📋 What you'll need: Nothing yet — read this before you write anything
⏱ Time: 20 minutes to read, then use as a reference every time you write
✅ Output: A structure for every email you write, and the handful of rules that decide whether it gets read
⏱ Time: 20 minutes to read, then use as a reference every time you write
✅ Output: A structure for every email you write, and the handful of rules that decide whether it gets read
Before you build a single sequence, it helps to know what a good email looks like. The answer is simpler and cheaper than most founders expect. You don't need a designer, a template library, or a Canva subscription. You need a clear structure, one idea per email, and one thing you want the reader to do.
What an Email Is Made Of
Six parts. Each has one job. Get these right and the email works, regardless of how it looks.
The six parts, and what each one does
- Subject line. Its only job is to earn the open. Not to sell — the body does that. Keep it under 50 characters, because only about 33 show on a phone. Put the useful part first.
- Preview text. The grey line next to the subject in the inbox. Most people never set it, so their email shows "View this email in your browser." Yours should extend the subject line, not repeat it. Read together, the two should make one sentence.
- The opening line. No greeting-and-warm-up. Get to the point in the first sentence, because that's often all anyone reads. Assume someone is skimming on their phone in a queue.
- The body. One idea. Short paragraphs, two or three lines each. Write about them, not about you: "You can now book Saturday mornings," not "We're excited to announce Saturday availability."
- One call to action. One thing to click, one place it goes. Not "read the blog and follow us and book a call." Every extra option costs you clicks. Name the action — "Book your free session," never "Click here."
- The sign-off, and the P.S. Sign off as a person, with your name. The P.S. is one of the most-read lines in any email, so use it: restate the one thing you want them to do, or add the detail that tips them over.
💡 Aim for 100–200 words in your early sequence emails, up to 300 later when you're including proof or a story. Shorter almost always beats longer. If you can cut a sentence without losing the meaning, cut it.
See It: Two Emails, Broken Down
Below are two emails you'll actually build later in this module. One is a welcome email — the first thing a new subscriber gets from a personal trainer. The other is a cart reminder from a candle brand, sent to someone who left something behind.
They do different jobs, so they look different. The welcome email has no images at all. The cart email has exactly one, because there's something the reader needs to see. Underneath, they're built the same way.
Ignore the specific words for now. Look at where each part sits, and read the notes explaining why.
📌 The rules that apply to both
- Write like a person. If it reads like a company wrote it, rewrite it.
- One idea, one CTA. Buttons beat text links. Two to five words, starting with a verb — "Shop the collection," not "Click here."
- Single column. Between 60% and 70% of your emails are opened on a phone.
- Body text at least 16px. Buttons at least 44 pixels square, so a thumb can hit them.
- Answer three questions before they scroll: what is this, why should I care, what do I do next.
- Never image-only. Most inboxes block images by default, so a one-big-image email arrives blank — and it looks like spam, because spammers hid text inside images to get past filters.
- Keep the whole email under about 100KB and any image under 1MB, or Gmail cuts the bottom off and hides it behind a link most people never click.
- Alt text on every image, every time.
- Check it in dark mode before you send. Light logos disappear and colours invert.
How Much Design Does an Email Need?
Less than you think, and not the kind you'd expect.
Email design isn't decoration. It's about controlling what someone looks at first, second, and third — so the point lands before they lose interest. A well-designed email might have no images in it at all.
So the question isn't "how do I make this look professional?" It's this: is there something my reader needs to see?
Do your emails need images?
If you sell a service, almost never. Your welcome email, your story, your follow-up, your win-back — nobody needs a photograph to understand any of them. Words do the work. A header graphic and a stock photo make a personal trainer's email look like a bank's newsletter, and it stops feeling like a message from a person.
The evidence backs this up. Across more than a thousand campaigns, plain text emails earned 42% more clicks than emails containing a GIF, and 51% more than image-heavy ones. Adding a single GIF dropped open rates by 37%. This edge is strongest for relationship emails and for people who've already bought — a first-time ecommerce welcome email still carries light branding and a product image or two, which is the case below.
If you sell products, ask what the email is actually doing.Showing a specific product? Then the image is the email, and it has to be there:
- Cart and browse abandonment — show the exact item they left, with its name and price. Not your bestsellers. The image is the reminder.
- Order confirmations — show what they bought and what's arriving.
- Product launches — people want to see the thing.
Introducing yourself to someone new? Then a light brand identity, because they signed up on your shop and should recognise the email when it lands. Your logo, your colours, one real image that earns its place. A single column, roughly 60% text to 40% images, one thing to click.
Talking to someone who has already bought? Then plain text, and this is where it does its best work — the data shows existing customers convert better on plain text than on anything designed. Your "how are you getting on with it," your review request, your win-back email: these should read like a message from you, because that's what they are.
When you do use images
Aim for roughly 60% text to 40% images as a starting point, then test from there. What matters more than the ratio is this: your email must make complete sense with the images turned off, because many inboxes block them by default.
Never send an email that's one big image. It's the single worst thing you can do. It arrives blank for anyone with images off, it can't be read aloud by a screen reader, it loads slowly, and it looks like spam — because spammers used to hide text inside images to get past filters. Your email tool will let you do it. Don't.
Every image needs alt text: a short, plain description of what it shows. It's read aloud to visually impaired readers, and it's what appears when the image doesn't load.
Gmail's Promotions tab isn't a second spam folder. People browse it looking for brands they want to hear from. Product images can send you there, because Google reads images — but that's a fair trade when the image is the message.
💡 The question underneath all of this: is there something my reader needs to see?
For a candle sitting in an abandoned basket, yes — that image is the whole email. For a coach explaining why twenty minutes beats an hour, no. Adding an image because the email looks empty without one is how you end up in the Promotions tab of Gmail.
The Rules That Don't Change
📌 The rules that apply to every email
- Write like a person. If it reads like a company wrote it, rewrite it.
- One idea, one CTA. Buttons beat text links. Two to five words, starting with a verb — "Shop the collection," not "Click here."
- Single column. Between 60% and 70% of your emails are opened on a phone.
- Body text at least 16px. Buttons at least 44 pixels square, so a thumb can hit them.
- Answer three questions before they scroll: what is this, why should I care, what do I do next.
- Roughly 60% text to 40% images, as a starting point.
- Never image-only. The email must make sense with the images turned off.
- Keep the whole email under about 100KB and any image under 1MB, or Gmail cuts the bottom off and hides it behind a link most people never click.
- Alt text on every image, every time.
- Check it in dark mode before you send. Light logos disappear and colours invert.
💡 The real reason people unsubscribe.
It isn't design. Nearly half of unsubscribes come from content that isn't relevant to the reader, and 42% from too many promotions and too little worth reading. Another 39% of people delete retail emails unopened simply because there are too many of them. Send less, make it useful, and design stops being the problem.
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Your Welcome Sequence
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