{"id":98539,"date":"2024-06-14T13:48:27","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T17:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.litmus.com\/?p=98539"},"modified":"2025-09-04T10:38:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T14:38:38","slug":"state-of-email-design-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.litmus.com\/blog\/state-of-email-design-tools","title":{"rendered":"The Most Popular Email Design Tools: Figma, Adobe, and More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t
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It takes an email marketing team an average of 2 weeks to produce<\/a> a single email.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s two weeks of tinkering with email copy, email design, and email coding before it\u2019s ready for approvals, testing, and finally, sending it out to the world.<\/p>\n

And at any given time, 46% of email marketers have up to five emails in production. When we asked email designers in 2023 the same question<\/a>, only 23% of respondents said they have up to five emails in production, at any given time.<\/p>\n

Email marketers are being asked to ramp up significantly (something that probably comes as no surprise to you.)<\/p>\n

We know that email workflows can get complex pretty quickly. But we also know that there\u2019s a lot of new technology out there that helps make one of the most fun parts of the email workflow\u2014design\u2014go more smoothly.<\/p>\n

So we asked over ~1000 email marketers exactly how emails get made\u2014and what tools their teams use\u2014for our State of Email Innovations report. Here\u2019s what we found:<\/p>\n

Email designers still <3 Adobe<\/h2>\n

Photoshop, email designers just can\u2019t quit you.<\/p>\n

The most popular graphic design programs email marketers use continue to be dominated by Adobe programs like Photoshop (37%), Illustrator (22%), and InDesign (14%).<\/p>\n\"which\n

There\u2019s a reason Adobe products come in at the top\u2014they\u2019re some of the most robust tools you can work with.<\/p>\n

While graphic design programs like Photoshop are preferred by designers, they can sometimes pose challenges to the email marketing workflow overall. That\u2019s because Photoshop (and cousins Illustrator and InDesign) require training before you can use them effectively. The same reason that these tools are great to work with\u2014the amount of customization and control you have as a designer\u2014makes it difficult for someone else to pop in and add their feedback.<\/p>\n

That may be why 40% of email marketers said that designing emails tend to hold up production<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Coordinating copywriters, designers, developers, and reviewers for email campaigns is one of the biggest challenges email marketers face.<\/p>\n

\u2026but DIY design tools are becoming more popular<\/h2>\n

Tools that anyone can use, like Figma and Canva, have become more popular as email marketers have to learn how to do more with less.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Adobe went 1-2-3 on the most popular design tools, but this year, Figma moved to #2. Canva held its #4 spot, as it\u2019s known as the best tool for non-designers to use.<\/p>\n

For teams that don\u2019t have a dedicated designer (or simply want a tool that you don\u2019t need 10,000 hours to become proficient in), Canva is a great option.<\/p>\n

These are tools anyone can learn how to use easily, without 10,000 hours of training and a degree in graphic design. That\u2019s precisely why teams looking to speed up the email approval process<\/a>\u2014notoriously one of the sticking points in any email workflow\u2014may switch to a more newbie-friendly tool.<\/p>\n

How email design trends influence email design tools<\/h2>\n

Part of the increased popularity of DIY design tools like Canva and Figma is that the way email marketers conceptualize and build emails has fundamentally changed.<\/p>\n

In the past, emails looked and felt more like a full-page ad in a magazine. Something image-driven, like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n\n

Source: Really Good Emails<\/a><\/p>\n

You can picture an email campaign like this easily in a magazine, even without the scroll-friendly messaging.<\/p>\n

This email, from back in 2015, captures the photo-forward, picture-perfect design trends at the time. Emails from the 2010s<\/a> had a lot more elements that made them look like the kinds of layered designs often found in magazines at the time. Photoshop (and similar products) make perfect sense to use for this kind of design.<\/p>\n

Even the most zine-y, color-blocked email designs today don\u2019t have as much going on as these emails\u2014and they\u2019re not even the worst offenders of the era.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n\n

Source: Really Good Emails<\/a><\/p>\n

(Not me having millennial ~*nostalgia*~ over this outfit I 100% wore to work in 2016.)<\/p>\n

This is before the kind of in-depth personalization we know today. Back then, if you used a first name in a subject line or in an email, that was a revelation.<\/p>\n

Email marketing certainly wasn\u2019t simple then and it\u2019s not now, but without demand for personalized \u201crecommended for you\u201d style blocks or other behavioral triggers, creating a beautiful email felt a lot more straightforward.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another example from 2018, which looks pulled straight from a 4th of July catalog cover:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n\n

Source: Really Good Emails<\/p>\n

Today, the dual demands of personalization and bells-and-whistles digital effects makes designing email a much more of a modular experience.<\/p>\n

You can see this with ESPs. WYSIWYG editors are much easier to use, with more sophisticated built-in tools that allow for quick swaps in images, text, and code. When we asked email designers about the coding tools they use, 20% said the code editor in their ESP, which is the first time it\u2019s taken the #1 spot. It goes to show that more ESPs are doing the heavy lifting for email marketers, adding features that consolidate the marketing tech stack.<\/p>\n

Rather than swap out templates or design completely from scratch, super-productive teams mix and match different email elements for each campaign. Designers pull various building blocks together in different ways, which is much more suited to a UX-centric design tool like Figma.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an example from the same brand, from 2024:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n\n

Source: J Crew<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not only is there lead animation, there\u2019s blocks on blocks on blocks of clothing to choose from, with a left-right-left design. It feels exactly like scrolling through a website instead of an ad or recreating an IRL magazine feel.<\/p>\n

This move toward more modular design processes may also be because email marketers are increasingly asked to do more with less. With this focus on modular components, email design has become more about creating fully functional email design systems than designing individual emails. And creating design systems is something that is ideally done with Figma.<\/p>\n

With 44% of marketers building 2-3 versions of every email, <\/a>it\u2019s no wonder we\u2019re all trying to save some time.<\/a><\/p>\n

What this all means is it\u2019s likely we\u2019ll continue to see shake-ups in the most popular email design marketing<\/a> tools as teams design and build emails in a more individualized way in the future.<\/p>\n

Email design made smarter with Litmus<\/h2>\n

If you\u2019re feeling like you\u2019re constantly juggling between a million different tools to get an email out the door, we feel you. (By the way, if you just went through an email migration<\/a>, integrations matter.)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why instead of adding more steps to your production process, Litmus<\/a> integrates with 100+ different ESPs. Forget about hopping from one tab to another\u2014save time and reduce errors with one seamless workflow for all of your favorite tools.<\/p>\n \t\t\t<\/div>\n \t\t<\/div>\n \t<\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Boost efficiency and scale email development<\/strong><\/h2>\n\t\t\t

Craft consistent, on-brand emails with Litmus. Create and store reusable templates, code modules, and more.<\/p>\n\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t Learn more<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t \t\t \t\t \t\t \t\t \t\t \t\t \t\t <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":98276,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[478,10351,853],"blog_category":[1169,10300,10303,118],"class_list":["post-98539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-design","tag-email-design","tag-state-of-email","blog_category-community","blog_category-email-building","blog_category-email-design","blog_category-stats"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Most Popular Email Design Tools: Figma, Adobe, and More - Litmus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Which email design tools do email marketing teams use most? And how are they using them to create beautiful emails? 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