Top 10 Email Marketing & Design Blogs You Need to Follow Today
If you’re reading this article, it means that you already realize the importance of email marketing. You know it can help you achieve a high ROI— more than any of the other marketing channels or techniques — not to mention how easy it is to create and implement emails, compared to other digital marketing methods.
However, to create successful email marketing campaigns, you need to be very well informed and educated on every little detail and technique. You need to keep up with the new trends and learn all about the most popular and effective tools.
You’ve come to the right place, my friend.
We have scoured the internet and chosen only the crème de la crème of educational email marketing websites and blogs. This list has been curated to provide you with the best content, which is not only credible and valuable but also quite entertaining and easy to follow.
Our Selection Criteria
We strive to bring you the most credible and valuable information to help you improve your marketing activities. We understand that today, the internet is crowded, filled with millions of websites and blogs claiming to be experts in any field, but devoid of knowledge, background research, or any proof. Certain sources blabber on, telling you to do this one day, and something completely different the next.
Rest assured, we’ve done the research for you and chosen ten amazing, rich, credible sources which are all about email marketing.
How we chose these email marketing blogs
Is marketing an art or a science?
Here at Chamaileon, we believe marketing is a combination of both. To honor the scientific part of it, we have objectively selected two criteria to guide us and serve as reference points during the blog selection process.
Criteria #1: Quality Content
To judge content quality can be very subjective, however, there are some indicators to look out for that can help in determining how good is the content:
- Accessibility to the information: all the blogs and resources recommended in this list are 100% free
- Creativity and originality of the content
Criteria #2: Accuracy and Objectivity
Numbers, data, studies, reports, research, credible sources… These are some clear indicators that help us determine to what extent the information mentioned in the blog post is accurate, reliable, and objective.
Email Marketing Blogs For Marketers
You will find that we divided our top 10 email marketing blogs into two main sections, according to the actual development process of email marketing campaigns: Strategy and Design.
Everything begins with a strategy, whether it is starting a business, growing your team, or even buying a new coffee machine for the office. Where there is an investment, there should be a clear and defined strategy behind it.
Email marketing campaigns are no different.
Before you hire a design team and set the send out date, you need to first have a solid understanding of what you want to achieve, and why? Who is your primary target audience, and what should you tell them? All these questions should be answered with thorough detail and be based on scientific data and logical reasoning.
To help you answer the most pressing questions that will shape your email marketing strategy, here are our top picks, listed in no particular order :
#1 Campaign Monitor
Everything you need for digital and email marketing that’s on point.
Campaign Monitor is an online email-marketing platform that offers web-based solutions for marketers when it comes to email marketing campaigns. Campaign Monitor is part of CM Group and counts more than 250,000 small and medium-sized clients that use their marketing automation features to send out emails. Their clients come from different industries and backgrounds, from travel agencies, nonprofit international organizations, and retail businesses to entertainment magazines, media, and publishing.
Campaign Monitor has been nurturing its website with high-quality content tackling email marketing related topics.
Their “Browse by” feature will give you an overview of all the topics they have covered in their blog posts and research. You can also browse their content by industry.
So, if you are a retail business, for example, you can simply click that button, and a filtered result page will show up, listing all the resources and email marketing case studies that specifically relate to the retail industry.
Finally, you have the possibility to browse the content by type: Guides, Infographics, Training videos, Knowledge Base…
This is a particularly neat feature, since by clicking on the Knowledge Base section, for example, you will see all the information you need about email marketing.
By entering the knowledge base, you will be submerged in great content: Email Strategy, Email Metrics, Email Marketing Best Practices… Only a few examples of what Campaign Monitor’s resources section has to offer.
Each blog post is strategically and meticulously developed to deconstruct marketing terms we all hear about, but might find some difficulty in truly grasping their meaning: Lead Nurturing, Email Segmentation, Open Rates, Conversion Rates…
We highly recommend Campaign Monitor’s resources and blog for all marketers out there trying to figure out where to start with their email marketing strategy.
#2 Litmus
Never send another broken email
With some well-established names for partners, such as Google, Netflix, and Trello, Litmus will allow you to instantly preview your emails across more than 90 email clients.
Litmus gives its large customer base of over 600.000 great insight into the performance of email campaigns. It will also allow you to catch broken links, images, or tracking as well as analyze load time and scan your subject line for improvements.
Litmus empowers marketers, designers, and agencies to send better emails.
Litmus highlights the importance of creating a good strategy, based on clear data and insights, to improve the quality and enhance the performance of any email marketing campaign.
This is very clear in their blog, where they regularly share articles all about improving ROI or informing you of all the latest trends and tools that marketers should pay attention to.
Not only that, but if you visit Litmus Blog, you will find a section called “Infographics”.
Based on multiple research and studies conducted by their professional teams, Litmus have compiled data and insights that will assist you in answering all the big questions when it comes to setting your email marketing strategies and enhancing your workflow.
Litmus also often shares full reports on subjects that will definitely interest you and make you think twice before launching any marketing campaign. They have recently published their “2019 State of Email” Report, which highlights and analyzes the significant shifts that will shape the email marketing industry in 2019, backed by data and insights.
#3 Marketing Land
Marketing Land is sort of a digital magazine that shares publications daily, covering all aspects and topics of digital marketing. Their content is very rich and valuable; it can even get a bit overwhelming at times. But luckily, you can easily filter their hundreds of articles and you will end up with only the content you are interested in.
Marketing Land, as its name indicates, is an endless land of content. It covers topics from industry trends to breaking stories. Their articles are written by a team of expert marketers, but also feature guest articles written by some of the most highly-established names from the industry. Their daily columns offer insight into online marketing strategies as well as tools and techniques for every aspect of digital marketing. Their fascinating content can also be easily consumed via email, thanks to their subscription feature that can provide you with regular newsletters published in arrangement with Marketing Land’s sister websites: Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. You will get the best of three worlds!
Marketing Land covers a wide array of digital marketing topics: CMO, SEO, Mobile, Analytics, Content Marketing, and of course, Email Marketing.
Their publications are unconventional and completely different from other blog posts you might find on the other recommended blogs on this article. Since Marketing Land is not an email marketing service provider, they allow themselves to venture out a little when it comes to the content they put out relating to email marketing. They share things like the effect of email marketing on brand equity, US data protection law, and email history.
#4 SendGrid
Send [Emails] with confidence
SendGrid is a cloud-based email delivery platform. With more than 80.000 customers, including big names such as Uber, Spotify, and Airbnb, SendGrid assists businesses in sending out over 50 billion emails each month, from shipping notifications to sign-up confirmations.
SendGrid has an impressive Education section on its platform. Not only do they share amazing articles and case studies on their blog — cleverly named “The Full Send” — they have also managed to create a full library of webcasts, videos and podcasts all about email marketing.
They have hundreds of fun and engaging educational materials that deal with different aspects of email marketing, from email marketing myths to recipes for successful email sending.
Their webcasts and podcasts are completely free and can be viewed at any time of the day, during your morning commute or even while at the gym. SendGrid has made the educational process easy and accessible by including these formats.
If you are still new to the domain of email marketing and wish to get up to speed with all the marketing pros out there, you can simply sign up for SendGrid’s Online Academy, 100% free of charge.
Register here, and you can start taking courses developed by SendGrid’s email experts. Each course is engaging, data-driven, and comprised of a number of short lessons. At the end of each series of lessons, you will get to complete an online quiz to test your knowledge on the course subject.
SendGrid obviously invests in the education of their large customer base, and every other business as well. They have taken it upon themselves to create the most complete and integrative education base, covering all topics related to email marketing, from the creation of an email development workflow to email copywriting.
#5 Intercom
Intercom is a US-based messaging platform that allows its B2B clients to communicate with their prospective and existing customer base from within their own app.
Intercom was founded in 2011 in San Francisco, but today has 4 more offices in London, Chicago, Dublin, and Sydney and employs a team of more than 600.
Thanks to its innovative solution in building “a suite of messaging-first products”, Intercom has successfully helped more than 30,000 businesses connect with their worldwide customer base throughout each step of their customer lifecycle.
Intercom made it on our Top 10 list thanks to their impressive library of free online books and guides that cover multiple aspects of marketing and sales.
From customer support to product management, Intercom’s books are a gold mine of quality information that have helped more than 100,000 marketers all over the world.
As you might have noticed, Intercom’s resources don’t focus solely on email marketing. However, their books and guides cover topics that are crucial to the success of every marketing campaign, despite the channel.
How to build your brand from scratch? How to transform your new signups into active users? How to increase customer engagement? These are all questions that are answered, with great detail and based on scientific insight.
Simply download Intercom’s books, available in different formats (ePub, mobi, PDF, and even audiobook format), all for free
Email Marketing Blogs For Designers
#6 Chamaileon
Chamaileon is a free, responsive email template builder, designer, and editor. It’s an intuitive, user-friendly platform that allows you to build and design high-quality emails. Chamaileon has built its customer base of small and medium-sized businesses, agencies, and enterprises.
With the objective to facilitate the email design process, Chamaileon offers its users free access to its large list of professionally-designed email templates. Users can easily go through the email template list, organized by themes, and choose the one that best fits their needs.
Chamaileon’s drag and drop feature allows users to edit the email templates without needing to write a single line of code. The final design is compatible with all versions of Outlook and all Apple and Android devices too.
Everyone on the design and marketing team can give their input during the email design process, thanks to Chamaileon’s collaborative nature.
In order to improve its ESP integration features, Chamaileon has built its ESP partners portfolio to include established names in the industry, such as HubSpot, Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp, and many more.
Over the years, Chamaileon has gradually built up its blog, enriched by the featured posts of diverse email marketing experts.
Our blog has a fun combination of posts and articles all about email design. If your creative juices are running low, you can simply browse our blog to find the most creative email designs for each holiday and special occasion(Thanksgiving, Christmas, Product Launch Announcements, etc), best practices, and the most inspirational and educational podcasts.
At Chamaileon, we believe that beautiful emails are the key to a higher ROI, and we prove that on our blog.
#7 Really Good Emails
We’re the epicenter of the email earthquake, but in a good and happy-shakey kind of way.
Really Good Emails is a platform that aims to provide marketers with an overview of the best curated marketing campaign emails and email marketing resources, handpicked from every little corner of the internet.
Their platform is pretty straightforward: once you enter the website, you will find an endless array of email templates. You can get inspired by the design of these templates, made by third-party websites, or simply click on a template you like, and it will redirect you to the email builder platform, where you can edit it to fit your standards.
Their lists of email templates are handpicked by their team of professional designers and marketers, but also enriched by their community submissions.
Really Good Emails is the place to go for any designer that is short on ideas and needs a little creativity boost.
But that’s not all, RGE features a Resources section, which is basically the email marketing and email design encyclopedia of the internet. You will find more than 190 resources and links to articles, blog posts, case studies, courses, infographics, books… covering almost every aspect of email design.
Really Good Emails is the portal that will guide you towards really good email design material.
#8 Mailchimp
Built for growing businesses
Mailchimp is one of the most renowned marketing automation platforms today. It’s an online platform used to build professional looking email templates, automate email marketing campaigns, and manage subscribers’ lists.
Named company of the year in 2017 by Inc. and earning more than $600 Million in 2018, while maintaining their famous freemium feature, Mailchimp targets mainly small and medium-sized businesses, with the ultimate goal to help them grow, not only by using their services, but also by creating and sharing helpful content on their blog.
In fact, when you open the resources tab on Mailchimp, you can choose between Marketing Tips and Success Stories.
The Marketing Tips sections are targeted to all marketers who need a little push to find their way towards reaching their email marketing goals. You’ll find articles unveiling the best tips to grow your business, increase your conversion rate, and choose the most effective automation plan for your business.
The Success Stories section is exactly what its name entails. You can read all about what other businesses and brands did to succeed!
Besides their email marketing columns, Mailchimp’s content creation team has developed a complete Email Design Guide, filled with tips and advice to help you improve your use of images, fonts, calls to action and all other aspects of email campaign design.
Mailchimp’s Email Design Guide is comprised of 8 main sections: Content, Color, Fonts, Images, Templates, Layout, Calls to Action, and Identity. Under each section, you will find a detailed list of guidelines, links to useful resources and free material you might use, and examples of what you should do to create better and more effective emails.
Mailchimp’s content is quite useful and technical. As one of the leading email centered companies, Mailchimp knows exactly what their users are looking for and provides straight to the point information, such as this blog post dealing specifically with image requirements in email templates.
#9 Emma
Email marketing that works for you.
Emma is an email marketing platform that gives its customers the tools to send an email campaign to connect with their subscribers. Their digital marketing platform makes it easier to create beautifully-designed emails that drive major results. Not only do they offer professionally-designed email templates, but they also help their clients grow their subscriber lists, create and share quality content, and test their email marketing strategies and designs using their A/B testing feature, among other tools.
Their team of experts provides continuous customer service to advise their clients and assist them in improving their email marketing strategies to boost subscriber engagement and to enhance the overall performance of their email marketing strategy.
Emma is also part of the CM family of brands, and just like Campaign Monitor, Emma has been successful in building a credible website and managed to create compelling resources for their blog.
Emma’s blog has been cleverly divided into two main sections: strategy and design, as in email marketing strategy and email marketing design.
And we simply fell in love with their design blog!
Their articles are so fun and innovative. They showcase creativity and ingenuity. Their series “Anatomy of an Email” deconstructs email designs from different company’s email campaigns, taking the time to provide a scientific explanation and context for each element of the email: why the designer chose this email template, why he used a specific color, font, logo placement, etc. Anatomy of an Email is built on attention to detail.
Another series that we always make sure to follow is the Email Showdown. I’m guessing you already have an idea about what this series might be about. Just like the name suggests, this series is literally a showdown between two competitors’ email campaigns! A fun series that each time chooses two brands from the same industry, offering similar products, and goes through a series of the email campaigns they send to their subscribers.
The author gives a critical overview under each email and in the end, lists the strengths and weaknesses of each email marketing campaign, and finally declares the winner of the two brands! A quick, fun and informative read, that always leaves you wanting more!
#10 Canva
Canva is actually not an email-related website. It is an online graphic design tool, launched in 2012. The platform was created to help beginners venture in the world of graphic design, using its simple drag’n’drop feature. Canva allows its users to create amazing design pieces, and provides them with access to over a million (mostly free) colors, photographs, icons, and graphics. Canva is used by non designers but also by professionals. Canva recently updated their platform to make it more user-friendly and to better serve their B2B clientele.
Canva’s blog is not exclusively based around email design, however, it provides a great selection of design tips and inspiration. Their blog posts will teach you all about creating graphics and beautiful content, from social media posts to email campaigns.
Canva’s blog is targeted at designers. You will find articles about fonts, colors, quotes, etc…
Canva also has a couple of tools that any designer would find useful during their design process:
- Canva’s Color Wheel: find the best color combinations that go with your brand colors.
- Canva’s Color Palettes: hundreds of color palettes have been created to help you out when you need to spice up your design.
- Canva’s Perfect Font Combination: a genius tool that gives you the best font combinations that go with your brand’s official font.
Canva is basically a toolbox for designers, we simply had to include it.
Wrapping Up
Many people have argued that email is dying. However, statistics show that the trend is only expanding. With more and more email-centered companies and startups on the rise, email marketing is regaining its place as the most effective marketing channel.
There is always more knowledge to consume and more lessons to learn. We are very pleased with our complementary selection of email marketing and design blogs.
Feel free to share with us any other blog or website you are following.