You’ve established the campaign goals, built out the tactics and are ready implement email marketing as a part of your strategy. Sometimes there are templates ready for you to utilize, but when there isn’t a template ready to use you will need to create one. It is important to send out an email with a template that follows the flow of the email. Some email templates are more suitable for certain types of emails while others just don’t cut it. I’ve compiled steps I’ve learned to create relevant email templates.

1. Figure out the message of the email
   • Knowing the message of the email is essential to creating the template. What are you telling the customer? Is it a promotion? An educational campaign? A welcome series? I find that writing out the objective of the email into a sentence will help build the foundation of the email. It will help you to visualize how you want the reader to receive the message.
2. Plan the flow of the email
   • When the objective of the email is clear, the rest tend to come together naturally. I make sure to answer these questions before heading over to the graphic designer with ideas. How do you want to present the message in a way the reader is engaged? Do you want to have an introduction or would you prefer to dive right in?  What is the copy for the email? Are there steps that you want to walk your reader through?
3. Compile the images that you want to use
   • Depending on the type of email, emails with images tend to perform better than emails that don’t. What are the graphic assets that you want to use? What is the brand style of the organization? Do you use illustrations or images? Or will you use a combination of the two? How do you want the graphics displayed in the email?

Now that you have the foundations of the email all lined up, it’s time to put everything together. There are many places to gather inspiration from. One of the first places is from your own inbox. From the emails that you receive, you can decipher what works for you and what doesn’t. You can use parts of one email and parts of another to create your template. There are also online resources that specialize in curating emails sent out by different companies. Reallygoodemails.com is one of the few places that have an organized way of curating and sorting emails be category. With the curated emails, you can see even more templates that you haven’t seen before. Seeing a wider variety of emails can inspire you for your email template creation.

Just because a template catches your eye doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate for your particular email. Based on the information and assets that you want to utilize, your template needs to flow and work with the content. The star of the email isn’t the template, it’s the message and the content.