How To Create Modular Email Design Templates?

The clock is ticking, and your next email campaign is still lingering. 

For 21% of email marketing teams, the email production cycle ends in a week. But for most—62%, to be exact—building an email takes two weeks or more.

That’s a lot of time, given that nearly a quarter of marketers juggle up to 5 emails in production at once. 

Add to that the fact that 54% of brands send emails 2-4 times a month. And you get the idea: repetitive email creation is a grind that never stops. 

But for no reason should you assume that you must do it from the ground up every single time. Nor should a limited budget or time make you settle for plain-text emails (although they have their place!). Because there is a smarter way forward to speed up the email creation process. 

Modular email design templates. 

Email modules are pre-built, reusable email design elements that can be assembled to create whole templates. This approach reduces email production time by up to 50% while keeping the email design consistent with your brand strategy.

If you want to simplify your email workflow and create emails faster without compromising quality, this is the read for you. Let’s understand how to build beautiful emails using modular email templates. 

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What Are Modular Email Design Templates?

Modular email templates are built from various pre-built email design elements called email modules. Like LEGO blocks, modules are reusable email building blocks. You can assemble them to create any email you need. 

Whether you want to get modular email templates designed by agencies like Email Mavlers or have an in-house team to do it, the flexibility you have is ample. You can mix, match, and customize them, so you never have to build each email from scratch, saving both time and effort.

Each email module is dedicated to a specific purpose and can include images, HTML text, videos, or other content types. 

As in, you might have a module for essential sections of your email templates. The email header, footer, navigation bar, primary content block, social media links, etc. By stacking these modules together, you can build an email tailored to your campaign goals significantly faster. 

Further, you can reuse static elements like footers across emails without making changes. Meanwhile, edit the content of dynamic blocks like product blocks without altering the overall design.

The point is: modular email templates help you strike the perfect balance between maintaining brand consistency across your email campaigns and adapting emails to specific needs. 

So, modular email design guarantees that your emails are both efficient to produce and visually cohesive be it a one-off promotional email or a recurring newsletter.

So, here’s what your email marketing team can do. 

Design a pack of modules for various types of email campaigns—promotional, trigger-based, transactional, reactivation, newsletters, and more. And store them as a part of your brand’s comprehensive email design system.

With this setup, every team member involved in the email creation process can easily access brand-compliant email components. They can use these components to build consistent and professional-looking emails without reinventing the wheel.

Creating Modular Email Templates: A Simple Step-by-Step Method

Step 1: Identify Email Elements That You Want to Turn Into Modules

First, identify which email design elements make good candidates for email modules. The best way to do that is to break up your email design into small components and see which sections you use over and over across all your email campaigns. Focusing on elements used frequently across campaigns will help you maximize the efficiency of modular email design and save time.

Most likely, elements that will remain consistent throughout the campaigns and that you would want to modularize are the header, footer, social media links, signatures, etc. 

But it’s also smart to craft modules for elements like promotional banners, blog posts, or product cards. You WILL have to edit the data every time you use these modules. But editing is far more efficient than building from scratch.

This step will help you organize your module library for a more simplified email design process. 

Step 2: Create A Design Strategy

All modules should maintain a uniform design to ensure your emails are instantly identifiable as part of your brand. Hence, define a cohesive design strategy based on your brand guidelines. Here are some elements you should consider:

  • Brand palette and logo
  • Image and text proportions
  • Button style
  • Background colors
  • Spacing between the modules 

Step 3: Build The Modules

The next step in defining this process is to begin assembly of modules. The end result is to develop modules that operate independently and integrate with your current email templates.

The best way to ensure this is to build modules in a single, comprehensive email template. All design standards of your brand should be captured in this master template. Segment the master template into reusable components. 

Now, start designing your email modules. These pre-built modules will be ready to insert into your template, requiring minor modification to fit the intended campaign.

Step 4: Test All The Modules

Your email modules are ready to be used in email campaigns only when they render as expected. 

So, test it individually to ensure it looks proper across all email clients, browsers and devices. Some of the things that can go wrong during a campaign and should thus always be closely monitored include the alignment of different elements, load time and interactivity.

Using preview tools and sending test emails are effective methods to ensure the responsiveness of your modular email templates.

Once your modules are through these tests, you can save the final versions in your design library. 

Step 5: Use Modules for Email Templates

Once tested, organize the modules into a pattern library for easy access. Assemble these modules into full email templates by stacking and arranging them based on the campaign’s objectives. Reuse or tweak modules as and when needed.

Next, conduct A/B tests to gather actionable feedback. For example, test different module versions to know which ones work best with your audience. Lean against CTR, conversion rates, and other engagements to tell what works best.

When you are using these modules in live campaigns, do not forget that the modules can always be altered by trying out various designs and content combinations. 

This iterative approach ensures your modules meet technical standards and drive the best results for your email marketing efforts.

Wrapping Up

The use of modular email design templates in a brand’s email marketing strategy is the most effective approach to decreasing the time it takes to create emails while still creating amazing results.

It is for this reason that it has turned out to be the most-sought after solution by marketing teams that want to cut their costs, streamline workflows, and offer their subscribers unique experiences.

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