Best Practices For E-commerce Email Design

An ecommerce company recently approached my team to do an email audit as they were facing challenges with low open and click-through rates. After analyzing their email account, here are our main recommendations to revive their email marketing channel: 1. Strategic Email Segmentation: Currently, your emails lack personal relevance due to a one-size-fits-all approach. This is a crucial area to address. Action Plan: Implement segmentation based on purchase history, engagement levels, browsing behavior, and demographic information. 2. Personalized Content Creation: Generic content won't cut it. Your audience needs to feel that each email is crafted for them. Action Plan: Develop emails specifically tailored to the different segments. This includes curated product recommendations, personalized offers, and content that aligns with their interests. 3. Subject Line A/B Testing: Your current subject lines aren't doing their job. You need to be implementing ongoing A/B subject line tests, as this is low-hanging fruit to improve your open rates. Action Plan: Regularly test different subject line styles and formats to identify what resonates best with each segment. Keep track of the metrics to inform future campaigns. 4. Mobile Optimization: A significant portion of your audience reads emails on mobile devices. Neglecting this is causing a decrease in your email engagement rates. Action Plan: Ensure all emails are responsive and visually appealing on various screen sizes. Test your emails on multiple devices before sending them out. Additional Campaign Strategies We Recommend: - Launch a Monthly Newsletter: This should include new arrivals, style guides, and user-generated content. It’s an excellent way to keep your brand in the minds of your customers. - Seasonal Campaign Integration: Tailor your campaigns to align with holidays and seasons. This approach can significantly boost engagement and sales during key periods. - Re-Engagement Campaigns: Specifically target subscribers who haven't interacted with your brand recently. Offer them unique incentives to rekindle their interest. Next steps: 1. If you found this helpful, please leave a comment and let me know. 2. If you own/run/work at an Ecommerce company doing at least $1 million in annual revenue, message me so my team can audit your email channel to see if there's a good fit for working together.

Email design isn't just about aesthetics—it's about driving results. In today's cluttered inbox, your email needs to do more than just look good. It needs to convert subscribers into customers. Let's break down what makes a modern email template truly effective... RESPONSIVE DESIGN The majority of email opens happen on mobile devices, which means your email must look good and function seamlessly across all screen sizes. Choose templates that resize well, use fonts that are easy to read, and make buttons large enough to tap without frustration. A poor mobile experience leads to unsubscribes and missed opportunities. A SIMPLE, SCANNABLE LAYOUT Your audience isn't reading every word—they're scanning for key information. Use a single-column layout, plenty of white space, and clear section headings. Break up long blocks of text into short paragraphs or bulleted/numbered lists to make them easier to consume. Reducing cognitive load always increases conversions. A STRONG CALL-TO-ACTION Your CTA is the star of the show—it's what drives clicks and conversions. Use a button for your CTA, placed prominently above the fold and repeated at the end. Choose action-oriented language like "Shop Now" or "Get Started" –– and use size and color to direct the reader's attention. A CLEAR VISUAL HIERARCHY Good design tells the reader where to look first, second, and third. Use bold headlines, bright colors, and strategically placed images to guide the reader's eye to the most important content first. The decision between "I'll read this" and "Archive it" happens in a matter of seconds. Having a strong visual hierarchy maximizes your chances of getting read, not ignored. BALANCED AESTHETICS AND FUNCTIONALITY While beauty matters, functionality should always take precedence. After all, design awards don't pay the bills –– purchases do. Test your emails across multiple devices and email clients to make sure they're looking good and functioning properly. Creativity is great, but if it comes at the expense of functionality, you're going to regret choosing cleverness over clarity. The best email designs marry form and function to deliver outstanding results. Run every email through this checklist before you click "Publish," and you'll make sure they don't just catch the eye of subscribers, but also drive engagement and boost conversions. Need help? Drop me a comment or a DM.

We’ve worked with hundreds of Shopify brands on their emails and this is one mistake we see time and time again…. A lot of DTC brands are still sending image-only emails. Looks cool, but hurts performance. Here’s why you need to balance text + images in your emails (and what happens if you don’t): 1) Image-only emails tank your deliverability Gmail and Outlook flag image-heavy emails as promo or spam. If your emails aren’t getting opened, it’s probably not your subject line—it’s your structure. 2) They take forever to load You’ve got 3 seconds before someone bounces. If your giant image doesn't load (or your customer is on bad Wi-Fi), they’re gone. Meanwhile text loads instantly. 3) No text = no context If someone can’t see the image, they miss the entire message. Including real text ensures your CTA, offer, and product details still get across. 4) You’re killing your mobile experience Image-only emails break on mobile all the time, text gets too small to read. Responsive text and buttons help create a frictionless experience—especially for people scrolling with one hand. 5) Emails need to sell, not just look pretty Beautiful design matters. But conversion matters more. A clean mix of images + copy consistently outperforms pretty, image-only emails in every campaign we run. Luckily once there’s a balance of image and text in emails, it boosts deliverability, open rates, clicks, and revenue across the board. Curious to hear from other brands—how are you structuring your emails right now? Let me know in the comments. PS. This image is me pleading to the GMail gods to let these emails get delivered lol.