• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, July 19, 2023

Email design teams are using a wide variety of technologies to personalize their sends, but most are not yet deploying AI, judging by The 2023 State of  Email Design Report, a study by Litmus. 

The most common design elements now include:

• Personalization using dynamic content — 63%
• Personalization in the subject line — 60% 
• Animated GIFs or PNGs — 58% 
• Emojis in the subject line — 58%
• Interactivity powered by HTML and CSS — 42% 
• Video — 30% 
• Images powered by CRM data — 20% 
• Interactivity powered by AMPHTML — 15% 
• Other — 5%

The most effective tools? They are: 

• Personalization using dynamic content — 38% 
• Interactivity powered by HTML and CSS — 30%
• Personalization in the subject line — 30% 

These are the elements most subjected to A/B tests: 

• Personalization — 45% 
• Emojis in the subject line — 37% 
• Animated GIFs or PNGs — 25% 

Are they using AI? They answer:

• No, and aren’t planning to — 33% 
• No, but are planning to — 25% 
• Yes, for brainstorming — 18% 
• Yes, for email copy — 10%
• Yes, for subject lines — 9% 
• Other — 3% 
• Yes, for image creation — 2% 

They are using these email design approaches:

• Responsive, adaptive, or hybrid design (controlled unique formatting, layout, and content display depending on screen size) — 63% 
• Mobile-aware or mobile-first design — 35%
• Desktop-centric design — 23% 
• Not sure — 2%

How do they build emails? For 42%, it’s a matter of replacing code from a previous email. And 23% more would like go go in that direction. 

Another 24% use a library of standard components. And 36% want to do that.  

In addition, 20% utilize WYSIWYG drag-and-drop, while 24% prefer to do so. 

Only 12% perform coding from scratch, and 10% would hope to. 

The most common graphic design tools for email marketing include:

• Adobe Photoshop — 58%
• Adobe Illustrator — 37%
• Adobe InDesign — 31%
• Figma — 29%
• Canva — 25%
• Adobe XD — 22%
• Sketch — 11%
• Adobe Express — 11%
• Affinity Designer — 10%
• Stripo — 6%
• BEE — 6%
• Other — 5%
• Unilever — 2% 

And design teams prefer these code editors:

• Adobe Dreamweaver — 29%
• Text Editor — 26%
• Code editor in my ESP — 25%
• Litmus Builder — 23%
• Sublime Text — 19%
• Other — 19%
• VS Code — 18%
• Email on Acid — 13%
• Atom — 11%
• Parcel — 9%
• Stripo — 6%

Litmus surveyed 1,200+ respondents across multiple platforms worldwide. Of those, 50% were email developers.