6 Websites You Need To Create Great Email Newsletters

Hola amigos,

Over the course of my 4 years in email marketing, I’ve built up a repertoire of must-have tabs on my browser.

These tabs have made my life as an email marketer easier and I think they’re going to make your life easier as well.

I recently shared this list with a client and the woman on the call said,

You don’t know what you don’t know.

But I wanna make sure you, lovely reader, DO know.

So with no further ado, let’s dive in!

Use these sites while creating emails

Canva

Canva is like Photoshop for dummies. I mean that in the most endearing way possible. I consider myself among the “dummies”.

What I mean is that Canva makes image and video design easy. Anyone can use it thanks to its gigantic library of images, videos, text, templates, emojis, stickers, and GIFs that you can drag and drop into any size image you’d like.

The good news for those on a tight budget is that many of Canva’s features are free.

I create basic templates for each of my clients that includes:

• Testimonials

• GIFs

• Hours of operation

• Lifestyle shots

• Video

• And more…

Another benefit is that Canva is fun. I’ve yet to meet a person who doesn’t love messing around with photo editors. It’s a fun great way to release some creativity and kill some time.

ezGIF

ezGIF is, as you might’ve guessed, a website that allows you to make GIFs. The reason I prefer it over the more popular website, Giphy, is because there are more customisation options — especially when it comes to the size of the GIF.

Many emails are 600px wide and ezGIF allows me to size GIFs to be that wide, whereas Giphy renders GIFs at 500px wide.

Plus, I can also compress GIFs right from ezGIF so that they’re the smallest possible size for the email.

Grammarly

I think everyone knows what Grammarly is at this point, right? It’s your personal online AI text editor.

While a lot of writers and marketers have gripes with Grammarly (it has a hard time understanding context and slang), it’ll be adequate for 95% of the population.

Truth be told, even though I have someone editing my work, every now and then Grammarly finds an error that slipped through our internal and external reviews so I’m forever grateful to have the extension downloaded.

Additionally, I imagine Grammarly would be of huge benefit to someone whose first language isn’t English or someone who really dislikes writing.

Google Analytics

If you’re using analytics that are native to your email marketing service (E.g. Mailchimp), that’s great…but in many cases, depending on the service you’re using, it’s not enough.

Google Analytics gives you a much more comprehensive overview of what’s happening after someone leaves your email and ventures on over to your website. From sales made to pages interacted with, Google Analytics provides you with a much more wholistic view of what your contacts are doing after they’ve clicked a link on your email.

Email Preview IO

If you’ve ever wanted to save an email to send to a client, to save to a database, to add to your portfolio, or for any other reason, you can save it with Email Preview IO.

When I found this website, I was so freaking happy. I was looking for all kinds of ways save my FULL email, not just snippets of sections, and I was at a loss. Then, on Twitter, I saw someone share a link to this website and I was stoked.

The process isn’t hard at all.

All you have to do is take the “View in Browser” URL and paste it into the website. Or, you can save your email as a EML file and upload it.

Your email will then save as either a PNG, JPEG, or PDF, depending on what you choose.

(Thanks, Stephanie, for creating this awesome website!)

Really Good Emails

Really Good Emails (RGE) is the reason I haven’t had a creative block whilst designing emails for the better part of three years.

I should probably send them a bottle of wine at Christmas or something. Honestly, the time and aggravation they’ve saved me is astounding.

RGE provide the world with a nearly endless repertoire of incredible emails — from design to copy — and it’s all curated by some of the best minds in the biz so you know it’s quality stuff.

Moreover, the RGE team has a wicked awesome YouTube channel where they speak to email marketers about the emails they create.

Now get creating!

I’m going to give you some controversial advice that I give to all my clients.

Ready for it?

Okay, here it is:

Don’t reinvent the wheel, just steal what works.

So many marketers get bogged down in creating something new. Don’t waste your time. True newness and uniqueness is a once in a lifetime thing. Forget about trying to achieve it.

Copy the templates on Canva and steal the design of emails on RGE. Everyone does it.

Now, let me be clear: When I say steal, I don’t mean plagiarise.

“But stealing is the same as pla—”

No. Not in this context.

I never copy peoples words or completely recreate a design I like. But I do use what other people have already written and designed to get me 75% of the way to my final product.

Make sense?

I hope so.

Adios,Andrew