Email design best practices
Designing high-converting emails requires a thoughtful balance between visual appeal, clarity, and user experience. Every element, from subject line to footer, should guide the reader toward a clear action.
When thinking about email content, it’s important to be intentional about both the length and breadth of what’s included. Rather than trying to fit every detail into a single message, emails should focus on the most important points: delivering clear, concise information that’s relevant to the customer and drives a specific action. Supporting details and deeper content can live on the website, allowing the email to act as a streamlined entry point rather than a comprehensive source of information.
Expand the dropdowns to explore some key best practices for designing emails that move the needle. If you’re looking for additional best practices, explore our blog.
Optimize your CTA
Optimizing your CTA is critical: they should be easy to identify, mobile-friendly, and strategically placed to capture attention without overwhelming the reader. The surrounding text and button text should clearly indicate what the call-to-action is, and why the recipient should take action. The value proposition shouldn’t be a mystery.
You should also aim to always keep the CTA above the fold, so recipients immediately know what action to take.
Balance text and image appropriately
Your text and visuals should adequately communicate your message, while not overwhelming the recipient with too much of one or the other. Too many images may cause long loading times or rendering issues, while too much text may be overwhelming and cause people to lose sight of the main message.
Overall, aim for the 60/40 ratio when balancing text and images (60% text, 40% images). Klaviyo email templates are a great place to get you started. From there, you can utilize headers, footers, product blocks and more to add in dynamic text and customize further. Learn more about Klaviyo email templates.
Prioritize accessibility
Accessibility is crucial. Ensure you’re using readable fonts, sufficient color contrast, and descriptive alt text so that all recipients can clearly understand your message. Follow best practices to create emails aligned to accessibility standards.
Incorporate personalization
The more personalized your email, the more relevant it is to each recipient, increasing the likelihood they’ll engage and eventually convert.
There are many email personalization features in Klaviyo you can use to your design advantage, including but not limited to:
- Personalization tags
- Dynamic product blocks
- Show/hide blocks
Learn more about personalization, dynamic product blocks, and show/hide blocks.
Design with mobile in mind
Emails are not just viewed on desktop devices; many people access their email inboxes on their mobile phones as well. Mobile optimization is crucial, and luckily, Klaviyo has settings that make this super easy.
When designing your emails, head to the Styles tab and toggle on Mobile optimization, which then naturally adjusts things like content margins, text sizes and spacing, and block padding on mobile devices. You can also strategically choose to show and hide things specifically on mobile devices.
Utilize your header and footer strategically
The header and footer sections of your email are great real estate for clear and standardized branding, as well as direct links to your website and social media pages. This is also a great place to make unsubscribing clear and easy to protect your deliverability.
You may also choose to add seasonal or other rotating disclosures into your headers or footers (for ex., you may update your footer in December with a reminder of longer shipping times due to holiday season delays).
Identify core elements of a strong email
Below is a strong example of a compelling email. Click through the tabs to explore core components that make this email engaging.
This email presents a clear header that immediately showcases the brand logo, fonts, and colors that can be reused across communications. This helps recipients immediately recognize your brand and deems you trustworthy.
In this section, there are a few featured dynamic products, including the next best product recommended for each specific user. This improves the email’s relevance and encourages recipients to engage.
Here is a VIP-only discount code reminder that’s visible only for recipients that are part of the VIP program. Otherwise, this block doesn’t appear for the rest of the recipients. With this feature, the brand can include multiple targeted messages within a single send, scaling efficiency.
The images used are high-resolution and clearly add value to the message communicated via text. They are balanced nicely throughout the email, protecting load times while also breaking up chunks of text to be more digestible.
This email has a footer that includes clear call-to-actions to the brand’s website and social pages that recipients will recognize in each of your sends. Unsubscribe information is presented clearly here too, helping protect deliverability.