Start with one goal per email
Before opening any editor, decide what the reader should do afterwards: book a consultation, open a catalog, pay through Click or Payme, reply with a question. Everything that does not support that action should go. An email with five equal offers rarely produces a result for any of them, because the reader does not know where to look.
Take a clothing shop announcing a new collection. The email should lead to the collection page, not to the website, Instagram, OLX and a Telegram channel at the same time. Those other links can sit quietly in the footer.
The structure of a newsletter, top to bottom
The order of blocks barely changes from email to email, and that is a strength: subscribers learn the pattern and find what they need faster.
- Preheader: the short line shown after the subject in the inbox. Never leave it empty, or the mail app will fill it with a random scrap of text
- Header: a small logo and the company name
- First screen: a headline with the main idea, a line or two of explanation, and the button
- Body: arguments, photos of the product or of finished work
- Extra blocks: related offers, only if they do not pull attention from the main goal
- Footer: contacts, Telegram, the reason the person received the email, and a working unsubscribe link
Layout: one column, readable type
The first screen matters more than everything below it, because many readers never scroll. If the button appears only after several swipes, most of your audience will not see it. A common mistake is opening with a huge decorative image that fills the screen and pushes the actual message down.
The safest format is a single narrow column, around six hundred pixels wide. It reads best on a phone and is easier to test. Two columns can work for a product catalog, but on a small screen they must collapse into one.
Mail apps support only a limited set of fonts, so your brand font may not load. Set a fallback system font and check that the email still looks tidy. Keep body text large enough to read without zooming, paragraphs short, and emphasis selective: if everything is bold, nothing stands out.
Buttons, images and dark mode
A button should be a real button, not a picture with text on it. When images are blocked, an image button vanishes together with your call to action. The label should name the action, such as “Book an appointment” or “See new arrivals”, not “Click here”. Make it comfortable for a thumb and clearly different from the background. Keep one main button and turn secondary actions into plain links.
A few rules for images and appearance:
- Never send one big image as the whole email: if it does not load, the reader sees an empty box
- Write important text as text, not inside a picture
- Fill in alt text so the image is understood even when hidden
- Compress files, since mobile internet outside the capital can be unstable
- Test dark mode: a logo on a transparent background can disappear, so add a light outline
Templates, brand and language
Do not design every email from scratch. Build a few templates with fixed blocks: news, promotion, useful article, and transactional messages such as an order confirmation or appointment reminder. Colors, header and tone stay the same, only the content changes. This saves time and lets subscribers recognize the sender before they even open the message. Just do not sacrifice readability for branding: light text on a light background or a hairline font undermines any style guide.
Language needs a decision too. If your list reads both Russian and Uzbek, you can send two emails to separate segments or one bilingual email. Bilingual messages get long and heavy, so it is simpler to ask for a preferred language at sign-up and write in it.
How to tell whether the design works
A beautiful email and an effective one are not the same thing. Opens and clicks show only part of the picture. To see how many inquiries and sales a newsletter produced, tag every link with UTM parameters and match the email service data with leads and payments in your CRM, or at least in a spreadsheet. That is end-to-end analytics: the path from email to revenue is visible in full instead of stopping at the click.
Once tracking is in place, run simple tests. Send the same content in two layouts to small parts of your list and compare where the button was clicked more often and, more importantly, where more inquiries followed. After a few rounds you will know what works for your audience, not someone else’s.
Pre-send checklist
Run through this list before pressing send. The usual mistakes are a dozen banners in one email, tiny text, buttons that blend into the background, and layouts built only for desktop. Each one reduces the number of people who reach the action.
If you want tracking and reports set up so you can see which emails bring customers, the markdev team can help. Write to us and we will talk through your task.
- The main action is clear from the first screen
- The email reads in one column on a phone
- Buttons are text-based with a clear label
- Every image has alt text
- The email makes sense without images and in dark mode
- All links work and carry UTM tags
- The footer has contacts and a working unsubscribe link
FAQ
How wide should a marketing email be?
Usually a single column about six hundred pixels wide. It reads well on phones and desktops. A catalog can use two columns, but they should stack into one on small screens.
Why shouldn’t a button be an image?
Some mail apps block images by default. If the button is a picture, the reader sees an empty space and has no next step. A text-based button always displays.
What should the button text say?
The action the person will take: “Book an appointment”, “See new arrivals”, “Place an order”. A generic phrase like “Click here” explains nothing and tends to perform worse.
How do I know if email design helped sales?
Tag links with UTM parameters and compare visits with leads and payments in your CRM or spreadsheet. Then test two layouts with identical content on small parts of your list and compare both clicks and the number of inquiries.
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