The email marketing stats are in, and they all say the same thing: email marketing is well worth your time and energy. In fact, the average email has a return on investment of thirty-six dollars for every dollar spent. But not just any email is going to get you the results you need.

Using well-designed email templates can help you create the perfect email template that gives you the power to bolster open and click-through rates while defining your brand. 

What is an email template? 

An email template is an editable template you can use to create mass create emails with ease. The perfect email template is styled to match your brand’s tone and vision. It might feature your colors or logo or have a specific language unique to your brand. 

The goal of an email template is to expedite the emailing process. Without a template, every time you wanted to send out an email campaign, you’d have to worry about designing something mobile-friendly, aesthetically appealing, and on-point for your brand. But, when you have a template, those aspects are already taken care of. 

Templates allow you to focus on creating strong email content that will be useful to your recipients. You save time on each email you craft while simultaneously sending out more effective emails. 

What are the different types of email templates? 

There are two major types of email templates: text templates and professional email templates. Rather than choosing between the two, picking the right template type will depend on your need. It’s similar to the difference between a screwdriver and a hammer: one is not better than the other, but you always want to have the right tool for the job you’re doing. 

Text templates

Text templates are usually stored in Google or Outlook. They’re ideal for boilerplate messaging used in one-on-one emails with clients. 

Consider, for example, if your brand offers a scholarship. If you receive emails asking about scholarship submission guidelines, it would be inefficient to look those up each time you need to respond.

On the other hand, you could have a text template that is crafted once, uses polite and professional language, and includes the scholarship’s due date, rules, and a link to the application form. Subsequently, any time you receive a question about the scholarship, you can easily copy and paste the answer with ease. 

Email marketing templates

Email marketing templates are suited for internal and external newsletters, small business marketing strategies, and multi-stage email campaigns. 

These email templates are designed to keep your audience engaged. Even the smallest business can create the perfect marketing email without hiring an entire marketing team. 

Drag-and-drop technology allows you to set up your template once and use it over again. Every email will have the same mobile-friendly online appeal, and the only elements you’ll need to change are the images and text. 

How do you find an email template? 

Some email templates need to be crafted by hand, while others can be found through online services and tweaked to meet your unique needs. 

How to find text templates

Text templates should be drafted by your team to convey the right message to your audience. However, you can format text templates and save them in Google or Outlook

How to find email templates

Email templates can only be created using a professional email provider. And getting the right email provider is everything when it comes to email marketing.

When you’re looking for an email provider, make sure the one you choose has best-in-class deliverability rates, mobile-responsive designs, reusable templates that are free with service, and the option to purchase additional professionally-designed and custom templates

What makes a good email template? 

Designing the perfect email template requires a bit of finesse. 

More people read emails on their phones than on desktops, so prioritizing mobile-friendly email design is a must.

In addition to focusing on mobile optimization, email templates should follow email design best practices. These include: 

  • Easy-to-read font choices
  • Your logo and brand colors
  • Simple, minimalist email design

It’s also a good idea to incorporate multimedia aspects — such as videos or images — into your email templates. 

Using a professional email provider can help you design templates that meet all of these requirements while only requiring you to drag-and-drop information into the template when you send out emails. 

How to choose the perfect email template

Choosing the perfect email template for your brand will depend largely on how you’ll be using the template in the future. The perfect email newsletter template looks different from the perfect welcome email template. 

Even similar emails may have different needs. For example, while they would both follow email marketing best practices, internal newsletters may require a different template from external newsletters. 

Most brands have a few different email templates, including templates for: 

By working with a professional email provider, you can design email templates that work together and communicate your brand similarly while meeting your different emailing needs.

In a way, this collection of varied templates, taken together, becomes your recipe for the perfect email marketing template. 

Once you have the perfect email template

Having the perfect email template is great, but it’s only the first step to sending perfect emails. 

After you have the right template, the next step is to ensure you maximize how you’re using that template. 

Follow email marketing best practices

Every email you send should follow email marketing best practices. In addition to having a simple, easy-to-follow layout — which should be taken care of by your template — it’s also important to use clear, concise language. 

Emails created for the general public should be written at an eighth-grade reading level or lower. Quick, concise information is easy for people to process on the fly, which is ideal for emails that are read on the go. You can use online tools like the Hemingway Editor to check the readability of your email content before you send it. 

And speaking of editors, make sure you edit your emails — and then edit them again. Studies show that typos and the overuse of capital letters make content come across as less trustworthy

Research also shows that it’s incredibly easy to miscommunicate via email.

This simple graphic illustrates how even missing a comma can completely change the meaning of your sentence. Image source: Kathryn Schleich

While your word processor will catch a lot of basic grammar mistakes, using an editor like Grammarly or the Hemingway Editor can improve more than basic grammar.

These online editing tools aim to help you simplify your language and improve clarity, which can limit digital miscommunications. 

Finally, run tests on the emails you send out. A/B testing can be used to help you decide the types of emails that have the highest open rates or click-through rates. These can help you craft more engaging emails in the future. 

Create a landing page for an event

If you’re using an email to advertise an event, make sure you have a landing page for that event as well. 

Landing pages can be used to generate hype around an event and provide more information than you could fit into an email. They are also easily shareable, so recipients of your email newsletters can direct friends and family members to your page without having to forward the email they were sent. 

Use email marketing automation

Email marketing automation combines the benefits of text templates with email templates to create different email sequences that engage and nurture your leads

With marketing automation, you can, for example, set up a series of welcome emails that will go out automatically whenever someone new signs up for your newsletter. These emails would be designed to:

  • Welcome the new reader
  • Tell them a little more about your brand
  • Provide specials offers and coupons to entice them to shop your store
  • Prepare them for the type of content they can expect from you in the future

Welcome emails aren’t the only emails that benefit from email automation. Other popular automated email sequences include: 

  • Abandoned cart email series
  • Lead nurturing emails
  • Re-engagement emails
  • Subscription renewal emails

Email automation allows you to put these types of emails on auto-pilot so you can focus your attention on crafting quality newsletters, announcements, and other one-time emails. 

Having email automation in place does more than just prepare your emails. By segmenting your lists and adding rules to your sequences, the emails will be sent out automatically when people on your email list take specific actions. Allowing you to send the right message at the right time without spending a lot of time and energy doing it.

Sync with social media

Since social media and email marketing are two of the most popular marketing channels, ensure that they align. Syncing social media and email help you make the most out of both forms of marketing. 

Use social media to grow your email lists

The easiest way to sync email and social media is to use your social media accounts to grow your email list

One way to do this is to provide an email sign-up link on all your social media channels. Facebook makes this especially easy; they offer a “Sign Up Now” call to action button that brands can use on all of their posts. 

Another way to sync social media and email is to use a social media contest to boost your email list. Offer to enter everyone who signs up for your email, within a certain time frame, an entry into a drawing. Improve the chances that this tactic is successful in bringing the right people to your email list by offering a prize that your target audience would covet. 

Use email to grow your social media following

Just as you can use social media to grow your email list, you can use your email list to grow your social media following. 

For example, you can include your social media icons in your professional email templates, allowing readers to easily connect to your social media page(s). 

BabyCenter has this custom footer at the bottom of their monthly emails, quietly encouraging users to connect on social media or download their apps. The clickable buttons make it easy for users to engage with this brand further.

You can also include a call to action in certain emails to encourage readers to follow you on social media for more branded content. While it would be tiresome for readers to see this every time they read an email, including a reminder on a monthly or quarterly basis can boost your social media following. 

A final way to do this is to suggest that people who unsubscribe from your email list follow you on social media instead. While this may seem counterintuitive, your followers may be unfollowing you for a myriad of reasons. Just because they’re purging their email list doesn’t mean they dislike your brand. Suggesting they follow you on social media instead is a great way to keep them engaged while respecting their choice to unsubscribe. 

Use email templates to boost your professional email marketing game

The perfect email template is a bit of a misnomer. Brands need to be versatile, curating a set of professional marketing email templates that make sense for their needs. 

When you use a professional email provider to develop your email templates, you can create all of your emails using the same colors and fonts. Doing so provides brand uniformity, boosting brand recognition and enhancing customer engagement. Plus, following email best practices — including email marketing automation and syncing with social media — takes your email templates to the next level.

Start creating your perfect email template now.