Over the years, I’ve teamed up with the Marketing crew to whip up an incredible email system that covers everything from transactional and trigger emails to daily promotional newsletters. It’s been a game-changer for boosting customer engagement and streamlining communication throughout the journey. I also took the lead in creating a design guide for daily campaign emails. This has made email marketing the superstar of our strategy, slashed production time for our small team, and kept our designs consistently dazzling.
Yami’s missing out by not having a streamlined email system, and it’s costing us big in personalized communication. Our newsletters and promos are the backbone of our marketing, but designing each one from scratch is a creativity workout that’s also eating up way too much time. Keeping designs consistent is a challenge, and let’s be honest—our current setup is looking a bit dated. We need a smarter email system to save time, keep things cohesive, and still let our creativity shine through.
Rome wasn't built in a day, and diving into a project this huge isn't a walk in the park. But hey, every epic journey starts with a single step, right? The best place to kick things off is with a Lifecycle Customer Journey Map. It's like our treasure map, guiding us through every twist and turn. And of course, setting our priorities straight is key. With a clear roadmap and priorities in place, we're ready to rock and roll!
It's shortcut for us to figure out what is the potentially the best for what we are pursuing. Lucky for us is, it isn't something new and rare, it's nice to see some of the regulations when it comes to design, content, sections needed for certain type of email. Here just share a few.
Header:
About 85% of brands have information displays and category links below the logo on the header section.
Buttons:
Over 75% of brands utilize unique CTA button styles to highlight the importance of different sections. Some even incorporate multiple CTA buttons within a single section to drive engagement and action.
Livetext
loads faster than images, looks great on any device, and is super easy to personalize. It's like the Swiss army knife of email design – versatile, speedy, and always ready to impress!
Hero:
More than 70% of brands use square or vertical rectangular hero banners. Animated GIF is commonly used on hero banners.
Body:
The most popular layouts for body are Inverted pyramid, Double-column and Zig-Zag, followed by F-pattern and Multi-column (3 usually) especially when it comes product showcasing.
Bottom:
Light gray and white are the two colors that most brands used as information display at the bottom section.
Consistency isn't just about looking good – it's about making sure every email feels like a natural extension of our brand. From colors to fonts, we're keeping things cohesive so our audience knows they're getting the real deal every time. Accent & Tones are the secret sauce that adds that extra pop to our designs, whether it's a playful widgets or a catchy icon. We're all about making our emails stand out in the inbox while staying true to our unique vibe. Then there is Sustainability, which isn't just a trend for us, by making the design reusable and easy to be turn into template, we minimize waste and maximize efficiency, making our emails as green as they are pretty.
With insights in our back pocket, we’re kicking off from low-fi and powering up to hi-fi. We’re all about making the product and visuals pop, while still keeping that clean, simple look that fits our brand like a glove.
Meanwhile, we've unleashed a bunch of fun illustrations, with both animated GIFs and vibrant static images, featuring our dynamic mascots, Dami & Xiaomi. These two show up in all sorts of playful scenes tailored to different scenarios. They don't just make our messages more personal and fun, but also crank up the brand love.
We finally rolled out the new design, giving our transactional emails a fresh look. We also created and implemented trigger emails and set up reusable templates for daily newsletters and campaign blasts. This completed our email lifecycle overhaul, making our emails not only consistent and efficient but also fun and engaging for our audience. Here are just a few examples.
Remember when we said the goal was to streamline email design for the team and keep a consistent look across all our emails? That’s why we jumped at the chance to build a Library that pulls together all the rules, strengthens our design game, and houses all the blocks and templates for future reuse. It's all about making things easier and more cohesive going forward.
Wins:
The revamped email design has given a serious boost to our CTR and overall conversion rates. It’s also paved the way for bigger goals like new customer acquisition and retention by supporting a more complete customer lifecycle. On top of that, the strengthened design library has cut the production time for daily campaign blasts by 100%, making our process faster and more efficient than ever.
Opportunities:
In the design world, one-size-fits-all just doesn’t cut it, even with a solid library at our fingertips. That’s why we’re always on the move—continuously crafting new designs and refining existing ones to fit specific needs. We’re also actively testing and experimenting with different email uses to create guidelines for new layouts and iterations. It’s all about keeping our email game fresh, flexible, and always a step ahead.
2022 all rights reserved, Daniel Xuanang Zhou
