How to Design Attractive Bulk Emails That Drive Sales

While an aesthetically-pleasing bulk email is important in driving your messaging, the most essential consideration of any campaign is to ensure your design is functional. So, before you spend time curating an attractive email, consider the following practical aspects:

• Use Responsive Design: Build your bulk email using a responsive template to ensure it displays appropriately and proportionately on any device.
• Embrace Light/Dark Mode: You need your bulk emails to be legible whether your recipients are using light or dark mode, so ensure you use colours that are visible in both modes.
• Ensure User-Friendly Capability: It goes without saying, but if your text is too small, your font is too difficult to read, or your links are not clickable, your messaging isn’t going to hit home. This is why you should make sure your text font is at least 12 points, but we suggest using 14 points, and use regular text, which is more visible than light-weighted text. Take into account there should be a high contrast between your content and the background of your email to ensure your text and images are visible. Testing your hyperlinks before you send your email is essential to ensure they work for your recipients when they answer your calls to action.

Do you want more tips and tricks to create engaging mailers? Take our bulk email crash course for everything you need to know, whether you’re an email marketing amateur or old-hand.

Once you’ve used a catchy subject line to entice a recipient to open your email, you want to engage them quickly to pique their interest. You can do this by using an eye-catching image with a short and sharp text description of what the email is about. We call this your header image.

Your text should sit to the left of your image and should be bold and easy to read. There are many options you could use for your image, for example you could use a lifestyle image that’s representative of the recipients for whom your email is created.

There are different schools of thought as to whether you should include your logo in your header image. One view is it’s important to include it to provide authority, build trust, and reinforce your brand at the start of your emails. You can also leave your logo out of your header, while using your brand colours for representation and tailor your messaging to sum up what your mailer is all about.

The header image is typically between 350–500 pixels in height and 600 pixels wide (the standard width of emails).

There are numerous tools to help you achieve email marketing success, but knowing this can make it overwhelming to decide which are the best tools to use and when. This is why we break down three easy ways to drive results.

Under your header, you can further entice your recipients and add context to your mailer by providing a two-line sub-header. It’s important to ensure the size of your font doesn’t compete with the font in the header image, as you want to ensure this messaging supplements the header and doesn’t overpower it.

You can use sentence case for your sub-header. Depending on the layout of the rest of your mailer, you could choose to left-align or centre the text.

Under your sub-header, the next text your recipients should see is your greeting. This is where you can use personalisation to greet each recipient by name and make them feel like you are talking to them directly.

Then, it’s time to consider how best to design your email to provide an end-to-end storyline, depending on your content.

It’s important to segment your email into high-contrast sections, especially if you have different topics to address. The reason we encourage making sure there is some contrast is so you can clearly separate the sections, for example, if you use a white background, don’t use a pale image, rather use a colourful one to stand out.

There are various was you could choose to design your content. Here are two examples:

Example 1
If you’ve got a lot to say, it’s likely your email will be text-heavy. In a bid to create interest, you could divide your content into sections, each starting with a header image across the width of your email followed by text – either left-aligned or centred – and possibly add a call to action. This will help you compartmentalise your email, while ensuring it’s attractive and an easy read.

Keep your paragraphs short – maximum of five lines – and use the inverted pyramid style of writing to ensure your most important information is housed in the top section of your email.

It’s also important to be aware that as your recipients read further down your mail, the less likely they are to read to the end of the sentences. This is known as the F-shaped reading pattern. This is why you should use strong sentence starters at the beginning of each paragraph and attractive imagery to keep your recipients’ eyes moving down the left-hand side of your email in a bid to ensure they read to the end of your email.

Example 2
Another option is to use content blocks in a grid layout to keep your recipients engaged. This layout works best when you use short text descriptions and calls to action that direct recipients to a landing page or website. In the corresponding content block, use an image to accompany the copy.

Picture the design as two content blocks next to one another. In the top row, you’d insert a short text description and button in the left content box while on the right, you’d insert a corresponding image. In the second row, you’d insert a photo on the left with the corresponding text on the right, and so forth. This creates a zig-zag pattern that is neat, keeps recipients engaged, and ensures the image-to-text ratio of your email is on-point.

No matter how you choose to design your email, there are some key considerations, such as:

• Embrace White Space: It’s important to use white space, which helps your email look uncluttered and more appealing. If you’re using text on a white background, your text should be 150–175 pixels in width and your white-space padding should be 24 pixels on either side to ensure your email is easy on the eye.
• Use a Solid Background: It’s also essential to ensure your text is placed on a solid background, so it’s legible.
• Choose Colour Strategically: It’s likely you’ll use your brand colours, but a top tip is that the people tend to trust and gravitate towards the colour blue – so try embracing it in your mailers.
• Differentiate Call-to-Action Buttons: If you’re including primary and secondary call-to-action buttons, ensure they look different. For example, if you were giving your recipients the options to “Sign Up Now” or “Get More Info”, you’d make the “Sign Up Now” button a solid colour, while the secondary “Get More Info” button would be transparent with an outline.

Close off your email with a sign off from the person or department the email comes from. This will help your email seem personal, friendly, and credible.

Discover the differences between personalisation and dynamic content, so you can use them in your next bulk email campaign.

Think of your footer as your business card that provides details like your business logo, contact details, and links to social media icons for your recipients to follow you. You can also consider including your terms and conditions of your email. In best practice, it should look different to your header.

It’s also important to make it easy for your recipients to unsubscribe from your emails. You may not be inclined to advertise a way to unsubscribe from your bulk emails, but in a bid to be seen as a legitimate bulk email sender, it’s imperative that you do so. The best way is display an easy-to-see one-click unsubscribe button in the footer of your emails.

Learn more about why it’s essential to make unsubscribing from bulk emails easy as well as tips to create a strong database.

The design of your bulk email can go a long way in ensuring your messaging hits the mark for your recipients. Opening an email that’s cluttered with heavy text, a lack of guidance of what to read first, and unsegmented sections can be overwhelming. This is why we’ve set out a simple formula to follow that makes for an easy read from the moment your recipient opens their email until their eyes reach the footer at the end. By embracing the best practices we’ve outlined, you’re sure to provide your recipients with an end-to-end storyline in an eye-catching email design that’s easy to read and reinforces your brand identity.