Email is a powerful marketing tool. With the right email design and message, you can captivate your audience and reinforce your brand’s identity. This can lead to an enhanced user experience as you focus on turning readers into customers. Marketing emails are important for creating stunning first impressions and enhancing your customer journey. To achieve this, you need to understand the logic behind the marketing email structure.
Whether it’s a welcome, order confirmation, cross-sell/up-sell, or any other type of email, some common features occur across successful email marketing campaigns. That’s exactly what this post covers. Keep reading for an in-depth understanding of how to make your emails stand out.
Essential Email Components
In order to explore the email structure options in-depth, let’s first quickly review the different parts of an email.
The essential components of an email are:
- Header: The header appears at the top of the email’s body and contains the brand logo within the first few inches of the email. Consistency in logo and tagline use is essential for setting the tone of the current and future emails. The header is where you personalize your greeting and establish the upcoming tone.
- Body content: The body of your email contains the email’s central message. It should be short, clear, and concise. Industry best practice indicates that the text should be between 50 and 125 words long. Bulleted or numbered lists are also great for readability.
- Use of visuals: Whether it’s an edited image, a video, or an infographic, positioning is essential. Your words should direct the reader’s focus to the visual to grab their attention. That’s why using size, color, and positioning strategically plays a pivotal role in supporting your written content.
- Call to action (CTA): Your call to action (CTA) buttons shouldn’t require numerous scrolls to reach. Display them prominently and use verbs that encourage your reader to take the desired action. CTA buttons should be moderately sized, and their colors should align with brand guidelines. Your emails should drive actions based on the customer’s journey stage.
- Secondary links: Links offer additional information and direct readers to further resources. Ensure you use accurate anchor text for your link placement and that they actually work.
- Social media links: Adding buttons that link to your business’s social media platforms is a great way to let your readers browse, explore, like, share, repost, and comment.
- Unsubscribing: Even when users unsubscribe, maintain a positive user experience. Instead of invoking feelings of guilt, maintain a friendly and positive approach, giving your audience the chance to return if they choose. Unsubscribe options are both ethical and part of your legal obligations.
What Impact Does Your Email Structure Have?
Your email design can have a positive or negative impact on your target audience. It’s a matter of ensuring that your email content aligns with their expectations while ensuring brand consistency.
Some important factors that are directly influenced by the structure of your email:
- First impressions: Your email’s structure and design play a central role in capturing your audience’s attention. Your very first email should be powerful enough and reputable to keep them from hitting the unsubscribe link or worse, land your email in your recipient’s spam folder, never to be seen. Always add value with each email you send, but remember that your first email should be so convincing and enticing that it gets users to keep returning to your brand.
- Brand perception: Every business should have brand guidelines that are always adhered to. This includes email marketing. Any discrepancies or deviations from your brand identity will be instantly identified by your audience. This is where you need to ensure that every email design reinforces your brand identity with consistent compliance with your brand guidelines.
- User experience (UX): The user experience and interaction with your email should be a positive one. This is where you need to focus on enhancing readability and encouraging engagement. All this is achieved through your email’s effective design (such as layout, bullet points, and structure), which plays a pivotal role in drawing audiences in and encouraging them to take the desired action.
Email Arrangement Options
There are some email elements that are quite fixed and are immovable. These include the subject line and preheader text. Other elements, such as your header and footer, typically go at the top and bottom of your email, respectively. In essence, the scope for creativity arises with the email body.
General Content Tips for Marketing Emails
While each marketing email has its own purpose, there are some rules and best practices that generally apply to all of them.
- You can break up a paragraph or text-only section with a bullet or numbered list. Depending on your email’s purpose, this may feature links or a CTA.
- Supporting photos, GIFs and other visuals should be placed near relevant text to reinforce the message and break up large blocks of text. Keep in mind that they have to align with your brand identity and match with each other.
- Keep the email as short as possible, while including the necessary details. Break longer content into sections or use columns for easy scanning.
- Look at your email through the eyes of your reader. You can send it to a colleague for checking before sending it out to your mailing list, to ensure that it has logical flow. Organize your text and visuals so they guide the reader seamlessly through the content, enhancing user experience.
The key takeaway is that email structures have a psychological impact on the reader. Chaotically or strategically positioned text and visual elements can take away from the user experience.
However, logically structured emails that flow well and address a reader’s expectations will ensure that you capture their attention and retain it, driving them to take the desired action. You’ll also enhance their overall user experience with your brand.
Where to Place Specific Email Parts
Some email parts are already fixed in their placement by default. But there are some that may raise questions about their placement and appearance. So let’s take a closer look at some of the basic email parts and content types and where and how they could be placed.
Different Newsletter Column Placement Possibilities
The layout of your newsletter can significantly affect how readers engage with the content. A single-column layout is a classic choice, ensuring the content is easy to read on both desktop and mobile devices. However, experimenting with multi-column layouts can be effective for showcasing multiple offers, articles, or product categories at once. For example, a two-column design allows one section to focus on a featured product, while the other can highlight testimonials, news, or a blog post. The key is to ensure that the design is responsive, ensuring readability across various screen sizes while also maintaining a logical flow of content.
Placing the CTA (Call to Action)
A well-placed CTA is essential in driving conversions. Generally, the CTA should appear at least once near the end of the email, but strategically placing additional CTAs throughout the content can also be effective. For example, a CTA after a compelling section about features, another after testimonials, and a final one towards the conclusion ensures that the reader has easy access to take action at various stages. The CTA should be clear, concise, and visually distinct, usually in the form of a button to make it stand out from the rest of the content. But keep in mind that all of these CTAs should not be completely identical in their wording and form, because that can come across as annoying and overly salesy, plus it doesn’t look good in the email.
For email newsletters where you want to showcase recent blog articles, you may choose to offer from one to several columns, with each text box supported by an image and a CTA.
Adding Secondary Links and Additional Information
Secondary links provide readers with access to extra details without distracting from the main content or CTA. These links, such as those leading to product specifications, event details, or customer support, should be placed towards the bottom of the email, just below the primary CTA. Aim for 2 to 3 links, each clearly labeled, like “More Details,” “Event Schedule,” or “Product FAQ.” These links allow users to explore additional information without overwhelming the main message, enhancing the user experience while maintaining focus on the primary goal of the email. Keep the text small and concise to ensure it doesn’t compete with the main call to action.
PS: These links can also simply be placed within your text. For example, if you write “Come visit our store at 3 Abbey Rd. to see our new collection in more detail. In addition – some old favorites will also be back in our store!”, you can add the link to the online shop page where the products that have returned to the store are featured.
Emphasizing Particular Product or Service Features
In any marketing email, highlighting the core benefits or features of a product or service should be a priority. Structuring the email to draw attention to these key selling points – whether through bullet points, bold text, or dedicated sections – helps the reader quickly grasp why the product or service is valuable. Positioning these features early in the email, after an engaging header and introduction, can prime the reader for further action, making them more likely to click through to the website or landing page.
Using Illustrative Images to Enhance Engagement
Images play a crucial role in breaking up text-heavy content and reinforcing the message of the email. High-quality visuals of products in use, happy customers, or lifestyle shots can help readers connect emotionally with the content. Strategically placed images, especially near the beginning or between text sections, guide the reader’s eye and create a more engaging, visually appealing experience. However, it’s important to balance images with text to ensure the email loads efficiently and remains accessible to all users. Here, the 60/40 rule comes into play, according to which you should aim for at least 60% text and no more than 40% images.
Adding a Column of Recommended or Best-Selling Products
A column of recommended or best-selling products is a powerful tool for driving additional sales and increasing engagement. This section is typically placed near the middle or towards the bottom of the email, after the main content but before the final CTA. When designing this column, ideally, display 3 to 5 products in the section. This is enough to give variety without making the email too cluttered. For a two-column layout, each column can feature 2-3 products; for a three-column layout, each row could showcase 1-2 products per column, depending on the space available. Each product should have a high-quality image, a brief product name, and a short description or price to capture the reader’s interest quickly.
Personalization is key when you want your products to interest the readers and sell your goods. Ultimately, personalization has a direct impact on email click-through rates, and knowing your audience well first will help you tailor your content to them.
PS: Ensure that the images of the products are uniform in size and well-aligned to create a neat and professional look. Additionally, you should attach clear CTA buttons like “Shop Now” or “Learn More” to each product to drive the reader to the next step.
Placing Testimonials for Social Proof
Including customer testimonials or reviews is a powerful way to build trust and credibility. Placing these elements strategically – such as in a separate section with a visually distinct layout or as part of a “why choose us?” section – reinforces the email’s message. Testimonials are particularly effective when placed after introducing the product or service features, as they provide social proof and validate the benefits already outlined. Visual quotes or photos of happy customers can further enhance their impact.
Praise from other people is like the icing on the cake in the final part of the email, giving the potential customer one last compelling reason to make a purchase.
Adding Event or Shop Location Details
If the marketing email includes event promotions or location-specific offers, presenting this information in a dedicated section with a clear layout is key. This section should stand out with bold headlines, a clear date and time, and relevant details that capture the reader’s attention quickly. Using maps, venue images, or countdown timers can further add urgency and excitement to the email, especially for time-sensitive events like sales or product launches.
The ideal placement depends on the type of message and the goal of the email. Generally, the best position would be in the middle to lower section of the email, following the introduction and key selling points (why should the person attend the event, what’s literally in store for them at your shop, etc.), but before the final CTA.
PS: If the event or location is a main subject of the email, consider giving it its own dedicated section with a clear headline (e.g., “Join Us at [Event Name]” or “Find Us at [Location Name]”). Use visuals like maps, venue images, or a countdown timer to make the section stand out and capture the reader’s attention.
Including Social Media Links
Often, social media links (or buttons) appear within the footer or just under it, but you can also place them inside the text of the main body of your email. The structure and layout will depend on your brand guidelines, but the placement in the text depends on your goal.
Adding social media links in the text makes sense when it is specifically related to the topic of your email – for example, promoting a new social media campaign, a call to follow the social media page or comment on a post, etc. If the main focus of your email is to promote products and guide the subscribers to your online store, then social media links in the main content of the email are redundant and distract from important CTAs.
Experimenting with Content Order
The order of content in an email isn’t set in stone – you should actively test and optimize the structure to discover what resonates best with your audience. Consider A/B testing different placements for product features, testimonials, CTAs, and images to determine which arrangement leads to higher engagement rates. Some audiences may respond better to a more visual-focused layout, while others may prefer text-heavy content with clear, detailed explanations. Constant testing and iteration are the foundations of refining email structure for maximum impact.
Conclusion: The Marketing Email Structure Is Key to Your Success
When sending an email to your audience, always put yourself in their shoes and determine whether it’s an email that you’d like to receive. Is the structure and layout logical? Are your brand colors, fonts, typography, and logo true to your company’s identity? Are you consistent with your marketing emails and are they doing their job correctly?
Making sure the above elements are in place and constantly adhered to will help you strengthen your brand while enhancing your audience’s experience. It’s about boosting engagement by adding value and putting careful thought into how you structure your email, with the right text and visuals to match.