In 2024, new ecom brands are popping up every day.

These brands are all setting up email, since they know it's the backbone of every brand.

Many will stick to basic templates and lazy designs resulting in brands looking exactly like the thousands of others in their niche.

Design is how you differentiate.

It's how you stand out from your competition and make sales in a competitive market.

I'm Max. I'm the founder of Well Copy, an email marketing agency that has generated over $20M in email attributed revenue for clients.

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Our emails that have generated $20,000,000+ for clients.

There's a difference between a "pretty" email and an email that makes money.

Great designs will maximize revenue through conversion based principles.

We've seen design A/B tests result in 3x more revenue just by optimizing spacing, sizing, and style.

Great looking email designs are exponential in returns.

Templatized designs and basic layouts make you look like every other brand out there.

New brands are popping of every day.

Differentiating yourself with your content is the only way to stay ahead of these new stores.

If not, you'll get lost in the mix and no one will buy from you or remember you.

We want to get customers "addicted" to opening our emails.

Obviously no one is at the edge of their seat waiting every minute for you to send an email.

But by associating dopamine releases with pretty designs, we get continued engagement.

Sending the same stuff over and over again will miss this opportunity and lead to churn.

With more engagement, comes improved deliverability.

With each open and each click we earn trust points with Google, Yahoo, etc

We continue to prove to them that we are a reputable sender and increase our inbox placement rate.

We judge books by their covers, it's human instinct.

Would you trust the word of someone in a suit or someone in baggy / dirty clothes?

Probably the person in the suit.

Same applies for your brand.

People are more likely to buy from sophisticated and well kept brands.

Having basic, mediocre designs will decrease the value of your brand and your word.

Customers subconsciously pay attention to these things.

Pretty website, pretty ads, then ugly email designs.

Customers make positive associations in your ads and websites that will be lost if your emails aren't matching.

In fact, it will harm your conversions.

Ease of Click ✅

Skimmability ✅

Any friction in the ability for someone to click will automatically lead to churn.

We need to hand the click to them on a silver platter with the following:

The "above the fold" section is the section of the email that is viewed without scrolling.

Not every customer will scroll on your email, so you want a button available in the hero section.

This way EVERY customer has the ability to visit the site and go down the funnel.

Including a top button is an easy low-hanging fruit to automatically improve your click rates.

An iPhone screen is 2.75 inches. That's not a large space.

Larger buttons, more surface area, easier ability to click.

This has a massive impact on conversions.

The goal of an email is to get someone to click.

Your buttons should be the easiest to view part of your email and there should be no ability for someone to click over a button.

Avoid distracting backgrounds and use contrasting colors to get your CTAs to stand out.

Most people hold their phone in their right hand.

If you put a button on the left side, the user has to stretch their thumb over to click (more friction).

This actually negatively impacts conversions substantially.

We even tested this, results below.

They're checking emails as they walk to the bathroom, on a quick break, etc

On average you have 2-4 seconds to get your point across.

Optimize for the skim, not for the read.

Include these factors:

Simplicity always wins.

Adding too much complexity in your emails will overwhelm the customer.

More importantly, complex designs will distract from the whole purpose of the email… to sell.

Keep it simple so users can easily skim and understand the contents of the email.

The human brain likes when things are organized and clear.

We want to be smooth with our sections, but clear when we are differentiating.

This way, people can clearly see 2-3 sections, categorize in their head, and skim with ease

The blow example makes it clear what is the intro and what is the product section.

As mentioned earlier, the customer is only going to be on your email for 3ish seconds.

Nobody is going to be reading an essay in their inbox.

More copy leads to overwhelm, nobody is going to read it, and it's wasted space.

Optimize for the 3 second viewers. Keep it quick and punchy.

Very few people will actually ready your body copy in full.

But they WILL read / skim your headlines / subheadlines

If we only get 3 seconds of our viewers attention we need to make it loud and clear what our main points are.

The strengthen your brand you need congruency across all channels.

Without it, positive associations with the brand from other channels will be lost in email.

This will promote long term conversions.

The hero section is the top part of the email.

It is by far the most important.

The "above the fold" section is the section of the email that is viewed without scrolling.

To remove friction for the buyer, we want the above the fold to have everything the customer needs.

A great Above The Fold includes:

As mentioned before, not every customer will scroll on your email, so you want a button available in the hero section.

This way EVERY customer has the ability to visit the site and go down the funnel.

Including a top button is an easy low-hanging fruit to automatically improve your click rates.

Funnel your customers' eyes into a CTA with this pattern.

Your bridge section is the supporting section to your Hero.

It will also serve as a transition into a specific product section if you include one.

In order for people to be able to sim your email, your bridge should have sub headlines.

The bridge can be anything…

Your bridge can be ANYTHING.

Any layout of info, photos, tables, graphics, etc

The hardest part is making it clear, clean, and fluid.

Your product section is exactly as it sounds.

It's the part of the email that is going to specifically feature and highlight a product or products.

It's important if you're showing products to make it clear that the customer can click it and go to that product page.

This removes friction for the buyer so they don't have to go to the general site and find the product.

Make it clear by giving individual buttons or underlines product titles.

After you give individual products, it's important to always have a general CTA below.

Maybe the customer is interested, but didn't like any of the products in the email.

By leaving out a general CTA below, you lose out on all these customers.

We've noticed 25% boosts in clicks by doing this.

(Use icons)

Transitions are what help make your different sections in your email flow.

Having separate sections that are blocky and unrelated will lead to churn.

Copy layouts from emails and brands you like.

If a big brand sends a certain type of email, it's probably because it works.

Don't reinvent the wheel, stick with what is proven to work.

Feel free to email me max@wellcopy.net to ask any questions, happy to help.

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