The 5 Design Trends behind 'The Best of the Email Swipe File'
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“The Best of the Email Swipe File” is not just about 20 outstanding emails. It is also about five critical design trends: 1. A growing requirement to be mobile-friendly 2. Increasing relevance through personalization 3. Greater sophistication for triggered messages 4. A stronger editorial voice 5. A continued evolution of inspired fundamentals During this webinar, Andrea Smith and I discuss these trends and how our selections from the Email Swipe File illuminate those trends.
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The 5 Design Trends behind 'The Best of the Email Swipe File'
- 2. Inspirations Webinar Series #ETWebinar Behind the „Best of the Email Swipe File‟ The 5 Design Trends
- 3. #ETWebinar
- 4. Housekeeping • Chat your questions to the host and we’ll answer them during our Q&A • Join the conversation on Twitter by using hashtag #ETWebinar • This webinar is being recorded. We’ll email you a link to the recorded presentation within a week. #ETWebinar
- 5. Andrea Smith Design Lead, Content Marketing & Research, ExactTarget @andreasmith77 The 5 Design Trends Chad White Principal of Marketing Research, ExactTarget and Author, Email Marketing Rules @chadswhite Behind „The Best of the Email Swipe File‟ #ETWebinar
- 6. 20 Emails, 5 Design Trends T eBest of the Email Swipe File 2013 #ETWebinar
- 7. The wide screens of desktops are being rapidly replaced by more modest tablet screens and challengingly small smartphone screens, and the pixel-precision of mice is being replaced by fingers on touchscreens. This transition is having a dramatic effect on email design and ushering in a variety of new tactics. #ETWebinar
- 8. Mobile: rapid adoption Data Source: Litmus #ETWebinar
- 9. Mobile: large market share of opens Top 10 Email Clients Averages across all customers. Data Source: Litmus 4/2013 – emailclientmarketshare.com Email Client Usage iPhone 23% Outlook 18% iPad 12% Outlook.com 8% Apple Mail 8% Google Android 7% Gmail 5% Yahoo! Mail 5% Windows Live Mail 3% Thunderbird 1% 42% Mobile #ETWebinar
- 10. Basic Approaches to the Mobile Inbox Aware Simple improvement without specialization. Design-only tactics Responsive Deliver a customized mobile experience. Special design + code 1 2 #ETWebinar
- 11. Mobile Aware Establish a mobile-friendly visual framework without specializing. • Single column hero • Key info & CTA in left column • Large text & buttons #ETWebinar
- 12. Reiss Type: Promotional email Send Date: April 14, 2013 Subject Line: Textured Summer Knits + London Lives Video
- 13. Responsive Design #ETWebinar Photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design Responsive web design is a set of techniques used to make a layout readable and usable on any screen and/or platform on which it’s displayed. • Fluid grids • Fluid images • Media queries
- 14. 600px, multi-column email becomes 320px, single column 600px, multi-column email becomes 320px, single column. #ETWebinar
- 15. 3 Common Responsive Layout Approaches Shrink Wrap Column Drop Layout Shifter http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1514 #ETWebinar
- 16. TOMS Shoes Type: Promotional email Send Date: April 12, 2013 Subject Line: New Ballet Flats & free shipping on all orders!
- 17. Many Gradations: • Desktop-Centric • Quasi-Mobile Aware • Mobile Aware Design • Fluid, Liquid, or Scalable Design • Adaptive Design • Responsive Design #ETWebinar
- 18. Moosejaw Type: Promotional email Send Date: January 7, 2013 Subject Line: It worked for Obama...
- 19. Kickstarter Type: Promotional email Send Date: January 8, 2013 Subject Line: The Best of Kickstarter 2012
- 20. In the era of email engagement, greater relevancy has become imperative. Personalization is one of the key ways that marketers can make their messages more personally relevant to their subscribers. #ETWebinar
- 21. What Consumers Want #ETWebinar Source: Monetate
- 22. Open Rates by Personalization #ETWebinar
- 23. Click Rates by Personalization #ETWebinar
- 24. IVCi Type: Promotional email Send Date: Q2 2013 Subject Line: IVCi conversation
- 25. Fitbit Type: Notification Send Date: April 23, 2013 Subject Line: Your Weekly Progress Report in Fitbit!
- 26. Lowe’s Type: Progressive profiling email Send Date: March 13, 2013 Subject Line: Version 1: Personalize your savings this spring Version 2: A Quick Question to Customize Your Emails
- 28. Triggered emails are among the most successful emails you’ll ever send. Their outsized ROI has inspired some marketers to explore ways to make them ever better— with longer campaigns, smarter content, and better triggers. #ETWebinar
- 29. Triggered Sophistication • Triggered emails generate opens and clicks at roughly twice the rate of broadcast emails, and revenue at multiple times the rate of broadcast emails. #ETWebinar
- 30. Finding the Right Trigger making a purchase >> order confirmation email, shipping confirmation email, delivery confirmation email, product review request email, short-supply and re- order emails, purchase anniversary email, service satisfaction survey email, other post-purchase emails registering at a site or for an event >> registration confirmation email signing up to receive email >> welcome email, signup anniversary email leaving an item in a shopping cart >> shopping cart abandonment email providing birth date of subscriber, spouse, children or pets, or date of wedding anniversary >> birthday email, wedding anniversary email not engaging with promotional emails >> reengagement or win-back email, re-permission email
- 31. Zulily Type: Welcome email series Subject Lines: Welcome 1: Get shopping credit! Invite your pals to join zulily too Welcome 2: Go ahead ... play favorites Welcome 3: Anytime. Anywhere. Take zulily with you. Welcome 4: Calling all social butterflies Welcome 5: Smart shopping is your superpower Welcome 1 Welcome 2 Welcome 3 Welcome 4 Welcome 5
- 32. Zulily Type: Welcome email series Welcome 1: Get shopping credit! Invite your pals to join zulily too
- 33. Zulily Type: Welcome email series Welcome 2: Go ahead ... play favorites
- 34. Zulily Type: Welcome email series Welcome 3: Anytime. Anywhere. Take zulily with you.
- 35. Zulily Type: Welcome email series Welcome 4: Calling all social butterflies
- 36. Zulily Type: Welcome email series Welcome 5: Smart shopping is your superpower
- 37. Foursquare Type: Welcome home triggered email Send Date: March 2013 Subject Line: Welcome back from your trip! How was it?
- 38. Crutchfield Type: Browse abandonment email Send Date: November 2012 Subject Line: Digital SLR Cameras: Our top picks
- 39. Content marketing is having a major influence on product marketers, who are realizing that advice, tips, and customer inclusion create more engaging emails with fewer discounts. #ETWebinar
- 40. Traditional Media is in Decline #ETWebinar
- 41. Traditional Media is in Decline #ETWebinar
- 42. Traditional Media is in Decline #ETWebinar
- 43. Traditional Media is in Decline #ETWebinar
- 44. Traditional Media is in Decline #ETWebinar
- 45. Traditional Media is in Decline #ETWebinar
- 47. Brands & Individuals Fill the Void #ETWebinar
- 48. Brands & Individuals Fill the Void #ETWebinar
- 49. Brands & Individuals Fill the Void #ETWebinar
- 50. Brands & Individuals Fill the Void #ETWebinar
- 51. Advertisers Should Act More Like Newsrooms “For messages to be heard in 2020, brands will need to create an enormous amount of useful, appealing, and timely content. To get there, brands will have to leave behind organizations and thinking built solely around the campaign model, and instead adopt the defining characteristics of the real-time, data-driven newsroom—a model that's prolific, agile and audience-centric.” - Baba Shetty and Jerry Wind, Harvard Business Review #ETWebinar
- 52. J.Crew Type: Gender-segmented email Send Date: July 1, 2012 Subject Line: Female Version: My favorite summer whites Male Version: Shoes are required. Socks are not.
- 53. Pandora Type: Promotional email Send Date: April 12, 2013 Subject Line: Thanks to You: 200 Million Strong
- 54. Twitter Type: Promotional email Send Date: December 20, 2012 Subject Line: See the most popular Tweet of 2012
- 55. Levi’s Type: Promotional email Send Date: April 9, 2013 Subject Line: Denim Die-Hards
- 56. While marketers are constantly gaining new tools to make their emails more effective, they shouldn’t forget the fundamental design tactics that have continued to be effective for years. #ETWebinar
- 57. Havaianas Australia Type: Promotional email Send Date: April 18, 2013 Subject Line: Disney for BIG Kids!
- 58. CB2 Type: Promotional email Send Date: December 1, 2012 Subject Line: get her this
- 59. Jack Spade Type: Promotional email Send Date: March 21, 2013 Subject Line: Watch Out! $98 Graphic Watches Are In
- 60. Anthropologie Type: Promotional email Send Date: March 15, 2013 Subject Line: Denim on the rise | Free shipping
- 61. Bendon Lingerie Type: Promotional email Send Date: May 8, 2013 Subject Line: Something extra for you: buy any 2 items, get the 3rd free. Images off Images on
- 62. Report: The Best of the Email Swipe File pages.exacttarget.com/EN-BestEmails2013 Bonus Swipe File Content: blog.exacttarget.com/blog/the-swipe-file Email Swipe File on Pinterest: pinterest.com/exacttarget/email-swipe-file Design Resources #ETWebinar
- 64. For more webinars visit www.exacttarget.com/resource-center/webinars
- 65. Connect with Marketing Peers Join us on Twitter every Thursday at 11am EST Sign-up for meetings near you: www.exacttarget.com/3sixtyLive
- 66. Thank you!
Editor's Notes
- The 5 Design Trends Behind “The Best of the Email Swipe File”
- Nicole:Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to today’s ExactTarget Inspirations Webinar, The 5 Design Trends Behind ‘The Best of the Email Swipe File’.
- Nicole:If you’re following along on Twitter, today’s hashtag is #ETWebinar.
- Nicole:Before we get started, I would like to go over a few housekeeping items and give you a quick tour of your console so that you know how to participate in today’s event. On the left side of your screen is the Q&A box. Here, you can submit your questions to today’s presenter at any time during the presentation. We will collect your questions and address them during the Q&A session at the end of today’s presentation. You can also use this box if you are having any technical issues and we’ll get you back on track. The second thing I want to point out is the widget dock at the bottom of your console. I won’t go over all of them, but I’ll point out some of our favorites. First is the green resource widget. Here you can access resources that are mentioned during today’s webinar. The second widget that I’d like to point out is the Twitter widget. You can use this to tweet directly from the console and it will automatically add today’s webinar hashtag which is #ETWebinar. Lastly, please don’t worry about taking notes and possibly missing anything during today’s presentation. This webinar is being recorded and you will receive a follow-up email with a link to view the recording.
- Nicole: I’m Nicole DelMastro, your moderator for today’s webinar and on behalf of ExactTarget, it is my pleasure to introduce our presenter for today’s webinar, Chad White, Principal of Marketing Research at ExactTarget and Author of the book Email Marketing Rules. We are also joined by Andrea Smith, Design Lead of the Content Marketing & Research team at ExactTarget.Chad and Andrea, thank you for joining us today!
- Chad: “The Best of the Email Swipe File” highlights 20 emails from the more than 160 and counting emails that we’ve pinned to the Email Swipe File pinboard on Pinterest. These emails represent outstanding email design, but they also represent five email design trends that we feel are critical.
- Andrea: In our first trend, we’ve identified a few great examples of campaigns that are truly mobile-friendly. We all know by now that large desktop screens aren’t necessarilygoing away, but consumers are really starting to use small screens prevalently to consume marketing messages – which means we’re now needing to ensure we’re designing for small screens and touch interfaces.
- Andrea: In October 2010-2012, we saw a 300% increase in mobile opens, and now even more recently, mobile opens are currently coming in at 42% this year. (Litmus chart shows May 2012-April 2013)More info: emailclientmarketshare.com / returnpath.com/resource/email-mostly-mobile/
- Andrea: So what does that mean? Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 email clients and their industry usage. Tablets are considered ‘mobile’ in this statistic – we’re thinking about them uniformly because they involve how we design for clicks versus taps.Even beyond the numbers, we have to think about click-through and conversion - a subscriber will receive an email, open, click, go to the website, and convert. A poor mobile experience doesn’t allow a subscriber to read and click the email: we are essentially choosing to ignore almost half of our openers by serving up a poor mobile experience.
- Andrea: Design = communication. Good design allows your subscribers to interact with your emails in their preferred format.
- Andrea: More considerations: Content first: think top-down hierarchy.Single column layout.Large text sizes to ensure readability.Use contrast to ensure readability across brightness levels.Don’t cram content into the viewport - honor legibility over length.
- Andrea: Mobile Aware: UK retailer Reiss makes design decisions about text, imagery, and links that translate well on all screen sizes. All screens receive the same message, but the overall experience functions perfectly on tablets, and is still functional on smartphones. Image contrast makes it easy to browse, concise text is clear and easy to read and tap, and even navigation links in the header (and footer) are easy to tap.Designed in nice screen-sized chunks with large images and big buttons, this “mobile aware” email is perfect for tablets, but still functional on smartphones. Unlike many brands, this UK retailer also made their navigation bars at the top and bottom of their email mobile-friendly.- AbulKashimSiddique, Senior Design Consultant
- Andrea: This is essentially what’s happening behind the scenes. A 600px, multi-column email becomes 320px, single column. When we talk about text sizes, remember to match them to your email size. So, if you’re using a best practices 600px wide email, remember that a 24px headline that might seem large will be scaled down to almost half that size on an iPhone.
- Andrea: These are common layouts in web design – we’re starting to see them used more and more in email design. Shrink Wrap – frame SHRINKS, text scales up and reflows, making the content WRAPColumn Drop – multi column converts to single by stacking, single column elements retain sizeLayout Shifter – layout reshapes as content is reworked for small screen optimization, nav or other non-essential elements may disappear
- Andrea: Adaptive: This email from TOMS employs adaptive design, which falls into our responsive category, and really just means that it’s been designed and coded so that there’s essentially one piece of code in the email, but based on what screen size is detected, different images and text styles are served up to best display the message for that format. In this example, the content and CTAs are optimized based on screen size – you’ll noticed minor shifts in the header and hero message layout. We also found it really intriguing that they served up a mobile-sized gif in the narrow screen version, adding extra pop and interest in the viewport with animation. The shoes change as the feet push back and forth, so this is a really fun and appropriate way to use an animated gif in your marketing efforts.Mobile version shows a narrower version optimized for the small screen. Also, the mobile version shows an animated gif.The really interesting thing about TOMS’ use of responsive design in this email is that the hero image is animated only in the narrow screen version, with the shoes changing as the feet push back and forth. They are serving up a mobile-sized gif instead of cramming a desktop-sized gif onto a mobile screen, keeping load time as quick as possible.- Kristina Huffman, Design Practice Lead
- Chad: There are a pretty wide range of gradation of mobile-friendliness—from the unfriendly desktop-centric all the way up to responsive design. Most of the brands that I follow are still using quasi-mobile aware design, where their primary and secondary messages are mobile-friendly, but their header, navigation bar and footer content are not.
- Chad: Text can be a great mobile-friendly tactic, especially for urgent communications, flash sales, and other short-duration events.A catchy, intriguing, topical subject line introduces a mobile-friendly, plain-text email that’s well-suited to convey the concise message. Both this email and the text-heavy emails of the campaign season are reminders that plain text can still be very effective, particularly in the age of mobile.- Laura Earley, Associate Designer
- Chad: There’s also a trend toward what we call hyper-minimalism, where the email is only one screen-worth of information and has one call-to-action. Often these emails lead to rich landing page experiences, as was the case with this Kickstarter email.The email is super simple and super straightforward. With a headline, three sentences, and a three-character call-to-action, the email provokes interest and propels the subscriber to the rich, slideshow landing page.- Chris Studabaker, Regional Manager
- Chad: The mantra for the past few years has been “relevancy, relevancy, relevancy.” Personalization is one of the key tools for boosting relevancy.
- Chad: Consumers know that brands are tracking their behavior and expect brands to use that information to make their shopping experience better.
- Chad: For a long time, personalization usually meant that you were doing first-name personalization. The legacy of that is that consumers are actually very distrustful of first-name personalization in subject lines, because the content of the email rarely lived up to the expectation of personalization set by the subject line.
- Chad: So you’re better off for the time being personalizing the body of the email and not the subject line.
- Chad: This is a great old guard example of personalization. The salutation, recipient’s company, and the signature area all personalized, which make this email appear like a one-to-one email rather than broadcast.While most emails work best as HTML emails, we’ve found that drip emails are the most successful when they’re in a rich text format, which makes them appear as though they’re a one-to-one communication between a sales rep and a prospect. This email from IVCi is short, conversational, and includes a personalized signature to enhance the impression that the email is coming directly from a sales rep.- Mathew Sweezey, Marketing Evangelist
- Chad: This email represents the new guard, where every bit of email content is intensely personal. This email is all about the recipient.Through their wireless trackers, scales, and mobile tools, Fitbit collects a lot of information about their users’ activities, diet, and sleep. To keep your progress top of mind, Fitbit sends you a summary of your stats from the past week. They also email you notifications when you earn badges for reaching certain milestones.- Hannah Kleyn, Design Consultant
- Andrea: Lowe’s really wants to serve dedicated content that’s useful to their audience, so we love how they used a tablet-friendly progressive profiling email, asking subscribers about their plans for spring. They focused on areas where spring had arrived (geo-targeting), but also ran a split test to really see what compelled subscribers to open. By providing info the consumer could can act on, they provided click-through options based on unique interests and led them through to their site to help make sure they had the right preferences for future content.Looking to gather data to power some segmented seasonal messaging, Lowe’s sent this tablet-friendly progressive profiling email asking subscribers about their plans for the spring. The home improvement retailer geo-targeted the email to areas where spring had arrived and also ran a subject line A/B test to better understand what would compel the most subscribers to provide more information about themselves.- Amanda Monroe, Associate Designer
- Andrea: Love that they are focused on long-term interests, respecting frequency preferences, and also make this part of their site really accessible so it’s easy to update at any time. Setting proper expectations for frequency and what kinds of messages you’ll receive goes a LONG way in establishing a trustworthy relationship with your subscribers and consumers.Jetsetter’s preference center collects subscriber preferences for ‘Destinations’, ‘Activities’, and ‘Scenes’, all of which are vital to creating highly targeted travel offers. Their preference center also addresses three of the most common reasons that subscribers opt out—too many emails, irrelevant emails, and change of address.Andrea Smith, Design Lead, Content Marketing & Research
- Andrea:Triggered emails don’t always get the creative attention they deserve, but they’re often among the most successful emails you’ll ever send. Let’s take a look at why:
- Andrea:Triggered emails generate opens and clicks at roughly twice the rate of broadcast emails, and revenue at multiple times the rate of broadcast emails.
- Andrea: This 5-email welcome series spans roughly 3 weeks, intermingled with regular daily promo emails after you sign up for their email program. The 5-email drip series is appropriate for Zulily because it’s a daily email brand – so when determining welcome series length, evaluate how much value you have to send, and choose a cadence and number for the drip accordingly. Also, note the length – daily Zulily emails are fairly lengthy, so these are short and to the point. Also, they do a great job of using bold, vivid imagery that’s not cookie-cutter – it’s brand appropriate, and they use repeating template elements in their header and footer, but give themselves room to play within the message itself.With the vast majority of marketers still sending a single welcome email, Zulily is well ahead of the curve with this five-email welcome series that seeks a closer relationship with new subscribers by asking for referrals, asking about their favorite brands, and promoting their mobile app and social presence.- Andrea Smith, Design Lead, Content Marketing & Research
- Andrea: Encourages you to share with friends – clear and easy value paired with an incentive. New and eager subscribers have just come on board, so this is a great time to get a subscriber to reach out.With the vast majority of marketers still sending a single welcome email, Zulily is well ahead of the curve with this five-email welcome series that seeks a closer relationship with new subscribers by asking for referrals, asking about their favorite brands, and promoting their mobile app and social presence.- Andrea SmithDesign Lead, Content Marketing & Research
- Andrea: Lifestyle-focus – get their app on your mobile device so it’s easy to engage on the go.With the vast majority of marketers still sending a single welcome email, Zulily is well ahead of the curve with this five-email welcome series that seeks a closer relationship with new subscribers by asking for referrals, asking about their favorite brands, and promoting their mobile app and social presence.- Andrea Smith, Design Lead, Content Marketing & Research
- Andrea: Get email alerts about your favorite brands so you don’t miss when they’re on Zulily.With the vast majority of marketers still sending a single welcome email, Zulily is well ahead of the curve with this five-email welcome series that seeks a closer relationship with new subscribers by asking for referrals, asking about their favorite brands, and promoting their mobile app and social presence.- Andrea Smith, Design Lead, Content Marketing & Research
- Andrea: Social engagement – make it easy to find and follow their social presence. Fun, whimsical, on-brand imagery is engaging and appropriate.With the vast majority of marketers still sending a single welcome email, Zulily is well ahead of the curve with this five-email welcome series that seeks a closer relationship with new subscribers by asking for referrals, asking about their favorite brands, and promoting their mobile app and social presence.- Andrea Smith, Design Lead, Content Marketing & Research
- Andrea: Lastly, they pose a referral again, but the actual creative is different but engaging…and to the point. Also, they give you options for sharing since you might prefer Facebook over email – and you’ll still get the account credit, no matter which platform you prefer.With the vast majority of marketers still sending a single welcome email, Zulily is well ahead of the curve with this five-email welcome series that seeks a closer relationship with new subscribers by asking for referrals, asking about their favorite brands, and promoting their mobile app and social presence.- Andrea Smith, Design Lead, Content Marketing & Research
- Chad: Behavior-triggered emails are among the most sophisticated. This Foursquare email is triggered by your check-in patterns. It recognizes when you’ve gone away on a trip and send you this welcome home campaign when you get back.Not only does this email use responsive design to target Foursquare’s highly mobile users, it is triggered by check-in patterns that involve airports and locations outside of my normal stomping grounds.- Kristina Huffman, Design Practice Lead
- Chad: This Crutchfield email acts like a good store associate. If you browse cameras but don’t put anything in your cart or buy, this email tries to get at why you didn’t buy. Did you want a camera that was just released? One that has the best reviews? One that’s a top seller? This email suggests products that address those possible desires.This browse abandonment email tries to get at the reason why you didn’t purchase in the same way that a good store associate would. It features the product you browsed, but then also suggests a new arrival, featured price drop, top-seller, and customer favorite in case you were looking for the newest product, the best deal, or social validation.- Chad White, Principal of Marketing Research
- Chad: Content marketing is having significant effect on email design.
- Chad: Traditional media is in decline. For instance, CNN shuttered its entire investigative journalism department…
- Chad: Newsweek published last print issue on Dec. 31, going entirely digital…
- Chad: The Chicago Sun-Times laid off all their photojournalists…
- Chad: Amazon now sells more ebooks than print books…
- Chad: Number of “TV households” declining…
- Chad: Traditional radio challenged by internet and satellite radio
- Chad: As a consequence, marketers are directing budget dollars away from traditional media.
- Chad: While traditional media is in decline, brands and individual are filling the void. For instance, Rants from Mommyland is a very popular blog that led to a book deal…
- Chad: River Pools & Spas has found success with their blog, as highlighted in Jay Baer’s new book, Youtility…
- Chad:Remodelaholic has nearly 100,000 followers on Pinterest…
- Chad: Justin Bieber has 40+ million Twitter followers, giving him a direct channel to his fans.
- Chad: The “Advertising 2020” forum concluded that marketers will act much more like newsrooms in the future.
- Andrea: J.Crew does an excellent job of leading with advice on etiquette and style to build trust and to give their subscribers the confidence to move forward with purchases, and I love that they’ve found segmented way to to share advice that’s personal and not typical of normal retail email. This brand has really picked up and differentiated itself in the last few years in the retail world, and that focus on quality and trend-worthy style is translated across the brand into email and other digital channels, not just stores and ads.More marketers are taking a “content first” approach to selling. This J. Crew email does an excellent job of leading with advice on etiquette and style to build trust and to give their subscribers the confidence to move forward with purchases.- Mike Diekhoff, Design Consultant
- Andrea: Infographics were the biggest new trend in B2B marketing last year, and Pandora hits the mark with a smart email thanking their users. Easy to skim graphics and text shares their story in a way that’s engaging and just plain interesting.Infographics were the biggest new trend in B2B marketing last year. This year we’re seeing infographics make their mark on B2C marketing, as in this Pandora email, which includes interesting figures on their growth.- Chris Studabaker, Regional Manager
- Chad: This Twitter email teases the content just like a news broadcaster would. The subject line teases the body copy, and the body copy teases the landing page copy.This email does a great job of drawing you in. The subject line makes you wonder what the top tweet was, and the email makes you wonder which of the topics shown was the top tweet, all with the goal of enticing you to click through.- Chris Studabaker, Regional Manager
- Chad: Just like CNN crowdsources news opinion via social and their website, this Levi’s campaign sources material from consumers and then uses social curation to narrow the field down to the “fan favorites.” Partnering with fashion website Refinery29 to get their interpretation of 501 jeans for the photo gallery presentation in this email is just the beginning of this social-driven campaign. Subscribers are asked, “What’s your interpretation?” and encouraged to upload photos of themselves styling 501s, and ultimately asked to vote on a Pinterest-inspired landing page to determine which finalist is the winner.- Tana Babcock, Design Consultant
- Andrea:To close out our trends today, we’re going to highlight some inspired fundamentals. Email is alwaysevolving, as we’re constantly seeking new tools and tricks–but tried and true best practices are around for a reason. Let’s take’s take a look at some of the more effective ‘evergreen’ tactics that are going to stick around.
- Andrea:Havianas Australia took a really useful opportunity to take a good email and make it great, using animation in a delightful way. If you’ve ever seen Alice in Wonderland, you might be familiar with the Cheshire Cat’s knack for mostly disappearing – and this was the perfect opportunity to bring that to life. When using animated gifs, find opportunities that make sense – don’t just do it because you can.This Australian sandal-maker did a great job of recognizing a wonderful opportunity to use animation in a delightful way, making clever use of the Cheshire Cat’s penchant for mostly disappearing.- Lindsey O’Donnell, Design Consultant
- Andrea: This holiday email from CB2 is a fun, infographic-inspired, chose-your-own-adventure gift guide. Based on quick prompts, it helps you make a decision based on rating your gift recipient on a scale of 1-10. Not only is this a great twist on a traditional gift guide, it’s a clever way to get people to actually read it and see all the gift options. Also, the natural organic movement of the shapes and lines draw your eyes down, which is a fantastic design tactic to encourage scrolling.Gift guides are a major selling tool during the holiday season. CB2 takes this concept and turns it into a fun, interactive decision tree that all starts with rating the gift-recipient on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s hard to resist following every path to its recommended gift.- Ryan Alvis, Design Consultant
- Andrea: This Jack Spade email really calls out the importance of clean simplicity – something we see as a fundamentally important skill to maintain in messaging when dealing with cluttered inboxs. Additionally, you don’t actually don’t see the watches until you scroll – but the simple text and illustration is really intriguing, to-the-point, and the main CTA IS found above the fold, so all key elements are accessible at once. Plus once you see the tip of the first watch, you just have to see the rest. Note the clean navigation in the header, using a bright pop of color to highlight their ‘sale’ section.Clean simplicity is the new sweet spot for email design and this email delivers by keeping the headline and call-to-action above the fold and using a mix of illustration and product shots to intrigue and get subscribers scrolling.- Anna Meier, Design Consultant
- Chad: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” This Anthropologie email lives up to that with an image that instantly allows subscribers to see the difference between their various pant and short lengths. They also include style advice below each product.This email proves the adage that a picture’s worth a thousand words by making it super easy to see at a glance the difference between Anthropologie’s different denim styles. For good measure, they also include some words, offering advice on what to wear with each style.- Chad White, Principal of Marketing Research
- Chad: Defensive design is a fundamental that’s not going away anytime soon. Many subscribers block the images in the emails they receive, so designing for images off is still important and provides an opportunity to standout with cool mosaics like the one in this Bendon Lingerie email.Rather than seeing image blocking as an obstacle, this Australian lingerie retailer saw it as an opportunity to use a mosaic of color blocked table grids to send a simple heart-shaped message. While many marketers use mosaics to emulate the images-on creative, Bendon Lingerie chose not to be limited by that.- Kirk Barlow, Senior Deliverability & Marketing Consultant
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