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Canva and beehiiv: The Power Couple of Email Newsletters
Design, Customize, and Send Email Newsletters with Canva
Megan Smith
August 26th, 2024
In addition to being a bee in the beehiiv community, I'm a devoted Canva addict.
It's the perfect tool for people who need to create eye-catching, professional content without a background in coding or graphic design.
This guide walks you through the creation and publication of Canva newsletters. It covers how to choose the best Canva newsletter template for your brand, how to customize and improve the design, and how to send a newsletter that will display properly on all email clients.
Understanding the Basics of Canva Newsletters
Canva is an intuitive platform with gorgeous templates for digital and print content and an easy drag-and-drop editor.
It radically simplifies the design process no matter what you need to create — a quick Instagram post, a business presentation, decorations for the annual theme party you throw for your husband's birthday, etc.
Canva provides tons of tools for both email and print newsletters. Some media and designs are only available with a premium plan (Canva Pro), but a free account has more than enough options for occasional users.
Why Choose Canva for Your Newsletters
Because it's easy, pretty, and fun.
Canva combines simplicity and power. You'll find:
User-Friendly Interface: The drag-and-drop editor comes as a godsend to anyone who's ever beat their head against a wall trying to use the Adobe suite or other platforms designed for experienced users.
Versatile Templates: The hundreds of newsletter templates inside Canva are fully customizable so you can make them your own.
Design Elements and Resources: Canva comes with a huge library of design elements such as fonts, illustrations, and stock photos to enhance your newsletter's visual appeal.
Ample Collaboration Features: Canva's 2024 summit (the annual Canva Create) unrolled a bunch of improvements under the title "Work Redesigned," introducing even more integrations and collaboration-focused features.
Canva’s wide selection of newsletter templates should include one that fits your needs. You can search for key terms related to your brand or filter by style (e.g. "Vintage" or "Corporate") or theme (e.g. "Travel," "Event," or "Business").
There's a variety of designs suited for different types of newsletters. Whether you’re sending out company updates, promoting products, or sharing industry news, there’s a template for every purpose.
Consider your content and audience. Look for templates that:
Highlight key information
Support multimedia
Reflect your brand
I'd also suggest picking templates with only one Call to Action (CTA) per page, but I'll go more into that later.
Time to delve into how you can make the most out of Canva's design tools to craft newsletters that stand out in your readers' inboxes.
Adding Multimedia to Your Newsletter
Incorporating multimedia elements can greatly enhance the impact of your newsletter. By adding images, videos, and other interactive components, you can make your content more engaging and dynamic.
Ensuring High-Quality Images and Graphics
High-quality visuals are essential for a professional-looking newsletter, and you should always opt for high-resolution images to avoid pixelation. Take advantage of Canva's library of photography.
Pro tip: Pull stock photography in line with your brand by using the same filter on all your photos — original and not.
Canva also provides options to compress PNGs and adjust download quality. Use these to help balance image quality with file size and ensure your newsletter loads quickly.
Customization Techniques
Canva’s customization features make it easy to tailor your content to your brand. (Last year, Canva Create 2023 introduced easier branding as well as AI-driven creation.)
To create a strong brand identity, incorporate your branding elements throughout the newsletter. Canva allows you to save brand colors, fonts, logos, and imagery to your in-platform brand book.
Best Practices for Adding Hyperlinks
Back to my cryptic allusion that you should limit yourself to one CTA per newsletter page.
Businesses often use email marketing to drive web traffic, but the one downside to using Canva newsletters is the hostility of most email clients to HTML email.
Technically, you can embed a Canva newsletter into a beehiiv post/email. The publication will look beautiful on your website and in previews.
And then you'll test it, sending it to your email account, and the odds are that you'll receive an email that looks like this:
Alternatively, you can send your email as a PDF attachment. Readers will be able to interact with your design and links — but only after clicking on the attachment to open it. In their inbox, they'll receive a pretty boring email with the link.
One of the biggest goals of digital marketing is to reduce friction, making it as easy for your target audience to engage with content and follow it to more branded material or products. It doesn't matter how pretty your Canva newsletter is if it is hidden behind links or blank screens.
So here's what you should actually do. It isn't the ideal solution. But, in my (rarely) humble opinion, it's your best option at this time.
Download your Canva newsletters as images. Then hyperlink the entire image to the single CTA contained on the page.
Multiple pages (and links) can work, too. The effect isn't seamless — there will be a visual break between the pages — but you'll have better luck asking your readers to navigate a little extra white space than demanding they take a multi-click journey before they even start to read.
You only have one per image, so follow the best CTA examples. Make them clear and compelling, using buttons or highlighted text to make them stand out. Place CTAs where they naturally fit within the flow of your content, such as after a valuable piece of information.
If you do choose to embed your newsletter (rather than insert images of pages), you can do it with Canva and beehiiv.
Here's how:
Download the Embed Code: After perfecting your Canva design, share it by creating an HTML snippet you can copy and paste.
Insert an HTML Snippet: In your beehiiv editor, select "HTML snippet" from the menu of content types to add and paste the embed code.
Proper formatting is crucial when embedding a newsletter to ensure it looks great on all devices.
Use Responsive Design: Double-check that your design adjusts well on both desktop and mobile views.
Consistent Width: Keep the width consistent, ideally around 600 pixels, to ensure compatibility across email clients.
Simplified Layout: Avoid overly complex layouts that might break or not display correctly.
Understanding Email Client Limitations
Different email clients have varying support for HTML and CSS, which can affect how your newsletter appears.
Test across clients (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.) and provide fallback fonts and alt text. This helps improve email accessibility and provides a failsafe in case your design fails to display.
Tips for Creating Engaging Canva Newsletters
An engaging newsletter boosts reader interaction and contributes to your marketing goals. Follow these best practices.
Write Compelling Content for Readers
Great content keeps your readers engaged from start to finish. Make your Canva newsletter a key part of your email content strategy.
Know your audience, and tailor your content to address the interests and needs of your readers. Provide information that offers real value, whether through insights, tips, or updates.
Craft a Subject Line that Stands Out
Your subject line is the first thing readers see — it needs to be attention-grabbing. Make sure your subject line reflects the content of the newsletter and create a sense of urgency with phrases that emphasize limited times or supplies.
Be clear and concise. Subject lines with 0-20 characters have the highest open rates.
Once you've crafted a visually stunning newsletter using Canva, it's time to send it out into the world. Let’s explore how to navigate beehiiv features to send emails, track performance, and optimize deliverability.
Simply export your Canva design as an image or HTML snippet and add it to your next send.
Tailor the subject line and preheader text, adding personalized greetings or fun emojis to stand out in the inbox.
Then, schedule your email to hit inboxes at the best time to send your newsletter.
Understanding how your newsletter performs is key to making improvements over time. beehiiv's 3D analytics feature provides valuable insights to help you measure success and tweak your strategy.
Keep an eye on:
Open Rates: Monitor how many recipients opened your email. Your newsletter open rate helps gauge the effectiveness of your subject line and timing.
Click-Through Rates (CTR): Track which links in your newsletter are getting the most clicks. This can highlight what content resonates most with your readers.
Subscriber Growth: Keep an eye on how many new subscribers you gain after each newsletter. A growing list indicates that your content is appealing and valuable.
Ensure that your newsletter reaches your audience’s inbox with email delivery best practices:
Clean Your Email List: Regularly remove inactive or bounced email addresses to maintain a healthy list.
Avoid Spammy Content: Steer clear of excessive use of promotional language and ensure your emails comply with CAN-SPAM regulations.
Authenticate Your Domain: Verify your email domain to improve your sender reputation and deliverability rates.
Using Canva to create email newsletters is a game-changer. It lets you pretend you have a lot more design experience and know-how.
With its intuitive design tools, you can craft eye-catching and professional newsletters quickly, even if you’re new to design. Their vast library of templates, images, and graphics ensures your content always stands out and grabs attention.
When you pair Canva with beehiiv’s powerful analytics and deliverability tools, your newsletters don't just look fantastic — they make an impact. Supercharge your email marketing strategy, grow your subscriber base, and hit your communication goals.
Ready to take your newsletters to the next level? Sign up for a free beehiiv account, and start using it with your free Canva account.
Yes, you can email a newsletter created in Canva. While Canva itself does not send emails directly, you can design your newsletter in Canva and then export it as an image or HTML file. You can also email links to newsletters for collaborators to view in the platform.
Yes. Just like beehiiv, Mailchimp lets you upload your Canva design into the content section of your Mailchimp email.
Yes. You can. Upload the PDF of your Canva design and use it as a template in Constant Contact.
Canva strives to make its designs accessible, but accessibility also depends on how you use and implement the designs.
Make sure to use alt text, high-contrast colors, readable fonts, and a clean layout that is easy to navigate.
Why Trust Me
I'm an often-published author who writes about email marketing and a Canva devotee in both my professional and personal life.
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