User Guide: Email Design

Email Design

Learn how to design modern-looking emails that encourage opens, clicks and engagement. This guide will help you get the most out of SilkStart's email tools.

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To access Email Campaigns, log in to the admin panel and navigate to Communicate > Email Campaigns > Start an Email Campaign

Review best practices

From inboxes to attention spans, there are many things to consider when sending an email campaign. We’ve scoured the web to bring you a comprehensive summary on best practices, including stats on which inboxes to design for, how to boost your open rates, how to convert your emails into website traffic, and much more.

Learn more: Email Campaign Best Practices

Select a template

With your new-found knowledge of the dos and don’ts of email campaigns, select a template that best suits the message you’re attempting to deliver. Are you sending a survey? Keep it short and concise with the Blank Template. Monthly Newsletter for your members to leisurely read? Consider our Newsletter Template. Look for the mobile phone icon to quickly see which templates are best suited for being mobile-friendly. 

Work within the template

To get the most out of SilkStart’s email campaigns, reimagine your desired look within the template you have selected. It’s best to add images to placeholders and replace existing text in the template. Feel free to add more text and images too! Just do your best to work within the template, piece by piece, rather than attempting to copy and paste from other sources (like a Word document). 

Learn more: Adding an Image to your email

Consider Outlook’s shortcomings

Microsoft Outlook likes to be different. In short, both desktop and online will use Microsoft Word to render emails. This means the code we use to optimize your emails for all other inboxes may render differently when viewed in Outlook—sometimes the results can look undesirable. Don’t believe us? Check out what MailChimp, the industry leader in email design, has to say about Outlook. We recognize that this can be less-than-ideal and add to the stress of designing your email, which is why we put together an article on how to optimize for Outlook.

Learn more: Designing Emails for Outlook