletter from scratch, you’re not alone.
Most businesses use email-building software to upgrade and speed up the design process.
Email builders, such as Publicate, give you access to hundreds of beautiful and editable newsletter templates. They save you time and money as you don’t need to hire coders or designers, plus they boost engagement!
You can use these tools to create your newsletter, export it to Outlook, Gmail or most other email service providers, and track its performance.
Want to learn more? Check out these 5 types of email creation software to support your search.
Browse your chosen email-building platform for your favorite newsletter template design.
Opt for something visually appealing. The most engaging newsletters are broken up into digestible sections, with white space and images or videos that prevent big walls of text.
Your layout should direct users toward your CTA (call-to-action). Experiment with email newsletter templates but when you find one that works (i.e. gets the highest click-through rate and conversions), we recommend sticking with it.
Now is the time to find content and personalize your template.
Email builder platforms like Publicate remove the need to trawl the internet for good content. Publicate connects with stock image and GIF sites as well as your favorite sources like Slack, Feedly and Pocket. That means you can discover fresh content without leaving the platform – the ultimate time-saving hack!
You can also add content you found online to your newsletter in just a couple of clicks. Copy and paste the URL into your email builder and it automatically scrapes content and adds it to your design.
With a drag-and-drop editor, you can update content, adjust templates and add your own branding with ease. With a tool like Publicate there is also a suite of collaboration features too!
If everything looks good, it’s almost time to send your newsletter. Before you do so, send a test email to yourself and a colleague.
Open it on desktop and mobile, and a couple of different email service providers (such as Gmail and Outlook). This helps to ensure the format is rendered well across multiple platforms.
If you are using an email builder you can rest easy knowing all templates are designed and fully tested for all screen sizes and email service providers so your newsletters will render perfectly every time.
Once you’re happy, your newsletter can get on its way to your subscribers.
Tracking performance using solid data is the only way to optimize your email newsletter.
Keep an eye on metrics and A/B test emails to understand what resonates with your audience. From subject lines to body content and CTAs, play around with content until you find that sweet spot that works best for your business.
The most common metrics to track are open and click rates, and unsubscribes. You can also use heatmaps and click maps to analyze which content works best by monitoring exactly how your audience interacts with your emails.
Some email builders, such as Publicate, offer detailed analytics so you can keep improving your email newsletter. No matter where you send your emails from, including Gmail and Outlook, you’ll be able to track the metrics that matter.
Good email design isn’t just about creating something pretty. It can make or break your email’s success.
That’s because well-designed emails are more engaging for readers. Design is the foundation of a great user experience, guiding readers on the right journey and making the whole thing enjoyable.
This positive experience encourages more user interactions and increases the chance of them taking the desired action. Plus, with so much competition in your readers’ inboxes, it’s important to make sure they look forward to reading your emails.
Without great design, your subscribers won’t hesitate to close your email and move on with their days.
There’s more to launching a newsletter than just typing your thoughts and hitting Send.
You need to learn how to design an email newsletter that will be opened, read and engaged with. Here are the characteristics of the best newsletters.
This sounds obvious, but too many people use newsletters to document their train of thought. This makes reading it far too laborious.
Think of your newsletter as a way to quickly convey information and direct readers to the desired CTA. Include concise copy, a well-structured layout, white space, headings and good formatting.
Always create newsletters for your audience.
Think about what they want to know, to come up with content that’s valuable and helpful. The most audience-focused content is relevant, informative and actionable.
Get it right and your emails will eventually become unmissable.
There should be a “point” to every newsletter: What do you want your reader to do next?
This could be anything from replying to your email to responding to a feedback survey, reading a blog or purchasing a product.
Make your CTA button stand out by using bold colors and clear copy.
A well-designed email newsletter consists of a set of components. Together, they craft an excellent user experience for a newsletter that performs.
Email builders, such as Publicate, contain hundreds of engaging, professional and customizable templates that come pre-loaded with all important components. This streamlines the email design process and gives you the confidence that your email will have the best chance of success.
You can add content to these templates with ease thanks to features like dynamic web scraping, stock image integrations, and in-line image editing. A Brand Kit stores all brand assets such as fonts, color palettes and logos, for consistency in your emails, no matter which member of your team is creating them.
Let’s cover the non-negotiable elements to include in your newsletter’s design.
Break up the body of the email with headings. Ideally, use one heading for each key point, topic or section in your newsletter.
This is the written text within an email newsletter.Copy should be written with a specific purpose in mind. Keep it short and sweet to hold attention, and write emails in your brand’s tone of voice.
Create emails using well-designed newsletter templates. All design elements should be laid out so the email is easy to follow and well-organized. This helps to communicate your message clearly and drive users towards the key action.
Generally speaking, visuals (like images, GIFs and videos) make emails easier on the eye and are great for guiding attention.Since humans process images faster than text, they’re also a good way to clarify what you’re saying.
While email newsletters are rarely exactly the same, there are some recommended ways to structure them for the best results.
Here is how to design an email newsletter so that all the elements fit together perfectly. Structure it as follows:
Designing a newsletter is no small feat. In the past, you’d have needed a whole team of designers, coders and email marketing specialists to make it happen.
Today, you can bring an email builder into the process for a fast, affordable way to design stunning emails.
Here are some great tools to explore.
A drag-and-drop email builder with hundreds of professional, pre-designed email newsletter templates.
Publicate’s templates are highly engaging and created with email-optimized code so you know your email newsletters will look great on every platform, saving you time and money without need for coders or designers..
It also integrates with over 57 email service providers to easily export and send your designs as full HTML newsletters, including Gmail and Outlook, which means it will be fully mobile responsive and render correctly across email clients.
Plus, Publicate offers advanced analytics so you can track the performance of your newsletter and understand what content is popular so you can continually improve as you go.
Online design software that lets you create content for all sorts of purposes, from email newsletters to social media posts and presentations.
A major drawback of Canva is any design you create is exported as an image, not email HTML.
This means it is the same as sending your readers an image of a newsletter, not an actual newsletter. This means it is not mobile responsive, and it is a real issue if readers have turned off downloading images by default in their email client, as they will just see a broken image and nothing else.
Adobe Express has some newsletter templates, but its range isn’t as extensive or diverse as Publicate’s and some other template builders.
Its design features are better suited to users who already have design skills, as the learning curve is steeper and the interface isn’t as user-intuitive.
Feel confident your email newsletters are ticking all the boxes with these design best practice tips:
A well-designed email newsletter can maximize engagement, build a closer relationship with your audience, and contribute to a growing business.
When you know how to design an email newsletter using best practices and time-saving tools, the whole process is seamless. Try an email builder like Publicate and see how easy launching a newsletter becomes.
