Emails are built by dragging blocks onto the page — text, images, buttons, dividers — inside a structure of rows and columns. Start from a template so the header and footer are already right.

Rows and columns are the whole trick

Email layout is not web layout. Things sit side by side only when they are in separate columns of the same row. Two buttons dropped one after another in a single column will always stack — to place them next to each other, split the row into two columns and put one in each.

What works in email

• One clear action. A single obvious button beats six links.
• Real text, not text in images. Images are blocked by default in many mail clients, and text in a picture cannot be read by anyone who has them off.
• Generous tap targets. A button read on a phone needs to be comfortably thumb-sized.
• Short. Nobody reads a long marketing email. Link to the long version.

Before you call it finished

Send yourself a test and read it on a phone. It is the single most effective habit in email marketing, and the one most often skipped.