Secrets Behind High-Performing Email Design

8 - Secrets Behind High-Performing Email Design

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This episode is all about email design. Our Lead Designer, Anne Lamotte, and Creative Director, Amanda Lucaj, share secrets behind high-performing email design. They prepared a variety of examples to show you best practices and current email design trends. This is an inspiring and valuable episode you should not miss.

Watch the video to see all the design examples!

You’ll Learn

• How often email design trends change
• Why image-only emails are a bad idea
• What white space is and how to use it in emails
• Why visual hierarchy is crucial in high-converting emails
• How to keep the text-to-image balance
• What separates high-performing designs from average ones
• How AI tools make email design easier (With Examples)

and more! 

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Transcript

Welcome to Email Einstein, a podcast by Flowium. It's time to start honoring your inner marketing Einstein. Tune in for the data-driven tips that'll make you a marketing genius. Here you'll find email marketing formulas and tips straight from the brilliant mad scientists at Flowium.

It's time for your emails to start earning more money. It's time to unleash your Einstein. Hello, hello! Welcome back to Email Einstein, the podcast by Flowium, where we talk all things e-commerce all things email.

I'm here today with my co-host Andrey. Andrey, say hi. Hi. And today we'll be talking about something special.

It's a trendy thing. Yes, we'll be talking all things trends, all things best practices, and all things designs with our amazing designers from Flowium, Anne and Amanda. Ladies, say hi. Hey.

We're so happy to have you. And every time we post something like design related, It's always a hit.

So we have high hopes for today. No pressure.

No pressure. But yeah, and Amanda, tell us, like, you've put together this, like, amazing, like, examples and presentation, like, what we will be talking about today and why is it important?

Yeah, so we are going to go over some, like, best practices we see in high-converting email design and then some trends and kind of going over what we've seen work, what we see that doesn't work, and then how we're practicing those best practices here at Flowium. How often does it change that, like, something new comes into the market, or something what was new before now has become old or not relevant or overused?

Yeah, I think trends change daily. It seems like, you know, we're in this kind of retro trend right now. A lot of '90s is coming back, not just in in email design, but even in fashion and music. Yeah.

But what we do see is those best practices stick around, like having a CTA above the fold. Yeah. Like having imagery that works, having live text, like those kind of things we see stay the same no matter what the trend is, no matter if you're using big bubble letters, no matter if it's minimal. And like to Amanda's point, I feel like trends, like it is faster and faster as trends coming and like with fashion, it does like trickle into the graphic design and like feeling sort of '90s trend, but it is true, like maintaining those best practices, but then applying those trends just like help convert and help like customers relate to the designs because it's like, oh, you know, they connect with it, you know, if it's following that specific trend.

Yeah.

So what I'm hearing, so like we still have the kind of framework or best converting email was CTA above the fold, live tags, all other like technical aspect, but what the visuals might be different, like '90s, something like more modern. Exactly. Yes.

Perfect. I'm obsessed with that, like, '90s, 2000s trends, you guys. Like, have you been to the physical mall lately? Like, to the actual mall with, like, stores?

I feel like I'm in high school again. It's crazy. It's like the fashion is back. Hollister launched, like, a 2000s, like, clothing— I know, not line, but I'm like, I had all these things.

All of them. I wish I still had them.

Like, someone should have told me to keep them.

I know.

Yesterday, by accident, I went to Linkin Park concert, and I felt like I was in my high school, like, listening to those songs. All of the same outfits. Yeah, it's great.

I know.

But it's so heartbreaking to see people who you listen to as a kid, seeing them in their, like, 50s and 60s.

It's so heartbreaking. I went to Red Hot Chili Peppers, and they're like, 60-something. And I'm like, oh no, heartbreaking.

They still, still got it.

Well, anyways, that's— sorry, sorry, not related to design, but I never see this like in my life. Actually, this is first— no, second American concert I went to. I went to Madonna, also not expectedly.

And this one also like didn't expect to go, but first time in my life I saw those mosh pits, how it's called, you know, like Yeah, like, it's like, first I thought it was a big fight. I thought, like, and I'm like, where's the security? It's like people, like, fighting and, like, there's no security. And I asked my cousin because he invited me to the concert, and I'm like, what is that?

And he told me, this is like mosh pits. This is like— I don't know this word. Please explain. People are kind of, like, dancing and not that, like, fighting, pushing each other.

Oh, I've done that. I just didn't know the name of the word. But there's a There's a whole kind of art to it.

You know, everyone respects each other in there.

You know, it's like you pick each other up. I don't know. I haven't been in any at all.

Sorry.

Not related to email design at all. I love it. Cool.

Okay.

Well, let's go back to the reason why we got together on this call today. The first best practice, something that we practice like religiously here at Flowium. Tell us more about the— what is the first thing that is important?

So I think we want to start with dark mode optimization.

So we know there's actually a stat, it's like over 80% of people have their devices in dark mode.

So how do we ensure that text and visuals are legible in both light and dark mode? We have a few like tips here.

So we want to make sure that the colors have enough contrast because readability can suffer if emails are not optimized.

And then, and do you want to talk about some of the tips? Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm usually surprised when I see some like bigger brands that aren't dark mode optimized, like logos getting lost, icons as well.

It's like disappears into the email and dark mode's been around for a bit, but it's like more and more people are switching because it's better on the eyes.

But some things with emails, it's like you have to think about making sure that when, you know, making sure your images are PNG so that once it comes like The emails aren't breaking up in an awkward way as well, but then that— because that allows for then easy copying for coupon codes. Because if you want to have that mix of image to live text as well, so it adjusts for readability and accessibility and deliverability as well. Because if it's too many images, it could fall into spam.

So it's kind of doing that amazing balance while designing for dark mode. By the way, if you're listening, you will not see, but if you're on YouTube, you will see we are showing the Parker Play brand, like white and dark mode. Question about that body section where it's like you have a white, I don't know, like, like, like the text. For me, I don't know, maybe it's my screen, but like, for me, it's harder to read.

Is there any like contrast best practices?

So with that, the text has the stroke and was exported as a PNG because their font wouldn't— would have— isn't a Google font necessarily.

So a lot of customers, it would switch to fallback. And for some brands, like, if that's really important to maintain their font in their emails, you know, it's like you will do those kind of little tips and tricks.

But for that, you also could make that like an HTML, like live text as well. But I think, yeah, it's playing around to make sure you have the right stroke around the the font, you know, is still readable, which I think it is. But yeah.

But some people might say like, why should I bother with this like dark mode thing?

Like, can I just design like, like one beautiful email, export this as one image or slice it into different like 5 or 6 images and like place it as a kind of as an image, but it looks like email. Right. I think there's a couple of reasons we don't do that because so many people use dark mode. We don't want to take away the dark mode experience from them.

If they have their phone in dark mode, that's how they want it. And if they get an email and it's like all white, then it's also, it can be like harder on the eyes. And then if we just do a full image, then we run into like deliverability. Is it going to be delivered?

And we will talk, talk about this later too. If it's all images, what happens if that person's in an area with like low Wi-Fi or low data? The images aren't going to load.

Now they get an email that looks like spam.

And I think too, along with accessibility as well, because if it's all image-based and your text is too small, like on mobile, the text will be a lot smaller and not as legible. And then you run into areas too where some people are having the same experience of, you know, your most important text is in the body paragraph that is live text that then could just, like if you're not doing proper alt text and it's all images, like that person's experience either hearing or tabbing through the email, like it's very different if it's just all image-based. Yeah. Right.

Right. Are you guys using the dark mode on your phones? Just like checking the stats. I'm the dark mode person.

Do you? I switch back and forth after like a year. And then I got a new phone. I tried.

I tried like because when the black mode things start, dark mode things started with emails. I'm like, I need to switch to see how email looks like. But I couldn't stand it for a day. I'm like, I don't know.

Yeah. And I tried a few times. I'm like, no, it's overwhelming to me. I don't know if it's true or not, but they say that it's actually saving the battery life too.

Yeah, I don't care about my phone's battery life. I care about my emotions. Don't you want to provide a good quality of life to your phone, Andrey? I just love it.

I think it's— I just like the aesthetic of it. I have a black iPhone, dark mode. It's just like, it works somehow.

Somehow it works.

That's so funny. I'm a later converter. I feel like friends would look at my phone, they're like, you still have light mode? I was like, I don't know.

And then once I switched, I was like, this is so 2022. I can't believe this. I don't know. How old are you?

Do you know that there are these apps that can actually turn your your phone into— or maybe it's not even an app, but standard setting where you can do it, the grayscale.

So basically everything is going to be black and white. And they say that if you turn it into like a black and white thing, it's like a productivity hack that you will be less tempted to like scroll through Instagram. I tried it.

It's like boring as hell. They call it Kindle. No, maybe pretty much. If it's all black and white and color, you know, would drive you to certain imagery and things like that.

You would just— Yeah, it's not, it's not as exciting. Let me tell you that. Yeah. Like your life would be boring.

Mm-hmm. Going to the, going back to like good practices, I'm kind of excited about the second one. And that's something that I learned from our design team. I didn't know that this is like how it's called the white space.

What is the white space and why is it like important to the emails and how do you even like use it in the emails? Well, I think even just design in a whole, using strategic kind of white space is super important because it helps things not become less overwhelming. There's more breathing room. Even like, I find it will change things like just 10 pixels because you're like, ah, just like adds a better breathing room, you know, while looking through.

But definitely with an email as well, like helps allow for like better scannability, readability too. And that helps really drive like clear kind of hierarchies of like where to look next.

So the two kind of, and I think, yeah, you grabbed another Nike example, which I, we pulled Apple and Nike, which are like clear driving brands for beautiful white space. Yeah.

In their emails.

So I think, yeah, like these examples here just like really help just show like where your eyes should go while you're going through the email. I don't know if you guys feel that same experience while you, yeah, go through. Yeah.

This is when I, I mean, back in the days when I was still interviewing designers for Flowium before we had recruiters. HR team, this was my, you know, number one trick to, like, to identify if it's a good designer, if they have some designers. Like, anybody right now can buy subscription to Figma, go to what's Canva, and start to be a designer. But people need to have some background knowledge about aesthetics, design, forms, like compositions.

Exactly. And I think in digital design, like, white spaces are— you can see like good designer versus bad. 100%.

Sometimes that's why sometimes we have a client who said like, oh no, that image needs to be 3 pixels left. And you're like, come on, you're serious?

Yeah, exactly. No, it's true. And it's all about that balance. Like you said, composition, balance.

It's like they all come into play while you're designing.

And so it's like having that certain sort of eye where you're like this, like, why does this look good? Are better than another design, you know, but it can just be that sort of a few pixel difference where it just clicks. Small things.

It also gives it that like upscale vibe. Have you guys noticed when you go into like an expensive store, they don't have like a ton of racks with like the clothing. They have like super minimal. They have like one t-shirt hanging and then the light is like shining on it and the angels are singing or whatever.

But it's like the experience, right? Exactly. And I, and I like that we use this kind of, um, styling for a lot of our upscale brands that we work with. Mm-hmm.

It's almost like gives the spotlight to the product. I love it. Yeah. And I think like to your point as well with like, I think it can be sort of brand dependent.

Obviously you want that like breathing room, but you know, you look at fashion brands' emails and it's like image, a lot of space, smaller little text, kind of similar to their store designs. It's like one clothing rack, one little area where there's accessories. It's like that kind of same. Feeling, but it's like, I feel like high-end brands definitely do, you know, a lot of white space, which is nice.

I really like this reference that you guys added by Canyon Coffee, inspired by Rome. I like how they use that like white space to give it almost like a magazine kind of vibe. Yeah, very editorial. Exactly.

It's beautiful. And I think, yeah, if, if it was even closer together, it would be very overwhelming, but how those sections have a lot of sort of white spaces between your iPhone. Yeah, I would be curious to see how that email looks on mobile because it should, it might, might break all that like beautiful, beautifulness of this email. Yeah, yeah.

Then that's the thing with that. Or, or on Outlook. Mhm. Outlook can break anything.

There is no thing that Outlook Outlook can't break you guys. You can have the best design team in the world and it's like you send it to Outlook, it's like, looks terrible.

I know, I know. I love the Nike example that you pulled in that GIF as well.

It's so fun. Yes, it's like one of the recent ones. Yes, they are launching the shoes. I think that email was sent, I don't know, like mid-July or something.

But yeah, they kind of use this white space to showcase the Yeah, the product itself. And they use the GIF too, which is also like a fun, fun little element. But yeah, this, it's nice. It's like such clear kind of direction of where to look next, you know?

It kind of ties in with like our next point of like clear hierarchy. Mm-hmm. Clear visual hierarchy, like guiding your eye, making sure there's like one thing at a time almost for the eye to focus on, which I love these, these first couple examples of the ones that do not follow hierarchy. Tell us more, tell us more about the do not follow the hierarchy.

I think if you're looking at like either of, especially these first two, it's kind of like your eye has nowhere to focus. It's like the logo to the 20% to that, to that. 2 million CTAs. Yeah, a lot of CTAs. The CTAs are bigger than the products.

Also just a little chaotic. Yeah, we actually— it is a bit messy. Yeah, yeah. We started kind of telling some designers a test of like, the Dr. Squash one is perfect.

Like if you look away for 5 seconds and then look back, that's a really good test to see if you have like good hierarchy. Like what does your eye go to first? Yeah. Love that.

I went to school for architecture and I start my first 2 years, we were drafting, uh, by hand. No, like, no computers. Uh, maybe they don't do nowadays, but like before, and, uh, we had, when we were drafting with a pencil, like, we have to apply different weight to the line, which will define, like, what kind of wall is this, right? And the goal was always to step two steps back and to see if there's difference, if you can see something, some line thicker, something like from like far away, if you can see a hierarchy, sorry, it's hard for me to pronounce.

Same thing with email, I think. Yeah. When you step back, yes, there's like small body text, which is kind of secondary, but can you see the clear call to action or can you see the clear flow of the email? Exactly.

And it really relates to, you know, when you open an email to someone, it's like that first few seconds if they're interested or not.

So it's like doing that sort of look away test. You're like, where do I look first? Where would they look first when they have— we have such a sort of short window also with email design if you kind of catch the reader's attention.

Yep, totally, totally. Like this email by the brand called Outschool, it was shared in our TLC channel. It's like, it's a lot, it's a lot for my eyes.

I know they probably like packed a ton of, yeah, good information that is maybe relevant to them, but then there is a question: do you guys do segmentation at all if you send everything in one email?

And I assume that this audiences might not be like the same audiences for everything.

So anyways, it looks just like, it looks busy. There are probably better ways to organize it, but so many links. It's like Word document.

Exactly. Yeah. And I think, I don't know, since I'm very visual, I like having no imagery or even just like, I know there's icons there, but one, but you know, I think that just is a good example of showing like having some sort of imagery as well. Can help break that up because readings— I, I would open this and just delete or close it because I wouldn't know.

But sometimes it can be intentional, like this email. What do you guys think? Like, Type Design for Designers. I don't know what this brand is, but whatever, some kind of like designer brand.

I know it's like busy, but I kind of like it. It's like a vibe, and it still has that hierarchy, at least in like in my understanding. I think that's a good example of like I was just saying to having imagery, but it's like how this is broken up with a specific sort of grid. It is busy, but it has a module sort of layout.

So again, your eye is following. You have clear titles. You go from math to reading to like, you see if you were interested in one. Yeah, you could just— right.

The titles are huge though.

Okay, um, so let's talk about— who designed it? Who did design this beautiful email?

Let's talk about this this beautiful email from the client of ours, Dr. Squatch.

You guys, first of all, all of the emails are so fun. Like, in general, their marketing is top-notch. I'm not a Dr. Squatch person, but I'm following their channel because they have this, like, a stand-up comedy, Dr. Squatch stand-up comedy, like, thing. And I love them.

Yeah. Tell us more. Tell us more about this email and how you kind of organize it for it to have the clear visual hierarchy. What do you think?

Oh, go ahead. No, go.

So definitely having like the headline big is great, bold. If you look away, you see smell legendary, you see the products, you see that CTA, and then still it kind of, it still drives your eye down the page and it makes you want to know more.

And even if you're scanning it, you get the, okay, forged by nature, no harmful ingredients, made for men. Like, that's like what you really need to know. If a reader wants to dive in and read everything, that's great, but we still are able to convey those like big USPs right away.

So I think that is— it's really great.

Yeah, I wish— and I was just gonna say, it uses that inverted triangle hierarchy layout that I feel most emails— it's like a good— if you want to, you know, drive conversions and click rates, it's like an inverted triangle with a giant, you know, big title at the top that drives down to the CTA. And the fact that it's a, the orange CTA on the green, it like really pops as well. Yeah. No, that's great.

Tell us more about the Patagonia email, because some might argue that it's not like a traditional email in terms of like the layout, you know, but somehow it still works. What do you guys think of it? I think it does hit that. It's there in the sense of hitting the inverted triangle in a way.

It's more of a stacked sort of like title body copy.

So the CTA is a bit low in a sense. But I think having that kind of visual, you know, big sweater like that, it does entice you a bit, you know, with the text overlaid. But I don't know if you guys would think differently, Vera, like looking at this.

No, it works for me. And I do love how they organized product blocks. I wonder if they are clickable because if they are, it's pretty, pretty amazing. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think also design, who— it's important to know who is your audience. Exactly. Like people who follow Patagonia, who buy their brands, I think they open each their email and just browsing because they're curious.

Yeah. I'm subscribed to a brand. REI, right? Or like they also outdoor, but it was multiple brands.

And like, I'm opening all their mails, I'm checking what they're sending. I'm not like always buying, but I'm always curious because like they sharing so much. Patagonia recently had this, well, not a scandal, but an interesting thing that happened to you. You guys, you know how on Instagram and on TikTok they had this like viral song about the 5-foot man who's wearing like Patagonia and has a trust fund, blonde hair, blue eyes, trust fund.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Basically, basically in the financial world, there are these like finance bros who are like wearing Patagonia jackets or like the vest. Yes. And this goes very like against everything that Patagonia believes in because they've created their gear not for this like trust fund babies or like the finance bros, but for outdoorsy life and that kind of stuff.

And recently some big— I think one of the big four firms or something, Ernst Young or something, they placed this like huge order with Patagonia to do this branded vests. But Patagonia kind of like declined.

So no branded vests for Ernst Young.

But anyways, I love their emails and sometimes they look like they didn't put a lot of effort in some of their emails because they just have like beautiful, like beautiful image without any CTAs or nothing and then just the text, but it works, you guys, at least for the audience that they are targeting.

Yeah. But actually it's a common thing, I believe, for outdoors brands.

Like now I'm like remembering the other brands.

There's something, brand starts on H, they have something similar.

Even in Vera Intima. Harry Hansen, right? Yeah, like I think outdoors brand, they kind of similar in design layout, how they do. Because they try to move away from like selling the product and instead they're selling the lifestyle, right?

That's what we've done. Like we've done this like huge rebranding for our client who sells this like outdoorsy products and we kind of like remove the CTAs, which is very unorthodox of us, but our click-through rates didn't go down just because we sell the lifestyle.

So you need to know your audience, right? Yeah, exactly.

And that's true, like selling a lifestyle or even if it's just more storytelling because it's just like, for Patagonia, it's someone like climbing, hanging on the side of the cliff. Like, even if they don't, you know, if they don't maybe even do that, they're not that outdoorsy, they connect and be like, oh, this is cool, you know? Like, I think that's a— right. Yeah, I sign up for one.

We are the, the company we went to, to climb Kilimanjaro. It's a Ukrainian brand, but like, I don't go to every trip they send, but like, I always open their emails and clicking almost on every trip they have, like, to check it out because I'm just curious. Yeah, yeah, totally. And like, going back to that, like, CTA importance, a lot of designers believe that having like that value delivered above the fold is very important.

Like, tell us more about it. And do you agree with it? Or do you not agree with this theory? Yeah, I think above the fold, I mean, it's super important.

Like the above the fold real estate should do the heavy lifting, you know, it grabs attention, it delivers the value fast, it kind of guides the next step, especially for conversions. But like you said, like we can maybe remove that if it's the right audience and then we can still see like the same click-through rate if you're telling a story, if it's emotion-based, like something like Patagonia. That example, you kind of want to see what's like, what's under it. Like it's kind of like a fun, like just having the pieces and you are really interested in scrolling down.

Of course, if it's a sale, usually that's the most important thing. Hit them with it. There's a CTA. Yeah.

And I really love this email that you've added to that bite email, which is like so unorthodox but so fun. Tell us more about it. Yeah.

So I saw that email and I thought, because obviously above the fold, you should, it should be above the fold to help with conversions.

But I think this is such a good example of a way to grab the reader's attention. I opened this email and I read it and I was like, this is fascinating. But then you keep scrolling and it's just tubes of toothpaste, especially looking at it in your inbox. But then the CT is at the bottom and I clicked because I was like, this was such a good campaign as well.

I think we use this term above the fold, above the fold, above the fold. Like, what do you mean above the fold? Like CTA, like their button should be there, like above the fold, because in the past I was thinking, oh, they mean like button needs to be there, but above the fold, something to grab your attention and get you curious to scroll, scroll down. And often what I see with, um, closing brands, uh, they catch, catch your attention with that like kind of lifestyle where you want to scroll down to check the other part.

I think Lululemon example, you have it here. Perfect. It's like catch your attention with like a collage of different lifestyle images and you want to kind of scroll down to learn what is this about. Yeah, it's actually one of the recent trends I've started seeing more and more of this emails with like collages or like gallery walls or whatever.

But they like, they get my attention every time because I'm like curious to see. I even like enlarge them to see like what's happening there.

So there are a few examples like this.

Or sometimes, you know, there's where they guide you.

There's either like dotted line or arrows that kind of, they just kind of directing you like, go down. Yes, right. We did have this like tests, you know, even in some emails. Too bad I don't have the example here.

But anyways, we'll add the example of the email that we've created for one of our clients where we kind of like created this like questionnaire with like little arrows that help them to pick the perfect tent that they need. Oh, yeah. I saw that. Yeah.

Yes. That was like so cool. And it's like literally it's guiding you to where you need to be. Or I like when they have a question about the fold.

Mm-hmm. And to get the answer, you kind of scroll like, you know, that there was a trend here about those horoscope like you did. I remember you did for somebody, what's your zodiac sign or something for the, like those kind of stuff and something else where you kind of ask the question about the fold, but they need to scroll to get the answer. You can tell me your zodiac sign and I'll tell you what supplement you need, you guys.

I'll find it. No, but seriously, it's like, you're a Scorpio, you need to chill, take some magnesium. No, that's not what we did, but that's the idea. That's the idea.

I mean, the client is a bit more like, he loved it, but he was like, yeah, we do have some like pretty conservative subscribers. They are from like southern states in America who are like hardcore Christian and they were not loving this idea as much as we did.

But anyways, I had a great time with that.

Anyways.

Yeah.

Yeah, so just like you guys said, um, it does not necessarily have to be like a traditional CTA button, like button in the hero image. There are like so much different ways to deliver that value and create that interest, right? Yeah, it just needs to grab attention.

Totally, totally. But I think it probably is important though for, you know, if you're pushing sale or those kind of campaigns. But I think when it's more storytelling or, you know, an an interesting campaign, then yeah, but not necessarily. Maybe the CTA has to be above the fold in a sale, but it's like your promo is big and colorful and it's like, okay, what is— and you know what, sometimes above the fold is all you need.

We've even tested like, you know how in Klaviyo or other ESPs you can actually see the heat maps of like how the customers are like engaging with your emails and how are they like, where are they clicking and like just like helps you to understand better how they interact. And we've tested that with one of the brands that is like similar to Lululemon kind of in the, in the vibe. And we've started testing this like longer emails versus the, we call them the postcard emails, literally the email that fits into like one screen of your phone. And we were surprised that it did deliver same engagement and sometimes even like better engagement.

And in revenue, it often outperformed the long emails, which was kind of like a surprise to us, but that's what we've started doing. More. I think that's a good point too, but also with— can be depend on the client or the customer, like length of email, you know. It's like some people are just like want a beautiful image and they'll click versus others who are ready to engage more.

So, but where is that like balance between like the text and image? Like how do you know how much text you need to use versus like text to image ratio basically? I think again, it can be sort of dependent on, um, client, you know, or like the brand as well, like what your ratio is. And like we discuss, if it's too many images, it like, you have to find that balance so it has good deliverability.

But I think, you know, some like fat, more fashion brands, it's like they do a lot more just like image-based emails because it's like selling a lifestyle, just showing the clothes on a model. Um, I pulled this example of Reformation because I thought they were a good example of like like an image to text and they have very clear sort of branding within their emails where it's image, fun, cheeky kind of body copy, another image. Like that's how all their emails are structured. Like, you know, anytime you open their emails, it's the same sort of format, but it does have that balance of just, you know, a little bit of copy with the image above.

Yeah, this is a great example. And I think, and you just say something important, and when you have this kind of framework or structure for like your brand, your, like, your customers, it's just easier for you to create another email. Like you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You're just replacing pictures.

Exactly. Copy and you're just using the working framework. Yeah, exactly. Because even for their brand, if they have a collection launch, it's like really they're changing, you know, it's the imagery that's really changing and people are connecting with like, oh, it's like wedding season.

It's like fun floral dresses, you know, and And the structure stays the same, but it's different copy and strong imagery. And it still creates like that hierarchy, like it guides you down. Like you see this big picture, a little bit of text. The text obviously helps a ton with like deliverability and accessibility.

No, but it looks, looks really good. What do you guys think of this email? Tell me, how do you feel about this Happi email? Happi spelled H-A-P-P-I.

They sell some kind of like chocolate, I think. And it's very weird. It has this huge copy and then this, like, two very big images and the teeny tiny CTA at the very bottom. What do you think?

I love how big their header is. I feel like that does— we're talking about above the fold, though, and it would take up on your phone, like, most of it. But that's great.

Somehow it works.

Somehow it works for them. For me. I think so too. And looking at their— even the packaging of their chocolate bars, like, it really kind of connects them as a brand in a way.

But I don't know if it follows that— those best practices that we were discussing. But I think if you, you know, you connect with that— the brand— I think there is like some fun— the fun layout in a sense, you know. Seems like it's kind of a low-risk email to try something like this because it's just letting people know Black Friday is coming. But that is the point of it.

It's not, it's not a sales email. It's not like anything lost. But you still want to have some kind of like CTA. I mean, this email might be, might be working really well for like brand building, but you need to send the traffic to the website.

Otherwise, in the eyes of like Klaviyo or ESP or anything, it will look like the not relevant email because people are not clicking. And that's actually the mistake that I'm seeing with some of the brands that we're doing audits for.

Sometimes they announce something and they don't even include the link and then their click-through rates are like 0%. And I'm like, guys, it's a beautiful email.

It has like amazing open rates, but you're like literally damaging your reputation with not including the CTA. By law they have one link, unsubscribe. Right. But that's also like, doesn't look good, right?

Cool.

Okay. GIFs. GIFs or GIFs, by the way, you guys, are you team GIF or GIF?

I'm GIF. GIF. GIF.

Okay.

Me too. Cool. Tell us more. Like, we use them quite a lot in our designs.

Do you guys love them? Do you guys use them often? Yeah, love them. And we see them do really well too.

So I mean, this first example from Noble, like, this is— it's really fun, especially because I don't think you're expecting the reviews. Yeah, right. You kind of think it's gonna end after you ask, we deliver, and it's like I wanna see every single one. Maybe the reviews could have been a little bit slower because you kind of have to watch it a couple times, but I think it's great.

And then it just makes you interested. Mm-hmm. Totally. Tell us more about this Dr. Squatch one.

So this one, it's just like fun. I think it was great using different image assets and putting them together. Especially like the champ, like it, it's like telling a story and it's not super focused on the product, which we don't do a lot. Usually we're very, you know, product or emotion focused, but it was just like a fun, there's a ton of GIFs we did for them.

And then if you scroll— Oh, was it, did we do, did we create that GIF? Yes. Oh, wow. Impressive.

Yeah. And then if you scroll down to the second GIF, like I love this. This one is like super functional. It shows you like Squatch Man to Squatch Legend to Squatch Champion.

And I think that is like really, it's really cool to see and it makes you look like, oh, I want to be there. I don't know exact statistics, but on one of the podcasts I was listening about Domino's Pizza and when they introduced that tracker, their orders or customer satisfaction went through the roof because that's simple thing to let people know. What tracker, you guys? Yeah, basically when you order pizza, there's a little kind of animation that starts where it's like, we got your order, and it's like, we're making the pizza, and it's like, it's being packaged, and now it's like, it's on its way.

And there's like little icons for each. I think it's even like a pizza and it's slowly adding slices also as like a clock.

So it just like adds.

So that's true.

If you just got an email saying, okay, you know, your pizza's coming or whatever, like, now you're waiting, you know, you're like, how's it going? But it like helps. Does a lot of psychology. I'm always like following my Uber driver, like, Uber Eats driver.

I'm like, where is my guy right now? Why did you turn? Why did you make left there? I just stuck somewhere.

Dude, take a short Oh my God. But seriously, I love how they are like gamifying this process for you. No, this Dr. Squash is amazing. Amazing email.

This is probably like my favorite part. Just like you said, Amanda, the more you squash, the more you climb. And like how they show the levels of rewards. Really clever way to communicate like a complicated long thing and like a short message.

Yeah, you should try their soap. You haven't tried their products yet? Even I tried them. Well, I didn't try them, try them, but I bought them.

So, okay, there's the domino. Well, hold on, sorry, it's very probably dumb questions and I do apologize for it, but is there a difference between soap for man and soap for— it's a soap. I guess that's scent. Fragrance, probably.

And there is no pink tax on it. Do you know what the pink tax is? No. Basically, there is this study where there are some products that are identical for men and women.

Sometimes the shampoos for men and shampoos for women, they're like identical shampoos, but the women one usually costs something like 15% more. Or like razors. Razors. Make it like blue.

Blue one will cost less than the pink one just because Wow. It's called the pink tax. Yeah.

So, oh wow.

That's interesting.

Anyways, this email is so beautiful. Oh yeah. It's by The Sports Edit.

So first of all, I do like how it looks like very editorial, you know, it's like a magazine. But tell us more about this GIF, you guys. What do you think? I think this is a great kind of example of like, well, before it was showing, you know, this sort of tracker or like how you could grow, you know, doing the reward program.

But with this This is a good example of even just like for like, for product images showing different kind of views for like styling and things like that. Just adding a bit more variety into, you know, just having one static image as well.

So this is a good example of like very simple but effective GIF. It shows like how the cardigan looks unbuttoned, how it looks like you get the— Yeah.

Up, you can kind of see like the fabric. I think that is like great for, it's a great way to because it'd be great to show all these images and have them big, but then you make your email really long. Yeah.

So this is super, super great.

And then it just— I mean, the whole email is really well done. Like, it's very, like you said, editorial, right? Like, honestly, like, all of their emails, I know, I just, like, love how they, how they look like. And they're beautiful.

Yeah. Cool.

Okay, guys, now let's go to my, uh, to the part I'm most excited about, and we'll try to, we'll try to cover them quickly. But, uh, you prepared this, like, examples of things that are trending in email design right now.

Tell us more about the AI-generated content and videos. Like, yeah, so this is, I think, well, it's been not necessarily trending this moment, but it's been the last little while. But you're seeing it more and more, and I feel like with email design too, it's like helpful for, you know, with creating sort of content for some brands. Like, I love this one with air filters where it's like, you know, amazing doing lungs, but it's like, obviously it's not, it's a great product, but a product people don't really think about.

So having like, you know, adding these sort of like creative heroes for this sort of product, it like really works cuz you would open this. Um, but I think it's allowed, like AI's allowed for that with creating this sort of content cuz it does some, you could make this, you know, artwork, but it would take some time. But it's really great to implement that. And I think we're seeing more and more of it, you know, in emails.

So sorry, just to be clear.

So this image that we see, filter and like a cloud of lungs.

So it was everything was generated with AI, you just prompted ChatGPT or something else to create it for you? Yeah, exactly.

In the air, like the filter itself, and said, this is, you know, this is what we're trying to do. We want to show a cloud, we want to show it with lungs, and then like got it back from, I think, ChatGPT. Oh my God.

So you can actually use it for productive stuff.

I usually use it for like, what kind of— how would I look as a dog, you guys? Like, this is what I'm using. I have a picture I can show you. Like, I would be I would be cute.

Please keep talking. But in all seriousness, you should drop it in random channel. It's like starting a challenge, right? No, but it's actually, I have a friend who has an agency.

They were doing the product photography back in the day before the AI, and he had to let go so many of the photographers because right now they can pretty much do a lot of these things with like AI and the quality is, yeah. Second example here.

So this was, this is a client that they didn't have a ton of assets.

So if you scroll down, like our designer created that pill from, with ChatGPT, like prompted it like, this is type of pill, this is how it should look.

And she created a ton of assets and the client actually asked if they could have those assets. Wow. Like separately.

So that was like really cool.

So that was fun to do. It can be tricky with labels. We often have to take it and put it into Photoshop and redo the label cuz it doesn't spit it out directly. Yeah.

But when it comes to things like the pill, there was multiple emails in this flow where it's like a bowl with all the pills in it and it was super, super helpful to show. Yeah. When we didn't have photography. And I, I think as well though, with it being, you know, it's easier to create sort of this content, but also I've I've like read so many things as well.

It's like you still need to be sort of a creative director for generating the content because you need to know the right prompts.

You know, even you can ask it certain cameras, the lighting angles, like there are things.

And also it's not exactly it.

So sometimes you do need to take it into Photoshop and edit or tweak it in ways, you know, but yeah.

Just going back to the white spaces, like for me, when I see the problem with white space, I know the problem, there, but I have no clue how to explain how to fix it. I, I see something's wrong.

So that's why, like, AI is powerful tool, but I don't think it's— yeah, and knowing the right, you know, keywords and prompts and ways to ask for even just like certain styling. If you're doing like, I don't know, you like, you could say just like Art Deco, but you, if you know the like certain lingo and like really go in depth about it, you'll receive way different results than just doing like 3 keywords.

Yeah. Right. And I was probably not giving good prompts cuz I, I wanna show you the doc, I guess I found this. Maybe I'm gonna send it into our Slack, but, uh, do you see it?

Oh, it's like, it's like I took a picture of me in, in the elevator and then it just like added the border collie face to it. And I'm like, that's beautiful, you guys. I need to be better with the prompts.

Okay.

The next, the next one is bold minimalism. What do you guys mean by the trend bold minimalism?

So it's not as, I guess it is a trend in a sense, and I think it also applies really great for hierarchy, like we were talking about, but it is playing with that, you know, using bright colors and like very bold text, but then having areas where it's very minimal though. It's like big bold text and then like, you know, maybe you a small detail of text below, but it's playing with like bold colors, bold text, but it's not too overwhelming and there's not too many objects within the, you know, layout.

Yeah. But I think with, it's a great kind of thing to bring into some emails if it fits the brand, cuz it does create those sort of clear hierarchies. Totally. Yeah.

It's like fewer elements, but a bigger impact. Like these two Malabar examples are great. Like you see what we want you to see, like the review. The headline, the product.

They're really bold, really fun. And I really can see that. I'm like never too, too adventurous with colors, even in my life. I mean, it does work for this email, but you need to know how to, how to put it together.

You can go. Definitely. Cool. This one is kind of cute and I feel like we've had this trend like maybe 10 years ago and it's kind of like coming back.

Handcrafting elements and scrapbooking. Tell us about it. More. I think this is one like we're seeing more as well, you know, counterpoint with AI coming in.

I think people like want that kind of nostalgic feeling as well and like things being like, obviously it's digital, but so it's not like physically made, but you know, having that like, yeah, nostalgic kind of, um, touch to the, you know, human, human touch. Exactly. Yeah. No, it looks great.

And it's kind of like, and it's kind of like connected to the next trend that you guys put the notes about, the doodles over the images, it also have that like crafty vibes, right? Exactly. I think in those kind of stylistic details, like obviously the Grazzo one, it's— there's a lot kind of going on, but that is their brand fully. It's just like lots of doodles, lots of like different illustrations.

Um, but I think it does have that sort of— it's very fun, but it kind of, you know, human sort of touch, hand-drawn kind of element. Um, which I love the example you added as like, oh, maybe the hero's fully— yeah, illustration. That's a good— I really visualize when the brands are doing that. Inked brand also does it a lot, the doodles.

I believe they have the temporary tattoos. Oh yeah. I love their emails. Yeah.

Or Simply Inked. Simply Inked.

Okay, cool. I really like this email example by Felix Gray.

I think it's the, I think it's the brand, like the glasses brands or they're selling the frames or something. And every, every month they have this like featured person of the month and they have like a doodle of that, like a famous person. And then they have the glasses that are kind of like connected to their person or they remind them of that person. It's a cool concept.

Yeah, I like it. Cool. It reminds me of how we created that for Lulu. Lululemon.

Lululemon. The lady of the month. Yeah. Back in the day.

That was super, super successful. Yeah. Cool.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much, you guys. It was fun. It was fun. Learned a lot.

Anything else to add before we go? Give us some inspiration before we wrap up for all of the aspiring designers. Pinterest is great. That's my inspiration.

Pinterest is great for inspiration. I think, how do you pull inspiration for email design without looking at other email designs? Like, is it architecture? Is it interior design?

Is it out in the world? Is it magazines? Like, you can look up competitors all day long and that's great and that's super helpful. but how do you find inspiration that's like not from emails? Maybe it's websites, museum, store.

Yeah. I think that's, I think that's such a good point. And even I find like magazines, I still like print has always been my heart and I look to magazines all the time. But I think that's such a good call out of like, cuz email design can be tricky because it's only this one sort of format, you know, like, and you're limited with size.

Amazing.

And so I think that's a good call out of like, how can you find other inspiration? Great. Thank you.

Thank you so much, you guys. We hope to have you here one day again. Thank you. This was great.

Thank you. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to Email Einstein. Can you feel that?

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