The best design for a newsletter
If you keep wondering which is the best design for a newsletter, you should think that there’s no universal truth about it, while there can be the best design for your newsletter. That may seem trivial, but it actually encapsulates an important concept: given a few common norms of good web architecture, you need to focus on what’s specific about your business and try to express it best with a template. A newsletter crafted for a new social network should be very different from a newsletter sent to the customers of an e-commerce selling jewels. And it’s not only a matter of product sector – it’s a matter of brand identity.
That said, (almost) nobody is a genius. So you can always take inspiration from some creative newsletter layouts on the web: and there are of course some general points that can be highlighted and are valid for any kind of templates. Here’s our best five:
- Use tables and care about your code. Write always proper, clean, indented HTML. Base your template’s structure on tables (still the best way to organize your content in a newsletter) and put CSS inline.
- Use lightweight images. The global size of an email should never exceed 100Kb at the most. The lighter it is, the better: and generally this depends on the weight of your embedded images. Also, provide always an alternative text.
- Structure a coherent flux of information. The aim of your email is to be read, and to be read easily. An overwhelming layout is no help at all: also considering the fact that a typical email user has a very short attention span.
- Think mobile. More and more newsletters are opened on mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads etc. So: calls to action and buttons can be tappable, while width must stay under 600px.
- Test. A big hurdle for newsletter designers is that a template will probably never look the same on every browser, mail client or device. The only way to guarantee a proper rendering is to test your design wherever you can: on Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and other webmails (on Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox…), on Apple Mail, Gmail for Android etc.
These are just some general advices. From our part, we have collected 300 amazing templates carefully crafted by our designers, in order to save you time and money: ready to be used and customized in your favorite email sending software.
