Make a great-looking email

Best practices for designing an email that looks polished and professional

It's easy to cram content into an email and hit "Send," but if you take a little extra time, you can create an email that's functional with a clear call-to-action, that also looks great!

Want professional help? If you're feeling overwhelmed designing your email, then leave it to us! With our Premium Design Service, we'll create the perfect email template for your business, fully customized with your branding and ready to use.

Here are some tips to get the most out of your next email:

Content

What's the purpose of your email? What are you trying to share with your contacts and what are you asking of them? Determining what your email is about will help you choose the right template and dictate how you lay out your content. Whatever your email is about, make sure it's clear and to-the-point so that your contacts don't miss your main message.
 

Template and layout

Choose a template that will give the right structure for your message. All of our email templates are designed to be mobile-responsive, so they'll look great on both desktop and mobile devices, and they're also completely customizable to fit your needs. Don't be afraid to move your content around the template to achieve a more balanced look, and add spacers between your text, images, and buttons to help your call-to-action stand out more and make your email easier to read.

Branding

Your email should look like it came from you! Add your logo and change the colors of your email to match your logo or website branding. To save time, you can upload your logo to your account settings so that it's automatically inserted into all your newly created campaigns. 
 

Tip: Before you begin customizing your email, set your brand colors and fonts on the Design tab to apply them to your entire template! This'll save you time, since you won’t have to change each individual block or element in your email.

Using a consistent color scheme across all your emails will help build brand recognition with your recipients. Just try to limit it to 4 colors or less (besides black and white) for a cohesive look and to ensure your email doesn't look too busy and overwhelming.

Text

Consider sticking with the default text sizes in your template; they're optimized for mobile devices. Text that is 14-16px is best for the email body and 22px text is good for headlines. To keep your email looking professional, avoid using overly fancy fonts or too many different font styles and sizes. Aim for web-safe fonts, too, to help ensure your message displays consistently for your audience.

And remember, less is more. Keep your email concise by focusing on the most relevant content and removing anything that isn't pertinent. If you have too much text, you run the risk that your contacts won't read it all and may miss your main message. Plus, long emails could get truncated when viewing in Gmail or Outlook.

If you have a lot of information to include in your email, consider formatting the important pieces into a bulleted list so that if your readers are quickly scanning your email, they'll be more likely to catch it without having to read paragraphs of text. Or consider including a brief snippet of the information and then inserting a Read More block to link to the full content. You can even use click segmentation to automatically segment the contacts who click to read the full information.

Images

Images are a great way to capture your readers' attention and help to support your message. With Constant Contact, you have access to tons of professional photos in the stock image gallery! Customize your images to make sure they pop, and don't forget to link your logo and images to your website or wherever you want to drive your contacts to. Animated gifs are also a great way to grab your readers’ attention and they add an exciting visual element to help increase engagement. Just be sure to use them sparingly.
 

Did you know? You can easily create beautiful and professional graphics using Canva and then insert them directly into your Constant Contact campaigns with our integration!

Be mindful of how many images you include in your email, though. Too many could cause delivery issues. If the image doesn't support your content, leave it out. A good ratio is one image for 20 lines of text.

 

Links and calls-to-action

If your contacts don't notice your links, they won't click on them, so make sure to style them in a way that stands out. Better yet - use a button for an eye-catching call-to-action! Focusing on one clear call-to-action helps to drive more clicks and improve engagement. It's also a good idea to include social media icons to drive traffic to your social profiles and make it easy for your contacts to stay connected with you.

Preview and test

The only way you're going to know you have a good-looking email is to see it for yourself. Preview your email to see how it will look on desktop and mobile, and send a test version to the people you trust to review your email and test all your links.

Questions?