Stay Ahead of the Game: Top Six Email Design Trends for 2023

Comedy-inspired email copywriting tips anyone can use from Lianna Patch

🏆 And the winners are...

Found a really good email you want everyone to know about? Or maybe you or your team made one and want the world to know about it? Then, you're in the right place. So relax and follow these steps to upload the email for review.

Building your email and SMS subscriber list can seem more like a complex puzzle of deciphering user behavior, A/B testing incentives, and more. It may sound easy enough to get an email or phone number, but it’s daunting to not only build email/SMS lists but ensure it’s valuable. Don’t get hung up on vanity metrics of list size. A big list is great but it’s only as good as its engagement and conversion rates. Similarly, every business wants more revenue, but optimizing the customer journey for higher order values is not always easy.

Live text. Accessibility. The original Star Wars trilogy. These are just a few things that inspired the vision behind Really Good Emails and sharing our love for great email designs with the world. Matthew from our team sat down with Doug Dennison, CEO of MailNinja and Owner of Chimp Essentials, to chat about pizza, whales, the infamous Really Good Emails submissions queue, and the inspiration behind RGE.

Some people might think of the North Star as the guiding light home, taking us back to days of navigating our way home on the ships. When it comes to reports, a North Star Metric goes beyond a clickthrough rate to measure what’s working in your customer journey experience and what you need to work on. So, how can a North Star Metric help you keep your campaign goals focused, and where does A/B testing (with control groups) come into play?

In 2020, email open rates, conversion rates, and revenue per recipient saw a significant increase from the prior year in health and beauty and apparel and accessories, the two largest e-commerce industries. How can you stand out with your e-commerce email marketing? Understand what the email’s job is, who your audience is, and how you can set up e-commerce automation campaigns to serve up really good emails for your customers and save yourself time.

We’re still riding the wave of speculation from Apple’s Privacy Protection announcement made two weeks ago. In the past week, we’ve come across more than a dozen articles citing how the update this fall to iOS 15 and macOS Monterey will either kill off email marketing as we know it, will be a benefit to customer loyalty, or land somewhere in the middle. That’s a wide range of opinions, so here’s what we know and some ideas of what you should do about it.

On Email and Coffee, host/email marketing specialist Joi Brooks and Matthew from our team chat about how to address people's well-being from a visual design perspective. Think about the evolutionary picture of humankind and provide clarity in your emails. Confusion can feel dangerous, so the key here is to create simplicity for your audience.

Your boss tells you they're planning to switch ESPs. Do you have all your ducks in a row for the migration or do you split to fly back up north for the summer? Mike from our team chatted with Bailey Busch, senior client success manager at Cordial, about the good, the bad, and the beautiful parts of migrating ESPs. At the end of the day, don't sweat it. It's all about what matters most in your company, how to work with different messaging platforms, and viewing your ESP as your partner in crime.

Typeform. Google Forms. Gym form. Collecting feedback can help quantify the customer experience. We need to know if the shirt fits true to size, how well the bread was toasted, and what people loved (or didn’t love) about an event to continuously improve the experience. Surveys measure your relationship with your customers, making the results crucial to growing your company, products, and services.

Members. Non-members. Gold members. Lapsed members. Your audience is full of them. And by segmenting and creating different content according to status, you're one step closer to sending the right message at the right time to the right people.

Think of a triggered email campaign as a map for your customer journey. You’re sending a message based on an event and/or a segment. “If this happens, then we’ll send this specific email.”

Running all the things in your email marketing strategy might seem like both a blessing and a curse. You have to keep an eye on 100 different things on a daily basis. Test. Double-check. Test again. And...again. The good news is it doesn’t have to be complicated when you’re planning your email campaigns. Here are 8 steps to get your game plan together and create a really good email campaign.

“What You See Is What You Get” is more than a Britney Spears song about being true to who you are. WYSIWYG, pronounced “wiz-ee-wig,” is a design tool you can use to build email templates, websites, and other content in a drag and drop editor.

RGE sees a lot of email designs. If you remember from last year, we predicted and mapped out a few design trends that made their way into our collective inboxes, such as wiggly blogs, beige backgrounds, and more. This year is different.

Since the dumpster fire of 2020 is over, everything changes, right? Maybe it’s not that simple, but you can kick off the year by reviewing last year’s email analytics to get this year’s strategy into shape (gym membership not required).

Personalizing the customer experience from the moment you lay eyes on their email address can set you both up for a wonderful relationship.

We look back on the crazy year that was 2020 and share what we want, what we love to give, and what we love to support this holiday season.

Frequently updating your email automations can help you save time and keep your content fresh to better serve your customers.

Really Good Emails CEO Matthew Smith guides us through looking internally at our thoughts, feelings, and fears, challenging us to bring ourselves and our customers to a safe space.

Why do organizations still utilize pop-ups when clearly anyone you ask hates them? This is what we found.

Allie Donovan, Director of Email & Retention at Brooklinen, uncovers how to create a seamless customer experience to prevent lapsing before delivery.

What’re the best practices and steps to follow when working with influencers to create IGC on behalf of your brand?

How to make email that your recipients can access and understand regardless of disabilities.

Skillshare is an online learning platform providing access to thousands of classes for curious, creative people. Here's what they do with their emails.

When summer's over, it's time to break out the flannel, the PSLs, and cinnamon brooms to spice up your marketing. Engage your audience year-round.🍂

Storytelling plays a major part in crafting strong NGO and nonprofit emails. These messages should show the value of donations in written and visual stories. 📝

Event emails are even more important since shifting in-person events to online formats. Show your audience why your event is worth their time and money. 📅💻

Cloud-based software company Braze invited Matthew and Mike for an Ask Me Anything. We gathered 'round the Braze Bonfire with curious geeks to talk shop. 💬

The best e-commerce emails don’t sell a product, they provide a solution. Engage your audience with creative product staging, personalization, and storytelling. 🛒

You need to think strategically and empathetically when deciding how often to email your customers.

B2B revolves around knowing businesses and their needs. Guide business owners through your solution with helpful and informative B2B emails. 🤝

A little bit on email acquisition, retention, and engagement.

Invite readers into your virtual home with an interactive welcome email as soon as they sign up. 👋

These newsletter examples get it. They're personal, detailed, and filled with great, original content. 💌

These summer emails will knock your socks off and keep them off because who wears socks in the summer? ⛱

An interview with Doug Dennison, CEO of MailNinja, about email agency life and creating emails for clients.

We teamed up with Litmus and Val Geisler to share strategies on how to get customers to buy again and build deeper relationships with them.

Email is like sushi: simple ingredients rolled up together in one experience. But as you look closer, you can see how each item is chosen for impact.

From blobs to transparent illustrations, Tattly's Design Director explores the top email design trends from 2019.

A thoughtful, inquisitive, slightly off the beaten path weekly newsletter.

The past, present, and future of the site.

Want to know what we thought of 2019's Black Friday emails? Well, here you go.

The basics about rendering issues, what causes them, and why you should care.

Wondering what is going on in Email? We surveyed thousands of people in email to get their outlook, skills, teams, history, and strategies.

We started ReallyGoodEmails.com in 2014. Five years later, what did we have? Over 2 million and a site that still was not that great. So we changed that.

In cinema, you are compelled to keep watching, even if it grosses you out. In books, you want to know if the main character survives. In email, you could care less… which makes that really scary sh*t.

So, if a picture is worth a thousand words, why does Instagram have captions?! Seriously.

Your email looks perfect. But it’s broken…because it’s inaccessible.

An interview with Suzie Docherty, Typeform’s Email Marketing Manager, about how simplifying design and targeting behavior improves performance.

An interview with the email team from Withings about localization, segmentation, and personalization to foster engagement

An interview with Chris Kaundart, Trello’s Email Marketing Manager, about how he handles the email for a large brand by himself and all that entails.

An interview with James Fuller, Katherine Peck, and Stephen Gillmore from CLEAR’s email marketing team on difficult topics, CTA tests, and more.

An interview with a boat-load of the Carnival Cruise Line email team on how they differentiate themselves and the benefits of geo-targeting

An interview with Jenny Durre, Beardbrand’s Digital Coordinator, on how email flows help brands stay relevant and introduce new products to customers

An Interview with Emily Rusch, Email Marketing Manager and Matthew Culbreth, Senior Designer, about Peloton's email strategy.

An interview with Annemarie Dooling of Vox Media on how they use email to drive more readers back to their sites.

An interview with Eva Scazzero, Jessanne Collins, and Adam Pasick of Quartz.

People ask us a lot: “What makes a really good email?” It’s really not a secret. This article lays out what our criteria is and showcases some examples to prove our points.

…and why they work.

An interview with Reigan Combs of Asana on how they improve their email process, designs, and more with their own planning tools.