From Coca-Cola’s AI-generated ad campaign

to the internet's (and our team’s) obsession with ChatGPT’s Ghibli-style artwork, AI-generated designs are everywhere.

Email marketing isn’t immune to it, as many email service providers (ESPs) are launching AI email design tools within their platforms.

But the question remains:

How do you actually use AI to speed up your email design process—and what’s realistically possible today?

This guide answers that and more.

What is AI Email Design?

AI email design uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help you ideate, craft, and test an engaging, accessible, and responsive email.

Instead of designing everything by hand, AI can handle tasks like:

• Suggest the best layout based on the type of email

• Generate hero section images for a promotional email

• Create repeatable content blocks like headers or footers

• Give feedback on typography or visual hierarchy of elements

• Fetch your brand logo, colors, and fonts from your site’s URL

But here's the thing — great design isn’t just about images, color palettes, or layout. Text is design, too.

It’s easy to separate visuals and copy, especially when design and writing teams work separately. But an email with great visuals and weak messaging is like a beautiful gift box with nothing inside.

AI email design isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about blending compelling copy with smart design to keep the readers engaged without overwhelming them.

The Benefits of Using AI for Email Design

AI helps you cut down time, scale email campaigns, and ensure brand consistency while playing more of a supervising role.

Some specific benefits of using AI include:

Automate the Tedious Tasks

Designing an email is a process preoccupied with many repetitive tasks—resizing images, removing backgrounds, tweaking color palettes, adjusting the padding, etc.

AI email design tools give you a head start by automating such repetitive tasks, especially when you're under a deadline or working as a team of one, where you are your designer.

Cut Down on Design Bottlenecks

Ever found yourself pinging a designer (again) to ask: “Hey, is this padding off?” Or waiting two days for a mobile test review?

If you’re not working with a large team or you're running a one-person newsletter, these small requests can create big delays. By using AI email design tools, you can handle these requests by yourself and reduce design bottlenecks. For example, you can ask an AI tool to adjust the image size or generate color palettes.

Scale Consistent, On-Brand Designs

AI can also help you build reusable content blocks and templates to maintain email consistency, helping you stand out in your subscribers’ inboxes through cohesive, on-brand, and polished emails.

Once you’ve nailed consistency, scaling email production is easier and less manual.

How to Implement AI in Your Email Design Workflow

You can integrate AI into your email design process in two ways:

• Method 1: Use an email service provider with AI design capabilities

• Method 2: Design in third-party AI design tools and import to your ESP

Method 1: Use AI Design Assistant Within Your ESP

Many ESPs now include AI features to assist with email design. I took three ESPs’ AI assistants for a test run, and here’s how each one performed.

beehiiv

beehiiv is a growth-focused newsletter platform that helps you build stunning emails with its no-code email builder. With various customization tools (columns, headings, embeds, etc.), you can design responsive, accessible, and human-focused designs.

And, to assist you, beehiiv has not one, not two, but four smart AI tools:

AI image generator

beehiiv’s AI image generator helps you create visuals from text prompts right inside the email editor. You can generate hero images, illustrations, or banners in 3D, line, comic, or photorealistic style.

AI writing assistant

beehiiv’s writing assistant helps you write compelling email copy—from introductory paragraphs to closing sentences. You can customize the content length, adjust the tone (e.g., creative, empathetic, formal), and choose the language.

I tested this with a prompt: "Write a short email promoting better time management habits for busy creators."

And, I must admit! I loved the fun, punchy sentences it generated.

You can then refine the output or use it as a draft to speed up your workflow.

AI text enhancer

Instead of rewriting that intro five times, just highlight it and ask beehiiv’s text enhancer to:

• Auto-complete any sentence

• Fix spelling and grammar

• Shorten or expand the length of the text

• Simplify your writing (great for technical content)

• Alter the tone of voice

AI translator

With beehiiv’s AI translation tool, whether you're translating from English to Spanish or German to English, you can easily sound like your readers.

I tested it by translating a greeting into Spanish, and it handled it effortlessly!

Selzy

Selzy is an email marketing and automation platform for small businesses that offers a no-code email builder with an AI assistant.

I tried Selzy’s AI email design generator to design an inverted pyramid layout email for a new product launch. While it took a little time to generate, I was impressed with the final result. The tool not only crafted the copy, but also included images and strategically placed CTA buttons. 

I figured that if you add in your brand color palettes, writing guidelines, and other design practices, you’ll get much closer to publishing emails.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp, another email and automation platform, offers an AI-powered creative assistant that speeds up email design. Just drop in your website URL, and it pulls your logo, colors, fonts, and images to generate ready-to-use visuals for structured emails.

Here’s what I got when I used beehiiv’s URL to generate designs.

Design in third-party AI design tools and import to your ESP

If your current ESP doesn’t offer robust AI features, you can still use AI to design faster with tools like:

• Figma AI (in beta): Design email layouts, remove image backgrounds, and create email templates.

• Canva Magic Studio: Generate images, edit images, remove backgrounds, fetch color palettes, resize images, etc.

• Jasper/ChatGPT/Claude: Write email copy, create copy variations for testing, rewrite, or generate images.

Matt Bowman, Founder of Thrive Local, a digital marketing agency, shares that his team uses Figma for creating email layouts and Canva for keeping visual consistency across campaigns. He mainly uses these tools’ AI capabilities to resize images, get design recommendations based on audience preferences, and select appropriate color schemes before he loads these into his ESP.

Harmanjit Singh, Founder and CEO of Origin Web Studios, a website design agency based in Canada, uses a similar workflow but pulls in their designer for a human check before uploading it to their ESP.

That’s the typical workflow for using design tools with AI capabilities if your ESP falls short of meeting these expectations.

If you design in Canva, you can easily import the Canva email into beehiiv in three easy steps:

Step 1: Click on Share > See all > Embed. You’ll see the HTML embed code. Copy the code.

Step 2: Create a new post in beehiiv and click the ‘+’ icon.

Step 3: Select the HTML snippet and paste the code there

Designing With AI: Tips to Avoid Constant Editing

Tip 1: Set Clear Guardrails

Before you even generate your first image or layout, set your brand up for success.

Most email marketing platforms, like beehiiv, allow you to upload your brand kit—logos, fonts, colors, button styles, etc.—in the settings or admin section. This will keep AI suggestions aligned with your identity and prevent you from having to “fix” every output.

Tip 2: Use AI for Structure, Not the Final Layout

Instead of expecting AI to deliver a polished, ready-to-send email, use it to create repetitive blocks like hero sections, footers, signatures, buttons, and featured sections.

Depending on the type of email, you can build a variety of reusable sections ahead of time. For instance, for a product launch email, use AI to generate a template section with a pre-designed layout—image placeholder, headline text, CTA button, and space for a short description. Then, simply plug in your actual content.

Tip 3: Review Final Output for Accessibility

No matter how tantalizing the design looks, if it’s not accessible, it’s not going to work. 

Before hitting send, test your emails by sending them to a few seed addresses—these are test emails, not actual subscribers—to ensure they display correctly across different devices and email clients.

Check for the following:

• Devices: Is the email mobile-friendly?

• Email Clients: Do all the elements render perfectly across Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail?

• Alt-text: Do all the images have clear and descriptive alternative text (Yes, even for your brand’s icon)

• Themes: Does it display correctly in light and dark mode?

• Context: Does it visually align with your previous emails and brand tone?

Tip 4: Collaborate With Designers When Needed

AI has phenomenal speed and knowledge, but it doesn’t 100% understand your brand designs as your designers do.

So, loop in your design team to review AI-generated layouts and images to spot clunky visuals, weird spacing, or anything that doesn’t sit right.

Even better? Loop them in before you hit “generate.” A designer can help you write better prompts from the get-go, so the results are cleaner, more on-brand, and need fewer edits later.

Where AI Email Design Is Headed Next

The future of AI in email design is looking brighter, with ESPs taking innovative approaches by bringing more advanced AI capabilities. 

Here are some trends we might see in the coming years.

Predictive Design and Behavior Forecasting

Future email design tools might offer prediction capabilities by studying and analyzing the reader’s past engagement behavior. Additionally, these tools can also suggest the best layout or media suggestions for different purpose emails to improve metrics like email click-through rate.

Real-Time Design Feedback

AI design tools are poised to become your full-time sparring partner—give feedback on your CTA button design, layout, or hierarchy of different elements. Rather than working alone, you’ll have 24/7 partners looking over you, ready to share their two cents to help you win over your reader through compelling emails.

AI-Driven A/B Testing

While you can use ChatGPT to get A/B testing ideas, future AI capabilities might even generate a whole email variant for testing. Rather than you setting the test, AI might automatically run variations based on your open or click goals and choose the winner in real-time.

Considering how fast AI technology is innovating and making people’s lives easier, sooner or later, these changes are bound to happen.

Get on board with AI using beehiiv

If you want to get more done without burning out, then adding AI to your email design process is a no-brainer.

From generating images to building ready-to-send templates, AI takes the repetitive work off your plate so you can focus on creating real connections with your subscribers.

I highly recommend trying out beehiiv’s AI image generator and writing assistant. It’s not only the best no-code editor for building and managing newsletters—it’s low-key addictive. Try beehiiv today!