Best newsletter email templates (and design tips)

Introduction

​​So you've decided you want to start sending out newsletters to communicate more regularly with your subscribers, but how do you go about making a good email newsletter template?

While a newsletter is still an email at the end of the day, there are certain aspects of this type of email that set it apart from others. So, in order to help you be as successful as possible with your newsletter creation endeavors, in this guide, we'll show you some examples of what a good newsletter email template looks like and show you where you can find free email templates. 

Let’s get started!

What is the purpose of an email newsletter?

Newsletters provide regularly scheduled communication 

Of course, you’re likely already communicating frequently with your subscribers by sending out promotional emails about your product or service. But what’s special about an email newsletter is that it’s a communication that your audience can typically expect within a consistent time frame, whether that’s daily, weekly, or monthly. 

Newsletters give you the opportunity to show off your company culture

Do you have any special employees you want to highlight? Or maybe a successful internal mental health initiative your company has implemented? A newsletter provides the perfect opportunity to showcase these things and give your readers a glimpse behind the scenes. When your audience feels in the loop with the culture of the business they support, they’re more likely to trust and humanize the brand.

Newsletters should convey news about your company

It’s literally in the name! If there’s any important news that you think your audience should know about your business, a newsletter is an excellent avenue to make those announcements. This can include anything from events to new product releases to new team members coming on board. 

What are some examples of good email newsletter templates?

To answer that question, we’re going to take a look at some examples of great newsletter email templates to see exactly what they did so well and see what can be learned. 

1. Use color to split up sections

As with any email template, the goal is to use your brand colors with intention. You want to familiarize your audience with your brand visuals as much as possible while keeping your templates vivid and enticing. But on the flip side, color can also be used to create more structure within your newsletter template. 

Take a look at the email below. Notice how each section has a different colored background. The sections still work together within the overall email design because the white, green, and blue are consistent throughout each section, but the different background colors also highlight each section.

Credit: Really Good Emails

2. Use headings

A typical promotional email will include a large, H1 heading at the very top, may be accompanied by a cool visual before leading into body copy and product graphics. This works wonderfully, but including more than one heading within the body of your email can also be effective. The worry with using multiple headings may be that your audience won’t know which piece of information is most important, but consider how the email below uses headings to accentuate each individual product. In this example, it works because of the uniform design of this section–the graphics, the text, and the CTA are similar for each product. 

Credit: Really Good Emails

3. Use more than one CTA

Whether the purpose of your newsletter is to notify your audience about an upcoming event, a new blog post, or a new service, you should work in a call-to-action when possible. If you’re doing all three of these things in one newsletter, multiple CTAs is even more beneficial.

The email example below is full of CTAs, but each is designated to a unique section. The concern here may be that too many CTAs can come across as confusing, but in this case, the call-to-actions create somewhat of a focal point for each section, directing the viewer on exactly where to click to get to the content they want to see.

Credit: Really Good Emails

4. Keep it short and sweet

While you may have a lot of insightful information to pack into your newsletter, it’s best to keep things concise. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience so make sure you’re only including information that is important to know or information that will resonate with your subscribers.

If you’re unsure of how long your newsletter should be, a good rule of thumb is to go by the Gmail cut off limit—any email larger than 102kb is automatically chopped. This doesn’t mean that the rest of your newsletter will disappear, though. Instead, Gmail will display a link at the bottom that your subscribers can click on to view the full email. 

Ideally, you still want to keep your email from reaching this cut off point. This is because not every subscriber will look for that small link at the bottom or they simply may not appreciate the extra effort of needing to navigate to another window to see the rest of your email.

5. Be economical with space

If you’re aiming to be concise with your newsletter designs, that means you also need to make the best use of the space that you do have. Email designers have gotten creative with this over time, using a variety of unique formats to conserve room while making the emails stylish and engaging. But you also don’t need to go overboard with it. 

A good way to save room is to shift from single column to two-column designs. In fact, a popular email design format that you can take advantage of is the s-curve. It’s a two-column design that involves positioning an image on one side and text on the other, then alternating the placement of the image and text with each following row.

This format is effective because it keeps both graphics and text balanced while creating an aesthetically pleasing pattern that is easy for the eye to follow.

Check out the image below to see the actual s-shape.

Credit: Really Good Emails

Where can you find free email templates?

Fortunately, you don’t have to look far because we have a library full of free, downloadable email templates! 

These templates can be used for a variety of email marketing purposes, including but not limited to newsletters. Once you find a design you like, download the HTML code for that template or open the template in Figma.

In Figma, you can customize the templates to your liking and use Cannoli.app to automatically convert your new email design into HTML code. Best part? It only takes a few seconds.

Click here to access the free email templates!