How to Design Emails That Look Premium (and Convert)

Why Design Serves The Click

Basic ESP templates do not cut it anymore. But pretty is not the goal either.

The job of an email design is to move the eye to one action and earn the click. Everything else is decoration.

Last year my team helped generate over $23 million from email and SMS. The rules below are the exact ones we use to build mobile-first emails across every screen. Most people check email with one thumb, scrolling half awake. If your email looks broken on mobile, you are not just losing clicks, you are throwing away revenue.

Would you rather watch than read? I cover the whole thing here.

Here is what that looks like in practice.

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Mobile First, Single Column, Always

Most people open your email on a phone. So you design for the phone, not your monitor.

That means one column, about 600 pixels wide, top to bottom. No side-by-side blocks that shrink into unreadable slivers on a 375 pixel screen. When you drop to two or three columns of products, mobile turns it into a squint test. The single column feels like a mini landing page that sells the click to the site.

Single column also builds hierarchy for free. The reader takes it in order: hero, headline, proof, button. You control the sequence instead of hoping the eye lands in the right place.

Set your font sizes for the thumb. Body text at 16 pixels minimum, never 14 or 12. Headlines at 20 pixels absolute minimum. If someone has to squint or zoom to read your email, they skip it and go to a competitor. Pull your phone all the way back. If you can still read the headline and the offer clearly, you sized it right.

Skip custom fonts on HTML emails. Gmail and most clients convert your fancy typography back to system defaults anyway. Match your brand with system fonts, and when you truly need custom type, bake it into an image. That is one reason we lean on image-based designs for clients.

Make buttons easy to tap. Big CTA buttons your thumb can hit without effort. No tiny links clustered together. Everything built for a quick glance, not a novel.

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One Job, One Primary CTA

Clear hierarchy comes down to one question: what is the single thing you want this email to do?

Lead with the outcome, not the spec. "Greens that stay crisp all week" beats a paragraph about the tech behind it.

Give that one action a single primary button, high on the email, styled to stand out. Repeat the same button lower down if you want. What you do not do is stack five competing CTAs that all pull in different directions. When everything is important, nothing is.

Win the first fold. The first fold is everything a reader sees before they scroll. Optimizing it is the single biggest lever on click rate. Pack five elements in there: your logo, a headline they can read in 0.2 seconds, your offer if you have one, your header image, and the CTA button. Most brands get three or four of the five right, then bury the button below the fold and wonder why conversions drop.

Build the body from modular sections, not one giant graphic. Design a few hero headers, a few reusable body blocks, product showcases, and a clean footer. Mix and match those into master templates, then swap in the products and copy per send.

That is how you go from basic emails to a consistent, on-brand look without starting from scratch every time.

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Cut The Header Nav And The Footer Social Icons

Two habits quietly leak conversions, and both live at the edges of your email.

No nav bar in the header. Just the logo. Category links and menus in the header hurt deliverability, they eat HTML, and they hand people a dozen exits before they ever see your offer. We have split tested this many times and taking the nav out wins every time. If someone does not want the main offer, they can find bestsellers or a "hair 101" link at the BOTTOM of the email. That should never be the first thing they see.

No social icons in the footer. The point of the email is to send people to your site to buy, not to lose them scrolling TikTok or Instagram. Your readers already came from social and they know it is there. So unless a client is adamant about it, we leave the icons off and keep the whole email pointed at conversion.

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The Plain Text Cheat Code

Here is the move most brands miss. Every other email in your customer's inbox is designed to look like marketing. Plain text breaks the pattern.

It feels personal even when it goes out to 100,000 people. Five minutes to write. No designer needed.

Across dozens of DTC brands, the sweet spot is roughly one third of campaign volume in plain style. It wins in specific spots: founder notes, post-purchase review requests, the last touch on an abandoned cart, mid-sequence in the welcome flow, sale start and sale end, and win-back.

The trick is to have the founder write it themselves, in their own voice. In Klaviyo, skip the drag and drop, pick the plain text template, type three paragraphs, send. That format is where you earn a 5 to 15% open rate lift.

You do not pick one or the other. You run both in the mix.

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Design For Dark Mode Or Lose The Read

One in three people read email in dark mode.

Ignore it and your carefully designed email turns into an unreadable mess the moment someone opens it at night. Your logo disappears against black. White space turns into awkward black blocks. The email gets deleted in seconds.

Two approaches hold up. Use mostly image-based sections: design in Figma, slice it, upload it, and it stays intact in both modes. Or blend HTML text with images carefully, testing each section in light and dark.

Whichever you pick, test every email yourself in dark mode before you hit send.

Do	Don't
Build spacing into your images	Rely on spacer blocks that break in dark mode
Keep logos readable on any background	Assume your logo shows on black
Test countdown timers in both modes	Trust that timers render everywhere
Send more plain text, it looks great in both	Alternate image, text, image, text

That last one matters. Alternating image and text rows creates ugly stripes in dark mode. The easy fix for all of it is the plain text cheat code, since it reads clean in either mode by default.

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Speed Is The New Moat

Last year a single designed email took two to five days. Brief the designer, wait for mocks, send revisions, wait again, export, hand off, build in Klaviyo. By the time it shipped, the moment was gone.

Modern tools collapse that cycle to under two hours. Lock the offer and angle, generate a few hero variations, drop the strongest into Figma, add the headline, subhead, and CTA, then build and QA in Klaviyo.

When turnaround drops from five days to one, you can react to anything: a trending moment, a competitor launch, a product back in stock.

One honest note. The tools are not there yet for generating full client emails end to end. We still build the real thing in Figma. AI is a hero shot and background tool today, not a replacement for design judgment. Use it for speed on the visual side, not to skip the craft.

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Brand Consistency Is The Whole Point

The brands with the best emails are not the flashiest. They are the most consistent.

Clean layouts that let the product shine. Neutral space and no clutter when you launch a collection. Ingredient or benefit callouts paired with a clear CTA. Bold color-blocking that stops the scroll and matches the brand story.

Nail your brand guidelines on the first try: colors, fonts, spacing, tone. When every send looks like it came from the same place, you build recognition. Recognition drives opens.

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Common Mistakes

1. Designing on desktop. Most opens are mobile, so build and test on a phone or the layout breaks.
2. Tiny text. Body under 16 pixels or headlines under 20 pixels make readers squint, and squinting readers leave.
3. Burying the CTA below the fold. Get the logo, headline, offer, header image, and button all into the first fold.
4. Stacking multiple CTAs. Pick one primary action and repeat that button instead of competing for the click.
5. Keeping a nav bar in the header. It hurts deliverability and hands people exits. Just the logo up top.
6. Adding social icons to the footer. The email should drive to your site, not send people back to TikTok.
7. Skipping the dark mode test. One in three readers see the broken version if you never check it.
8. Alternating image and text rows. It creates stripes in dark mode. Build spacing into the images instead.
9. Sending only designed emails. Missing plain text means missing a 5 to 15% open lift on the sends where it wins.
10. Rebuilding every email from zero. Work from modular sections and master templates, then swap in products and copy.

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Get Expert Help

Our team designs five to eight emails a day for DTC brands. We know what reads clean on mobile, holds up in dark mode, and actually earns the click. Want a design system built for speed and consistency instead of one-off guesswork? We can help.

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