10 Ways to Improve Email Design and Deliverability 

Ever wonder what can truly make your email marketing campaigns stand out from the crowd? Making an effort to improve your email design pays off. Beefree’s Brand Strategist Emily Santos shares 10 tweaks you can make today to make your emails more beautiful – and help them land in the inbox.

New strategies and trends appear at the speed of light in email marketing. Having a solid foundation lets you experiment and test while knowing you have everything in place to get your audience’s attention.

This foundation entails a perfect balance between:

• Sending the right messages to specific segments of your email list.
• Creating captivating email design that keeps your prospects scrolling.
• Working to achieve strong email deliverability so your messages can get in front of people.

Email design isn’t just about aesthetics. Rather, it speaks about your brand’s identity, personality, and messaging, helping to build real connections with your readers. However, even the most well-crafted emails can fail to land in recipients’ inboxes. 

This is where the creativity meets the technicality, ensuring that your emails reach their destination and drive results.

The importance of email design in marketing

Design’s impact in email marketing is much like a storefront window; it invites the viewer in and offers a glimpse of what to expect of your brand. However, in an era of flooded inboxes, you have to stand out to drive email engagement.

Responsive design, interactivity, and personalization are some of the most effective elements when delivering high-performing results. Here are some supporting statistics:

• Forty-seven percent of people open a brand email every time because they’ve received relevant emails from that brand in the past (ZeroBounce).
• Mobile responsive email design increases unique mobile clicks by 15% (Litmus).
• Segmentation is the best form of personalization and generates an email ROI of 77% (Campaign Monitor). 

Email design best practices

The statistics above speak on the power of email design in not just attracting but retaining user engagement. Let’s discuss some of the best email design practices to ensure your next email campaign performs.

Balance text and visuals

Use a mixture of text and visual elements to help balance your content and guide the reader’s eye toward the desired action. Use text hierarchy and white space to create harmony between the text and visuals and create an engaging and easily digestible email.

Consistent branding

Align all email communications with your brand’s identity to ensure brand recognition. Implement your brand’s color scheme, typography, logos, and other elements important to your identity. Additionally, imagery that illustrates your brand’s personality helps to humanize your brand, building connections with your audience.

Call-to-action (CTA)

Your CTA should clearly state what action you want the recipient to take. The copy should be short and to the point. To ensure that your CTA stands out, use contrasting colors that pair well with your branding; however, make sure that the text is still readable against the color.  

Test for responsiveness

When designing your email, test the design on different devices, especially mobile. With 61% of email opens happening on mobile, ensure a seamless user experience regardless of which device they’re viewing it on. If your email builder allows, change the layout or hide elements for a better viewing experience on mobile. 

Great email design enhances the user experience, encourages click-throughs, and reinforces brand identity. However, even the most captivating content can be futile if deliverability issues persist.

The challenge of email deliverability

Email deliverability determines if your messages reach the inboxes of your recipients. But many emails never reach the recipient’s inbox, often landing in the spam folder or getting blocked entirely. 

Related: Why emails land in spam and how you can fix it

Email marketers often grapple with email deliverability as it comes with many elements that impede the performance of their campaigns. Factors like spam filters, ever-changing algorithms of email service providers, and the quality of email lists play pivotal roles. 

Let’s explore the best practices that can help improve your email deliverability.

Email deliverability best practices

Adherence to email deliverability best practices is non-negotiable. Here’s how to enhance your email’s journey to the inbox:

Consistent sender information

Use recognizable sender names, email addresses, and subject lines. Consistency helps build trust and familiarity, reducing the likelihood of being marked as spam.

Engaging and relevant content

Your content should be engaging, relevant, and valuable to your audience. Email campaigns with personalized subject lines generate 50% higher open rates.

Regular list cleaning

Regularly remove inactive subscribers and incorrect email addresses. This improves the overall health of your email list and deliverability rate.

Opt-in practices

Ensure that your recipients have opted into your emails. This not only complies with legal requirements but also improves engagement rates.

Avoid spam triggers

ZeroBounce found that 78% of people will report an email as spam if it “looks like spam.” Keep your language natural, straightforward, and with minimal click-bait titles to help avoid spam filters.

Achieving the perfect balance with Beefree and ZeroBounce 

While visually compelling email design captures the audience’s attention and fosters engagement, ensuring that emails reach the inbox is equally crucial. A harmonious integration of both elements guarantees that your emails not only look impressive but also land in subscribers’ inboxes.

Tools such as Beefree and Zerobounce help make this balancing act easier.

Beefree  – A flexible and intuitive email design tool

Beefree offers you a suite of features that transforms the email design process into a seamless, creative, and efficient experience. 

Beefree prioritizes creativity without compromising email responsiveness or deliverability. With features like Mobile Design Mode and Integrations, you have the flexibility of designing without any rendering concerns.

Even if you have minimal design experience, you can craft emails that resonate with your audience. This translates to more engagement and successful marketing campaigns.

ZeroBounce – A powerful email deliverability tool

ZeroBounce’s email validation services help more than 300,000 businesses like yours land in the inbox and engage with real people. By filtering out invalid, abusive, and spam trap addresses, it ensures that your email list is clean for higher email deliverability.

ZeroBounce offers more than email validation. Its email scoring service, paired with Activity Data, lets you identify your most active audience so you can reach out with better messages. Higher engagement builds your sender reputation and helps your emails earn their place in people’s inboces.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind when pairing Beefree’s design abilities with ZeroBounce’s email optimization tools.

Design for your audience

Use ZeroBounce data to understand your audience better and design your emails in Beefree to suit their preferences.

Regular testing and tweaking

Continuously test and tweak both your designs and your list, using feedback from both Beefree and ZeroBounce.

Get better results in your next campaign

Achieving the perfect balance with Beefree and ZeroBounce involves integrating these two powerful tools to enhance and improve your email marketing campaigns. 

Step-by-step integration:

• Design with Beefree: Start by crafting your email with Beefree’s intuitive design tools. Ensure your email is visually appealing and aligns with your brand’s identity.
• Validate with ZeroBounce: Before sending, run your email list through ZeroBounce. This step will clean your list, ensuring you send emails to valid, active addresses.
• Combine insights and design: Use the insights from ZeroBounce to segment your list and personalize your emails in Beefree. You can then cater to different audience segments.

Using ZeroBounce and Befree in tandem not only enhances the aesthetic appeal of your emails but also ensures they reach the right audience. By adopting these tools, you can enjoy higher open rates, better engagement, and a stronger connection with your audience.