Marketing Email Templates Development and Layout

Developing Marketing Email Templates

Marketing emails — promotions, announcements, news digests, win-back emails — differ from transactional ones with a freer structure and focus on conversion. They need eye-catching headlines, quality banner images, clear CTA, and compatibility with email clients from Outlook 2016 to Apple Mail on iOS.

Stack: MJML + Handlebars

MJML works well for marketing templates — it handles tables and media-queries, while Handlebars inserts variables like {{firstName}} and iterates through {{#each products}}.

Typical promotional email structure:

<mjml>
  <mj-head>
    <mj-preview>30% off until Friday only — don't miss out</mj-preview>
    <mj-attributes>
      <mj-all font-family="'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" />
      <mj-text font-size="16px" line-height="1.6" color="#374151" />
    </mj-attributes>
  </mj-head>

  <mj-body background-color="#f3f4f6">

    <!-- Hero banner -->
    <mj-section background-color="#1e40af" padding="48px 32px">
      <mj-column>
        <mj-image src="{{ logoUrl }}" width="140px" align="left" />
        <mj-text font-size="36px" font-weight="800" color="#ffffff" padding-top="24px">
          Final Clearance
        </mj-text>
        <mj-text font-size="18px" color="#bfdbfe">
          Up to 50% off everything — only until {{endDate}}
        </mj-text>
        <mj-button href="{{ saleUrl }}" background-color="#f59e0b"
          color="#111827" font-weight="700" border-radius="8px">
          Shop Now
        </mj-button>
      </mj-column>
    </mj-section>

    <!-- Three products in a row -->
    <mj-section background-color="#ffffff" padding="32px">
      {{#each products}}
      <mj-column width="33%">
        <mj-image src="{{ this.imageUrl }}" border-radius="8px" />
        <mj-text font-weight="600" color="#111827">{{ this.name }}</mj-text>
        <mj-text>
          <s style="color:#9ca3af">{{ this.oldPrice }}</s>&nbsp;
          <span style="color:#dc2626;font-weight:700">{{ this.newPrice }}</span>
        </mj-text>
        <mj-button href="{{ this.url }}" background-color="#3b82f6" border-radius="6px">
          Buy
        </mj-button>
      </mj-column>
      {{/each}}
    </mj-section>

    <!-- Footer -->
    <mj-section padding="16px 32px">
      <mj-column>
        <mj-text font-size="12px" color="#9ca3af" align="center">
          You received this email because you subscribed to our newsletter.<br/>
          <a href="{{ unsubscribeUrl }}" style="color:#9ca3af">Unsubscribe</a>
          &nbsp;·&nbsp;
          <a href="{{ preferencesUrl }}" style="color:#9ca3af">Preferences</a>
        </mj-text>
      </mj-column>
    </mj-section>

  </mj-body>
</mjml>

Rendering and Sending

import mjml2html from 'mjml';
import Handlebars from 'handlebars';
import { readFileSync } from 'fs';

function renderMarketingEmail(
  templateName: string,
  data: Record<string, unknown>
): string {
  const template = readFileSync(`./email-templates/${templateName}.mjml`, 'utf-8');
  const compiled = Handlebars.compile(template)(data);
  const { html, errors } = mjml2html(compiled, { minify: true });
  if (errors.length) throw new Error(errors[0].formattedMessage);
  return html;
}

Dynamic Content

Marketing emails often require personalization based on user data:

• Products from browsing history — SQL query by user_id, top-3 categories
• Name and greeting — {{firstName}} with fallback "Dear Subscriber"
• Geolocation — different offers by country/city via conditional Handlebars
• UTM tags — ?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=spring_sale added to all links