How to Combine Plain-Text and Designed Emails for a Killer Email Marketing Program

Hey, it's Max from The Inbox Newsletter.

Should you use designed emails or text-based emails?

I talk to brands all the time that won't touch email unless everything is perfectly designed.

And then I talk to brands who blast plain text back-to-back and wonder why nobody's buying.

Both are making the same mistake: defaulting to one without knowing why.

Designed emails and plain text emails serve completely different purposes.

If you're only using one, you're not getting the full picture of what email can do to scale your brand.

Today I'm breaking down when to use each, and what the data actually says.

Designed Emails

Designed emails are built for a couple things: making your brand pop and allowing people to see your product in action.

When someone's deciding whether to buy from you, they're they're buying into your brand’s world. Designed emails give you the canvas to showcase that world.

With good design, you can feature the lifestyle, the aesthetic, and the product in action.

This matters most for brands selling something people want to see in action like fashion brands. A paragraph describing a product is not the same as a customer seeing a model wearing your latest drop.

The other thing designed emails do over time is keep the inbox experience fresh.

There's novelty in a well-crafted visual. They act as dopamine hits that give people a reason to keep opening.

The tradeoff is real though... You need a designer involved, production takes longer, and there are more variables that can break. The barrier to doing them well is higher.

But for the right brand, that investment compounds.

Plain Text Emails

On the other hand, plain text emails have a whole different type of appeal.

When done properly, they should feel like they came from a person, not a marketing team.

That's the whole point.

When someone opens a plain text email, there's no banner, no product grid, and no branded header.

This format creates the feeling that a real person sat down and wrote this specifically for them.

That's why plain text works so well in high-trust moments. Post-purchase sequences, direct response offers, anything where the relationship between the brand and the customer needs to feel personal.

The Gains in Bulk email below is a good example of this done right. The founder is talking directly to the customer.

The engagement numbers back this up too. Plain text emails consistently see higher open rates, better click rates, and stronger deliverability because inbox providers treat them more like real emails and less like marketing material.

The downside that there is no visual appeal, no product shots, and no lifestyle imagery.

Over time, an inbox full of plain text starts to feel boring.

It's also limited in what it can communicate… Some products need to be seen.

We track all of our campaign performance across client accounts using Hiro. It gives us a clean view of what's actually working: open rates, click rates, revenue per campaign, all in one place.

We pulled our top 10 performing campaigns from this year across one of our accounts with 50 total campaigns sent.

Only 10% of our sends were plain text-based emails but 3 of them cracked in the top 7 best-performing emails of the year (including the top performer).

Look at the difference in click rates as well.

The above dashboard was taken directly from Hiro Analytics. We use Hiro for all of our analysis and reporting across our 100+ clients. Check them out here.

The Verdict

The best email programs use both.

The ratio depends on your brand. For most of our clients we run roughly 75% designed, 25% plain text. Designed emails build the brand over time and keep the visual experience fresh. Plain text handles the moments that need to feel direct and personal.

If you're only doing one, fix it and find your ratio!

Email Inspiration Of The Day

Brand:
IM8

Email Design:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GjXn9VoTSKL_f03Q3d44T5eLUgxcxJyO/view?usp=sharing

Notes:
IM8 is a new AG1 competitor and they are scaling aggressively. This email stacks massive social proof in a well-designed, on-brand format. Definitely a brand worth paying attention to!

Reply to this email if you have any questions or further content you want covered.

Cheers,

Max Sturtevant

P.S
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