When you walk into a liquor store, how do you choose what to buy?

Usually, the answer is the branding.

This applies to your newsletter design too.

Well-branded newsletters stand out against the millions of competing emails.

They create an association between your subscribers and what you want them to think and feel when engaging with you.

And over time, these things work together to build your reputation and encourage people to buy from you over someone else.

Below I'm going to show you how to do this. I'll show you how some of the best brands are using these branding techniques, so you can apply them to your own newsletter.

But first, a note about branding: it's not for everyone.

I've talked a bit about this before. Sometimes branding actually doesn’t matter at all.

Generally, this comes down to the stage and type of business you're in.

Especially for new startups working with email, branding is often on the bottom of the list of priorities. And instead, it's better to focus on your content and driving immediate revenue first. At this stage, branding is usually just icing on the cake.

BUT, in some situations, a good brand from the start is absolutely necessary.

What are those?

1. Highly competitive industries with little differentiation - like beer, skincare, or airlines. A strong brand is key here because to your average consumer, there is little differentiation among so many options, and the brand helps these companies stand out and speak to a specific market segment to appear better, healthier, tastier—whatever it may be you're going for.
2. Complex purchase decisions - like enterprise software, cars, and presidential elections. A brand is important here because there are so many things to think about and consider with the purchase decision, and this can overload the brain. As a result, strong relatable branding can help simplify a complex decision for people. i.e. "The Jeep's probably better for me because it fits with my outdoorsy lifestyle".
3. People selling content, experiences or lifestyles - especially for creators, branding helps sell things that are less tangible or visible. It helps build a narrative and story, and it can feel aspirational. i.e. if you're a lifestyle coach, strong branding can help you appear more credible, giving confidence to people seeking out your services. It will also hep you differentiate yourself in the highly competitive niche.

Keep in mind: branding is NOT just design.

I've worked with so many founders who obsess over graphic design. But they don't care at all about content strategy, tone, photography and positioning. This is a big mistake. Thinking that branding is only visual design is a very shallow view of what a brand really is. It's like defining a person only by how they dress. Instead, branding is done through all sorts of activities: the causes you support, the people you work with, the topics you talk about, the words you choose. Together, these all make a strong brand.

With that said, for the sake of this article I'm going to speak mostly to visual design when it comes to branding newsletters. I'll show you how you can can combine simple things like layouts, button styles, images, fonts, or even just link colors - to create a great visual brand.

As a result, your newsletter will stand out, have better readability, and build the connection you want with your audience to influence how they feel about you.

Here are 10 examples of beautifully designed newsletters and why they work (key takeaways at the end)

You can follow each of these brands in competitor monitoring to get all their email templates, and use as inspiration when you create your own design.

The School of Life - credible, professional and bold

The School of Life is a collection of resources, tools and services that help people live more fulfilled lives. They have a great looking newsletter overall. It's simple but colorful design makes it easy to read and navigate. The consistent use of vibrant yellow as the main color makes it bold and attention-grabbing. The clean lines and elegant serif fonts enhance its credibility and professionalism. Perfect for a company with a strong focus on education.

People I've loved - crafty and personal

Carissa's brand, People I've Loved creates thoughtful handmade gifts (cards, prints, journals). It's brand is super cool, and it really shines in her newsletter. Reading it, you instantly get a very personal, human feel that's also whimsical and creative. This is perfect for the business she's in. She gives her newsletter this feel through a beige craft background, informal editorial style photography, hand drawn art (including her logo), and a bright splash of pink is just fun and recognizable.

Piecework Puzzles - smart, creative, and personal

Piecework is another whimsical brand that sells creative puzzles. Their minimal newsletter design helps their products shine. Clean serif fonts and the consistent use of red everywhere makes their brand recognizable with every email. On top of that, they incorporate small graphic elements and a personal signature to give the newsletter a human feel.

Butter - fun, simple and entertaining

I love the Butter brand. They're a software company that helps teams run more engaging meetings and workshops digitally. Their brand's design is incredibly unique. So unique, that when I first saw this newsletter at a glance, I immediately thought "ohh, is this that team event software company with the really cool branding?". This is a perfect example of branding in action. Their unique style is consistent throughout their website as well as their newsletter, using bold typography, vibrant solid blocks of color, and simple graphics, working together to help them really stand out against other workplace collaboration companies. This style also reinforces their key message: making virtual collaboration easy and engaging.

Parcel - professional and technical

Parcel is an email coding platform. It's another brand that does a great job standing out with their newsletter. While the design is super clean and simple, it's still really different from anything else I've seen a SaaS company deliver. It's essentially just a plain email, but with purple accents and a code-style font. Thats all that's needed to stand out here as well as make the reader feel that this is a unique kind of coding software.

Drunk Elephant - fun, nourishing vibes

Drunk Elephant is a skincare brand focusing on healthy 'biocompatable' ingredients. They think about their products as blends of different ingredients, which when combined create 'smoothies'. Whether intentional or not, this story aligns with the bold use of colors in their brand. It makes picking skincare products feel fun, and it's a unique appraoch in this highly competitive industry. I absolutely love what they've done with their branding, and it is definitely one of the more extreme examples here. Note while a brand like this may require a bit more work to maintain, it crushes in this highly competitive niche where you need to stand out to win.

Wealthsimple - simple, modern and trustworthy

Wealthsimple is an investing platform designed to be smart and simple. They've created their newsletter design to align with this vibe: from the uniquely branded header, minimal design, green accents, and simple graphics.

Mount Sapo - natural and nostalgic

Mount Sapo, another skincare brand has an amazing looking newsletter. And its so simple which is what I especially love. The off-green background, black and white photography, rounded edges, and letter typeface give the email an organic and nostalgic kind of vibe that is so different from other brands in this competitive space.

The Steal Club - creative, personal and thoughtful

If you're a marketing geek like me, this is a great one to read. The Steal Club is a budding copywriting newsletter that's helping its audience create better content. And in a world filled with AI content, I love what they've done with the brand to make it clear there's a human behind this. Their branding is also easily identified against the thousands of other marketing newsletters, and besides the content itself being so unique, they differentiate visually through these 3 things: simple stick character graphics, a consistent core brand color (orange) in backgrounds and typography, and unique branded dividers instilling a human feel. Again, while these may not seem like a big deal, it's these small details done consistently over a long period of time that make a great brand. And it doesn't require a lot of effort or large budget.

Hard Graft - earthy and fashionable

Hard Graft creates fine accessories with down to earth aesthetics. And their newsletter branding immediately gives this vibe, using muted colors (a plain off-grey background and brown buttons), a product focus, beautiful serif fonts, and lifestyle imagery. It really makes it feel like their products came directly from the earth. For fashion brands that want to put heavy emphasis on the product design, this minimal approach is one of the best.

Two key design takeaways to apply to your own newsletter

When I look at the newsletters that stand out the most to me:

1. They don't over-design - While many of these newsletters look really well designed, their components are actually pretty simple. Usually, consisting of just 1-2 colors, a unique font, and strong graphics / imagery. Sometimes it's just a single unique color and typeface. They do this not just because simplistic design looks good and stands out, but also because anything too complex adds more moving parts which can become difficult to manage, especially when it comes to email where changes need to be made on the fly. Too many design elements can also lead to other problems like accessibility (i.e. text in images can be difficult to read on mobile devices) as well as cause your emails to land in the junk folder.
2. They stay true to their overall brand - These newsletters all very focused in what they are trying to communicate with their design. Whether they want to appear trustworthy, creative, or fun. All the design decisions they make can be tied back to their core mission.

An easy way to brand your newsletter

Email design has always been a huge timesink for me:

• Most email design editors feels outdated and use clunky template builders. These come overloaded with design elements that take forever to adjust.
• Others rely heavily on image-based designs. These look pretty, but struggle with accessibility and deliverability. This is pretty important, given that most marketing emails are now viewed on mobile. And building a giant 'banner ad' email will only help you land in the promotions tab.

Email marketers should be looking for a better solution.

And it's why we created an editor that:

• feels as easy as writing in a Notion or Google Doc, so you can focus on the content.
• works seamlessly with all our AI content creation tools.
• allows you to add sleek, minimal design themes and publish with one click.