Short answer: it depends. Sorry.
We know that’s the most annoying answer in marketing. But we’ve actually been asking this question internally. Our team was split down the middle – with some citing that they love a plain text email, that feels personal and gets to the point. They’re easier to read and they don’t feel as salesy. The other half of us argued that we know it’s a marketing email regardless and the design increase brand recall and feels more elevated.
So, I dived into the data and discovered that, it really does depend.
When Litmus asked their email community which performs better, 85% of people on LinkedIn picked designed HTML emails. When HubSpot asked over 1,000 professionals what they prefer, nearly two-thirds said HTML with images. Then HubSpot actually tested it, and the plain, boring-looking email won every single time.
So people say they like the pretty one and click on the plain one. But we haven’t scratched the surface.
Let’s unpack what’s actually going on, and how to work out which one suits your campaign.
- The honest answer is "it depends" (sorry): simpler, personal-style emails have won most published A/B tests on clicks, but people say they prefer designed emails, and 94.5% say recognising the sender matters when deciding to open.
- Most of the data is older than your phone, and open rates are half-broken thanks to Apple's privacy protection. Judge by clicks and conversions, and test it on your own list.
- The real question is what the email is for. Newsletters and launches suit your brand, follow-ups and win-backs suit a personal touch, and most things in between suit a hybrid. Whichever you choose, make it accessible and keep the unsubscribe.
First, what are we actually comparing?
Branded EDMs are the ones you probably picture when someone says “email campaign”. Logo up top, brand colours, hero image, big buttons, a tidy footer. They look like your website shrunk down to fit an inbox.
Personal-style EDMs look like someone just sat down and wrote you an email. Plain text (or close to it), sent from a real person’s name, no banner, maybe a signature. The “hey, quick one” email.
Then there’s the option we kind of forget about in these arguments: the hybrid. A small logo or light brand header, but copy that reads like a human wrote it to another human.
The case for making it look like a personal email
The most-quoted evidence here comes from HubSpot, which ran a series of A/B tests on their own emails. In every test, the simpler email won:
- An HTML template with images got a 21% lower click-through rate (CTR) than the plain-text version
- Adding a single GIF dropped click-through by 2.3%
- Even a simple HTML email beat a heavily designed one by 5.3%
HubSpot also looked across more than half a billion emails sent by its customers and found that even one image reduced clicks, and it got worse the more HTML you piled on.
Then there’s Litmus, a company that makes its living from HTML email tools, so you’d expect it to want the opposite result. When they tested plain-text webinar invites, existing customers converted at 60% and prospects at 49%. Customers opened and clicked slightly more on plain text.
So, why do we reckon this is? Plain emails feel like they came from a person, not a marketing department. They don’t look like an ad, so people don’t treat them like one.
But (and you knew there’d be a but) Litmus also found prospects opened plain text more, yet clicked marginally less. People who already know you might love a casual note. People who don’t might want a bit more convincing.
The case for making it look like your brand
Before anyone sees your design, they see who it’s from. In Sinch Mailgun’s research, 94.5% of consumers said recognising the sender’s name or brand matters when deciding whether to open an email, and 65.2% said it’s very important.
So, we know your brand is doing the heavy lifting in the inbox before the email is even opened. If nobody recognises the name, the prettiest template in the world won’t even be seen.
People also say they prefer designed emails. Two-thirds of HubSpot’s survey respondents did. You can argue that stated preference means less than what people actually click, and that’s fair. But if your subscribers signed up for a newsletter, a catalogue or a monthly round-up, a plain-text wall probably isn’t what they had in mind.
And some emails need visuals to do their job. A product launch, a new range, an event with a venue worth showing off. Describing a new couch in plain text is a tough gig. So there’s also the lead generation vs product selling argument, and then there’s the business-to-business vs business-to-consumer argument.
You’ll also see the claim that consistent branding lifts revenue by 10–20%. That comes from a Lucidpress (now Marq) survey of 400+ brand managers, and it’s their estimate, not measured results. That one is mostly anecdotal, but worth noting.
Why all of this data comes with an asterisk
Firstly, the big studies are old. HubSpot’s tests and survey date back to 2014. Litmus’s test is from 2020. A lot of the “2026 email statistics” lists you’ll find online are just those same numbers recycled, often with no date or sample size attached. Inboxes, devices and filters have changed a lot since then.
Open rates don’t mean much anymore. Apple accounts for about 62% of email opens (Litmus, July 2026), and Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection affects roughly 55–60% of opens by loading emails automatically, whether or not a human looks at them. So we can’t even fully trust open rates anymore.
What you can still trust: clicks, replies and conversions. If an email format doesn’t get people to do something, then the opens don’t really matter.
So the data points one way, but it’s old, and some of it measures something that’s now half-broken.
And all of this is backing my earlier comment of “it depends”.
There’s also accessibility
Now this one isn’t an argument against branded emails but it is an FYI on how important they are to get right.
The Email Markup Consortium tested 376,348 marketing emails between May 2025 and May 2026. Only 8 of them passed every accessibility check. That is a crazy statistic.
Among the most common problems:
- 58% had text with poor colour contrast
- 48% had images with no alt text, so screen readers had nothing to announce
- 71% had links with no readable text
Plain-text emails sidestep most of this by default. There’s no image to forget the alt text on and no pale grey text on a white background.
That doesn’t mean branded emails are bad. It means a lot of them are built carelessly. If you’re going to go the designed route, build it properly: real text rather than text baked into images, decent contrast, and alt text that describes what’s there.
"Personal" doesn't get you out of the Spam Act
One thing that doesn’t depend on anything: if your email is marketing, it’s a commercial message under Australia’s Spam Act. It doesn’t matter if it’s styled as a quick note from the founder.
The ACMA says every commercial email must:
- Clearly identify your business, with accurate contact details
- Include a working unsubscribe option that's easy to find
- Process unsubscribe requests within 5 working days
The ACMA isn’t mucking around on this either. Commonwealth Bank was fined $7.5 million in 2024, and Pizza Hut $2.5 million the same year, largely over missing or broken unsubscribes. Tabcorp copped $4 million in 2025, partly for messages without adequate sender information.
Whether you go branded or plain text, just make sure you keep the footer.
So which one should you use? (Here comes the "it depends")
The more useful question isn’t “brand or personal?” It’s “what’s this email supposed to do?” Here’s a rough guide:
| If the email is… | Lean towards | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A newsletter or monthly round-up | Branded | Subscribers signed up for it and expect it to look like you |
| A product launch, sale or new range | Branded | The visuals are the point |
| An event invite | Branded or hybrid | Show the venue, keep the ask simple |
| A sales or quote follow-up | Personal | It should feel like it came from the person they spoke to |
| A win-back or re-engagement email | Personal | A different look can cut through when your usual template gets ignored |
| A feedback or review request | Personal | People respond to people |
| B2B nurture or founder updates | Personal or hybrid | Trust and relationship over polish |
If you’re trying to generate leads, sending a mix of these, the hybrid is usually a safe bet. Keep a light brand header so people recognise you, then write like a human.
It also depends on your audience. Existing customers who already know and trust you may be happy with a casual note. Cold prospects might need a bit more brand to work out who on earth you are.
The only way to really know: test it on your own list
Every study above was run on someone else’s audience. Yours might behave completely differently. The good news is testing this is pretty simple:
- Pick one campaign. Something you send regularly works best.
- Split your list in two. Send one half the branded version and the other half the personal version. Same offer, same subject line, same send time.
- Measure clicks and conversions, not opens. As discussed, open rates aren’t that accurate.
- Do it more than once. You need a solid amount of data to make a decision. Do 3-4 tests.
- Test by email type. Your newsletter and your follow-up emails might want different answers, so test them separately.
The not-very-satisfying (but honest) verdict
Should your EDMs look like your brand or like a personal email? As mentioned, it depends.
If we had to boil it down:
- Your brand gets the email opened. Make sure people recognise who it's from.
- Simpler emails tend to get more clicks, but most of that evidence is getting on a bit.
- Match the format to the email's job, not to what looks nicest.
- Match the format to the email's job, not to what looks nicest.
- Whatever you choose, build it accessibly and keep it Spam Act compliant.
- Test it on your own list and trust your clicks over anyone's blog post. Including this one.
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