11 Design Ideas You Should Steal For Your Newsletter

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When I look through my inbox these days, it feels like I’ve got a case of newsletter déjà vu. So many newsletters look exactly the same — the same rounded corners and bulleted lists. Part of that is because many email service providers offer out-of-the-box templates that users never customize, but the other reason is because we’re in an age where copy-and-paste is often the default operating strategy.

I think you can do better than that.

My general take on email design is that you shouldn’t overdo it. On the web or in print, you’ve got more space to incorporate design elements. But in the inbox, you’re more limited. Inboxes like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo all have different rules for how emails display, so the design that displays beautifully in Gmail may not display correctly in Outlook. Plus, most users are reading your email on their phones, which means you don’t have much space for your content — let alone extra design elements alongside it.

But even though you should try to keep things simple, I think you should also work to create newsletters that really stand out. You may only have a few seconds to grab a reader’s attention once they open your newsletter. Shouldn’t you do everything possible to show them that your newsletter’s worth their time?

So I went through the newsletters in my inbox to find a few design elements that you might want to steal for your newsletter. I’m betting you’ll find one or two you can incorporate into your newsletter to make it stand out in the inbox. (Bonus points if you can try to put your own spin on the tactics below!)

Growth Design’s super-simple layout

I used to joke with clients that if you wanted to build a newsletter with the highest possible click rate, you’d have just one thing in the newsletter: A single button that says “click here.” No intro, no additional links, no fluff — just that one link.

And then I stumbled upon Growth Design’s newsletter, which comes as close as I’ve ever seen to the “only one link!” strategy.

Open their newsletter, and you’ll often see 50 words of text or less, and then a link to their latest case study, with the estimated read time attached. They only give you two options: Click the link or close the email. (Their strategy reminds me a lot of the best landing pages, where you may only have the choice between entering your email or exiting the page.) I’ve never seen their stats, but I’d be willing to bet anything that their click-to-open rate is incredibly high — there’s nothing to do here except click.

Popbitch’s unwavering commitment to text-only emails

Whenever someone tries to convince me that you need an email designer to create a beautiful email, I always point them towards the newsletter from Popbitch, which features a mix of celebrity and media gossip. There aren’t any design elements besides bolding, angle brackets, asterisks, and horizontal lines. But they do something really smart: They alternate between 100- to 150-word sections and one or two-sentence hits of gossip, which makes this newsletter easy to scan. 

Could they add celebrity photos into the newsletter? Sure, but in my opinion, it would take away from the gossip itself. They keep things super simple, and it works.

How The Newsette incorporates sponsors into their header

For certain premium sponsors, The Newsette will incorporate the sponsor into their logo at the very top of the newsletter. What’s brilliant about this is that they don’t do this every day — if they did, a reader would start to skip right past it to the content of the newsletter. But by doing it every once in a while, it really grabs your attention when you open that day’s email. Plus, they don’t just throw a logo up there — they’ll create original art, like this graphic with a countdown clock, for a big professional golf tournament — to make sure you pause and give the ad a closer look. (They can also charge a premium for this type of ad unit, which is a nice bonus.)

Honolulu Civil Beat’s two-button strategy

Some of the best design elements start with a simple question: What would help our readers take the right next step? This example from Honolulu Civil Beat is a great example of that. 

In their fundraising emails, they often include two different buttons. One is for readers who want to donate monthly, and one is for readers who want to make a one-time donation. They use their signature orange on the monthly button to make that stand out — they want to nudge readers towards recurring donations. And after you click, you’re taken to a landing page where the option you chose (monthly or one-time) is already pre-selected. All you need to do is select the amount you want to give and enter your credit card information. By removing that one extra step — you don’t need to choose “monthly” or “one-time” once you get to the donation page — they’re removing one piece of friction that might keep a reader from completing the donation process.

I wouldn’t use the two-button strategy in every newsletter, but this sort of tactic can be very effective for a fundraising email like this.

Post’s use of white space

Post, a newsletter from Australia’s The Saturday Paper, leans into the use of bullets and bolding that are so popular among newsy newsletters these days. But they add a twist for their newsletter: Giant numbers (their newsletter always features five news items) and lots of white space for desktop users. The result is an email that just feels a little different when you open it — the reading experience feels more like something you’d see in print. And they’ve made a smart decision for mobile users: They strip away the extra white space there, leaving a more standard one-column approach.

The section headers for the New Yorker and Santa Cruz Local

If you have multiple sections within a newsletter, you’re going to need to find a way to break up the sections so readers can easily find what they’re looking for. I really like how the New Yorker’s done this with their newsletter. For a recurring section within their daily newsletter, like the list of that day’s puzzles, they add this little illustration at the top to offer a visual clue for readers who are quickly scrolling through the newsletter. (As a bonus: These tiny bits of art, which the New Yorker calls “spots,” are also commonly found in the print magazine.)

Not everyone has access to illustrators, but a header that uses an emoji or a strong background color would be another way to help break up the sections. Santa Cruz Local does a fine job of that with their newsletter — these simple yellow headers share a bit more about the next story and make it easy to figure out where one story ends and another begins. That’s helpful for a newsletter that often has lots of different news items.

The Anchorage Daily News’ clever way to drive clicks

One common mistake I see with newsletters is that they simply have too many buttons. Every time there’s a link, a reader sees a button with the words “Read more” or “Click here.” Buttons can be an incredibly effective way to get readers to click, but if you overuse them, readers might start to ignore them. My suggestion is to use them selectively — for instance, in an email when you’re trying to get readers to pay for something, like a ticket to an event or a paid subscription.

So what do you do if you’re not using buttons? This strategy from the ADN is a smart one. In their newsletter, they add these little arrows to indicate that readers will be taken to the site once they click. Without the arrows, readers might not realize that these headlines are actually links — but that one simple addition indicates to readers that they’ll want to click to read more. It helps drive the action the ADN wants (a click) while also limiting the amount of code in the email, which keeps their emails from getting cut off in email clients like Gmail.

Dense Discovery’s strategic use of background color

In the same way that the ADN is smart about using buttons, I love how Dense Discovery is smart about their use of background colors. They could certainly add color everywhere; instead, they’ve used it to highlight key sections of the newsletter. In particular, I like what they’ve done with the background color behind their ads. They’ve picked a color that’s strong enough to help the ad stand out, but not bold enough that it distracts a reader from reading.

Prison Journalism Project’s subject line strategy

The subject line probably isn’t a place where most people think about design, but that’s what I love about these two design choices from the team at PJP. Let’s start with their use of an emoji at the start of every subject line. They use a red circle, which matches their signature red color on site and in their newsletter, and that helps readers clearly identify their newsletter regardless of subject line. (It’s also a great emoji choice — a different emoji might uncut the tone and content of the PJP newsletter.)

But the other design choice? They’ve added blank space at the end of their preheader text. Instead of what usually shows up at the end of the preheader text (i.e. “View this email in your browser”), a reader only sees the preheader text they’ve added. The extra bit of blank space really stands out, particularly when seen alongside other emails where the preheader stretches the full width of the window.

Curious how they add that white space? Litmus has a guide that explains how to add it to your template.

(Full disclosure: A few newsletters on this list, including the ADN, Honolulu Civil Beat, and PJP, are longtime Inbox Collective clients.)

CityCast’s clever footers

City Cast has local newsletters in markets across the U.S., and I love how they localize each edition through the footer. Each edition has a unique footer that reflects the local landscape. Take my local edition here in Salt Lake City, Utah. If you’re a local, you’ll immediately recognize the outline of a few notable landmarks, including the Salt Lake Temple, the capitol building, and the mountains surrounding the city. 

The other fun thing is that City Cast could take these footers up a notch by adding an occasional Easter egg into the footer — think: lights decorating buildings around the winter holidays, or a few snowflakes falling above the mountains during the first snowy day of the season. That extra element might not be noticed by many, but those who do would happily scroll all the way to the bottom just to see if there might be something different in that day’s newsletter.

The kickers for The Publish Press or Splice

A kicker is the last line of a big story — something that closes the piece with a bang. When I publish something new, I’m always looking for a great line or quote that leaves an impression.

In the newsletter world, I think of the kicker as that final closing section. If you’ve scrolled to the bottom of the newsletter and you haven’t clicked, can we give you something of value that you’ll be likely to click on? The goal is to get readers to click on something, even if it’s not back to your website. If they do, then they’ve gotten value from that day’s newsletter and will hopefully click again.

I love how the Publish Press adds a simple kicker at the bottom of their newsletter. They’ve got three things to click on: Something to read, something to watch, and something to listen to. It helps build the habit for readers, too. You know you should keep scrolling because there’s almost certainly one thing that’s worth clicking on at the bottom.

You could also use a kicker to incorporate a few next steps for a reader to take. For an Expert newsletter, like this one from Splice, that might mean adding links at the end of a newsletter to their conference, their coaching program, and their on-demand course. By adding those as their kicker, they’re using that space to drive readers to support them and their work — and over the course of the year, that kicker can drive real revenue for an org like theirs.

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