Hi friend,

Back in late November I was eagerly anticipating the high school basketball season. My son was the starting point guard on a team that we felt could really compete for a league championship.

I was running the boosters program, which among other things, helped promote the games on our social media and through our email list.

Now one thing you have to know about my school district, we are a baseball school, and historically attendance at basketball games was low. So getting a large attendance was challenging.

When it came time to send emails promoting the game, I really wanted to make sure they looked amazing and created some excitement. 

I wanted to include some cool looking designs in the emails, but I have no idea how to draw a stick figure let alone design an element for an email.

Fortunately I knew about Canva, an online design tool. I swear Canva can make anyone look like a professional designer. You may know Canva and may already use it (you may even use it when creating emails in AWeber), if you do then you know what I’m talking about.

Check out what I created for the home opener:
 

Not bad if I do say so myself.

And when it came time to promote the game honoring our seniors, I think I upped my “creative” game.

I think Canva is one of the top online graphic design tools available and it’s free. And it's so easy, each of those designs took me about 5 - 10 minutes.

So what makes a great email design anyway? I checked with some creative designers to find out:

1 - Grab attention, build anticipation, drive action

This structure is meant to grab attention and focus on the most important parts of your message. 

It’s good for when you have one thing to tell your readers, and a specific call to action you want them to take.

Here's an example:

2 - Make it scannable

Most people scan emails, rather than reading them word by word. 

Here are some key ways to make your emails scannable:

• Having some white space between your images and copy 
• Keep your paragraphs short
• Break out sections with headlines

3 - Use images with a purpose

Have you ever heard the statement “images are worth a thousand words”. It’s true, but don’t add images for the sake of adding images. Look at my examples above, I used those images to grab attention and I took advantage by including key information - like game dates and time.

4 - Attract your reader’s eyes

Adding a creative and fun animation such as a GIF is a great way to draw your audience’s attention to the most important aspects of your email.

Here are some summer GIFs that you can add to your next email. Here's an example:

So what do you think, can you create something better than my masterpieces?

Now go make your emails even more amazing than they already are.

Easy design tool just a drag & drop away

If you are not doing so already, it’s time to start designing like a professional.

Use the Canva drag and drop element in your email builder within AWeber and add professional looking images in just minutes.

If you don’t have a Canva account yet, don’t worry, it’s free to sign up.

Behind the newsletter

In this weeks Behind the newsletter, Chris and I dive deeper into email designs, Canva, and a little basketball.
 

Get our latest expert advice and helpful tips 

As always, thanks for reading!

- Sean and the team
 

P.S. Adding our "Behind the Newsletter" video to this email was really easy with the drag-and-drop icon in the email builder. 

I just added the video URL and the video thumbnail and alt text was automatically added.

👉 See how you can add a video to your next email