7 Top Email Marketing Design Trends For 2023

There’s no use following what’s trending without knowing if it’s here to stay. At least, that’s what most people think. Marketers know that trends exist for a reason, and you’ll likely lose a sizable percentage of your customer database if you don’t keep up. Consumers are always eager to follow hot trends. And email marketing design trends for 2023 are all about showing instead of telling.

In email marketing, targeting your audience with a design that responds to the current time is key to building authority, demonstrating value, and driving conversions. Therefore, it’s crucial for business owners to be on the lookout for rising trends. 

To help you with pursuing this objective, we will detail the latest email design trends for 2023 and how to design your emails with them in mind. 

The Top 7 Email Marketing Design Trends for 2023 to Keep an Eye on

It’s no secret that recipients’ inboxes are flooded with daily email promotions. To craft emails that stand out, your design should be up to date. So, let’s discover the design trends that will dominate the email marketing landscape and help you skyrocket your sales.

1. Personalization

As savvy marketers know, personalization is more of a necessity than a trend. In an era where most reputable brands leverage personalization in every aspect of their marketing strategies, ignoring it is a recipe for disaster. Especially in email marketing, adding personalization elements to your email design enables you to target readers more effectively. 

And it’s no complicated or time-consuming process either. Robust email marketing services like Substack or popular Substack alternatives offer advanced segmentation options to identify each subscriber’s unique characteristics, like demographics, browsing habits, buying behavior, or personal preferences. This insight is all you need to customize your email components and match them to each recipient’s specific needs.

The more personalized the email content, the better the chances of readers acting on your call to action. As mentioned above, the first step is mastering list segmentation with as much recipient data as possible. To personalize email content in an easier and quick way, there are AI personalization tools available that can significantly streamline this process. These tools can analyze data and automate the creation of customized content, matching visual elements like videos or illustrations to each subscriber’s preferences. After implementing such tools, it’s easier to tailor your emails to meet the unique interests and needs of your audience.

Or, you can even use smart tags to create relevant email content that resonates with your audience. Also, utilizing email marketing template is gaining momentum since you can customize them with your branding elements and optimize them for mobile. These options create a consistent and unique user experience no matter the device used. Don’t forget to ensure the security of your email campaigns and protect sensitive customer data by implementing robust email security measures like end-to-end encryption and DMARC setup. 

2. Dark Mode

Dark mode has been on the rise for quite some time, and there are solid reasons behind its popularity among designers. Dark mode in emails gives designers a perfect opportunity to exercise creativity. Aside from that, let’s check some other key benefits of this trend:

• It reduces eye strain as it’s easier on the eye, especially for users reading emails on mobile devices or having limitations like a low-light environment 
• It enhances content readability, directing recipients’ attention to the features of your email and making the content easier to digest
• Emails designed with dark mode come across as more sophisticated and aesthetically pleasing
• Dark mode can be easily combined with other email marketing design trends, such as animated gifs, bright colors, or bold typography 
• It encourages subscribers to stay longer and click through your email content, thus boosting engagement and click-through rates

However, you should remember that dark mode is mostly about keeping email components in the right order and boosting readability. So, make sure you use sufficient color contrast between your text and its background and stay away from large blocks of text. Moreover, consider color psychology to deliver your message smoothly yet effectively.

3. Bold Typography

Typography is key to communicating your email message. 

While many design elements have taken the minimalist approach, typography is becoming bolder. Bold typography is a surefire way to catch attention, convey your key message, and set priorities for your email content. Emails with bold typography let the message do all the talking, straying the attention away from animated gifs, images, or other visual components.

You shouldn’t overdo it with this particular email design trend, though. 

This means you must avoid bolding the entire text or pairing this typography with bold colors, as it will probably overwhelm users. Try to tie your typeface with your visuals so that they reflect the nature of your product, service, news, or offer in harmony. Make sure you turn it into an integral part of your email theme and use enough white space to soothe the reader’s eye. Even more importantly, check that it works great across all screen sizes. 

Last but not least, the font chosen is a crucial factor in whether or not you can use bold typography. Choosing non-web-safe fonts is a bad tactic in general. You can imagine what happens when you combine it with bold typography, right?

So, avoid using hard-to-read or too decorative fonts with such typography since it will definitely harm your readability. After all, your top priority is to create an accessible design for every reader and push them to engage with your message. 

4. Accessibility

Speaking of accessibility, designing your emails with accessibility standards is about every subscriber having a great and equal experience when reading your emails. Therefore, there’s nothing trendy about it. With 2.2 billion people having a form of visual impairment, designing for accessibility is imperative if you want to target as many readers as possible. Not to mention people with temporary disabilities or situational limitations, such as an arm injury or slow internet connection. 

How can you achieve making your message accessible to all users, no matter the circumstances? First and foremost, opt for a clear and uncluttered design that lets readers spot the most crucial and relevant information quickly. People with visual disabilities rely on screen readers to scroll through web pages or their inboxes. So, ensure you include alternative text for screen readers to describe your images accurately. 

Avoid large blocks of text, and use bulleted lists, headings, and visual components to break up your text. That way, you support recipients with reading disabilities. Again, color psychology is important to target low-vision or color-blind readers. This tactic helps you reach out to multicultural audiences, too, as colors have different psychological connotations for users coming from diverse backgrounds.

5. Gradients

Gradients, otherwise known as color transitions, refer to the progressive blending of one color into another. We saw a lot of this color transition trend in email design during 2022, and it will stick around in 2023, too. Gradients may be single-colored, meaning one color that goes from one shade to another, or of multiple colors, blending from one color to another. 

But what are the reasons behind its popularity? 

Most brands choose gradients because they give a vintage feel to the design. Designing your emails with color transitions in mind helps you build a stronger connection with your audience. This is because your email campaigns are more memorable, thus leading them to relate the gradients used with your brand. What’s more, gradients in email design tend to guide eye movement, making it easier to direct recipients to a specific message or call to action.

Should you opt for bold or more subtle gradients? Well, that depends on the email character and what best resonates with your brand identity. 

From making them the key point of your email design to using them as the background for a specific image, you have many options regarding where to leverage gradients within your email. You might even use them in your typography to highlight your main points or in your email CTA button to draw attention to the desired action.

6. The Power of Animation

No one can deny that motion catches users’ attention more than static components. Interactive content has been on the rise for quite some time, enabling businesses to introduce their company updates and deliver the message in a visually appealing way. 

Animated GIFs, in particular, are a popular trend in email marketing. And with good reason, since they promote action and direct readers toward the most critical email elements. Animated GIFs motivate readers to stay longer because of their creative and fun nature. That’s why they have a positive impact on your engagement and conversion rates. Not to mention they are compatible with most email clients, browsers, and devices. 

But now it’s time to speak about the new trend in email animation: animated CTAs. Every savvy marketer knows crafting bold, attention-grabbing, and prominent CTAs is key to email success. That’s where animated CTAs come in to help your emails stand out. Some brands go for placing animation around the email CTA while others prefer to animate the CTA button to direct readers toward the desired action. 

However, remember that animated content will likely increase your email load times. So, make sure you don’t overdo it and reduce the file size by compressing them. Or, you can animate a single element within your image instead of using full-picture animations. Last but not least, always invest in trustworthy tools to create animated elements so that your hard work doesn’t go to waste. 

7. Single-column Layout

Single-column layout started out as somewhat of a necessity due to the fact that many email clients wouldn’t support some types of multicolumn structures. Single-column emails scale to fit every screen type, thus looking great no matter the device or email client used. And it’s a no-brainer that this is a major benefit since the majority of recipients read your emails on mobile devices.

A single-column layout is so simple and straightforward that it can’t go wrong. It allows for a clear hierarchy of information and calls to action, thus removing distractions. Readers find the information exactly where they expect it, while the layout leads them from point A to point B.

All your content is placed in a large column, making it easy for the user to skim through it and comprehend your message. What’s more, scrolling feels intuitive, which in turn, improves the user experience. Perhaps that’s the reason why designing single-column emails goes hand in hand with increased engagement and conversions.

But how can you do it right? First of all, simple doesn’t mean simplified. There’s no reason to avoid interactive content or bold typography; quite the opposite since these design trends are a perfect match for single-column layouts. It’s also the perfect occasion for your header to become the protagonist of your email content. All you need to do is highlight your key message right there. 

Final Words

To unlock the full potential of email marketing, you should create your emails with the latest email marketing design trends in mind. Great and up-to-date design is what will get your emails to stand out in crowded inboxes and deliver your message effectively. Remember that recipients are after emails with specific standards that provide a memorable experience.

By staying on top of email marketing design trends, your email content is more likely to increase trust, grab attention, and evoke emotions. As a result, you will be one step closer to driving conversions and increasing engagement. Keep in mind, though, that there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to email design. 

First, you need to understand what resonates with your target audience through careful research and extended A/B testing. Then, you will be on your way to finding the trends that will help you power up your email marketing game.

If you need help in creating these trendy designs for your email marketing, we have various freelance designers that can help you out. We also have a logo maker tool should you need help for your branding assets. 

We wish you the best of luck with your email marketing campaigns!

Written by DesignCrowd on Friday, June 30, 2023

DesignCrowd is an online marketplace providing logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world.