MindComet

Must Subscribe: Crate & Barrel

This email knows who it’s talking to.

I visited a Crate & Barrel over the weekend and purchased a cocktail shaker for a friend for Christmas. Three days later, this wonderfully designed email dropped into my inbox, beckoning me to buy more. And what an email it is!

I’m not yet sure what it is about the email—whether it’s the cool blue color or the block formation of their products displayed—but I must have stared at it for a good three minutes (which is near-record time for me). It also may have something to do with the fact that this does NOT scream CHRISTMAS!!! at me, unlike the majority of the email landing in my inbox these days. I’m becoming numb to it all at this point.

This is undoubtedly a holiday-related email, but it has a sense of solidarity to it. It’s unique. It’s not leaning on any predictable holiday colors or icons like snow or trees. If anything, it’s more suitable for a New Years campaign than Christmas.

If you haven’t signed up to receive Crate & Barrel or CB2 emails, do yourself a favor and do so here and here, respectively. Their emails are always solid and classy and always offering good deals. And lets face it, they blow IKEA out of the water.

View Comments

Posted by Bryan Quilty on Dec. 16, 2009

Body Background Images Can Add Depth To Your Email

If you’ve followed this blog for the past couple of years, you know that I’m a big proponent for the removal of background images in email design. This is all due to the popularity of unsupported clients such as Outlook ‘07 and even Gmail to a certain extent. Although, sometimes a series of events will take place that will lead you to change your whole perspective on things.

In this case, that perspective-altering event was visiting Dylan Boyd’s killer Email Wars blog. The post that really piqued my interest included a screenshot of a BEEEAUTIFUL email from Columbia. The forest-landscape background totally threw me for a loop. As far as background images go, they usually consist of a gradient or repeating image, but rarely do I ever see photo-realisitc backgrounds in the bodies of emails. It caught my attention to say the least.

I then remembered that the geniuses at CampaignMonitor discovered a method of getting background images to display in the body of an email. So even this email could be displayed as intended in Outlook ‘07. Win.

I think this should be an example for creative online marketing and advertising departments to stretch their email designs out a bit. Try incorporating big, sweeping background images. I think most B2C email campaigns could benefit from at least testing this.

Have you seen any other brands using photo-realistic background images in the body of their emails? Provide examples in the comments.

View Comments

Posted by Bryan Quilty on Oct. 07, 2009

B2C Black Friday Email Wrap-Up

Over the Thanksgiving break I was sent over 30 emails all related to Black Friday and holiday sales—most of which were composed pretty well with a semblance of strategy and thought put behind them.  Others cried out “well, since everyone else is sending out an email, I guess we will too”.

NHL / NY Rangers:
Even though it’s a huge sports fan faux-pas, this email’s call to action is pretty compelling.  It would’ve been an A+ if they could have incorporated my last name into the design on the jersey dynamically, but having “ANY NAME” works too.  The deal for free customization and shipping was for that day only, making it even more compelling to click through.

Home Depot:
This was sent to me on Thanksgiving day, early in the morning—serving as a means to beat the Black Friday rush, with deals and sales available starting that morning. Each item spotlighted in the email were labeled with in-store or online availability, most of which were available on that day.  I don’t get any of their competitors emails such as Lowe’s or Ace Hardware, but I can’t imagine either company were as effective with their Black Friday-related sends as HD.

Restoration Hardware:
RH has never had compelling designs.  Their emails usually consist of serif text embedded in an image with their site’s navigation above. Their sales emails over the weekend were no exception… still as lackluster as ever.  I will give them credit for hitting me every day over the course of the sale.  Only one element of the email changed between the three days.  Click the preview too see what I’m talking about.

Inmagine:
The design is stark, simple and effective. But that’s about all I can praise about this.  It only links to the main page, with no additional info on the promotion for the reward points.  One of my biggest complaints—and it’s a biggie—is that this email is NOT CAN-SPAM compliant.  Where’s the opt out link?  Where’s the physical address? The team at Inmagine needs to brush up on their compliance rules before they get blacklisted.

Simple Shoes:
The perfect sales email. Showing the previous price against the one-day-only sales price was their best bet to increase conversions and they nailed it.  The copy is outstanding—especially this part: “they feel like marshmallows hugging your feet”. I love the personality Simple brings to their emails and how they market to their audience. I didn’t open this email until today, and when I clicked through, it brought me to a landing page with info on their NEXT Black Friday sale (which apparently takes place every Friday at simpleshoes.com).  Too bad I missed the train on their slipper sale.  I want marshmallows hugging my feet.  This is by far my favorite email from the weekend.

Threadless:
Another example of a very simple and effective sales blast.  Threadless slings limited-run t-shirts to hipsters and nerds alike and they know their audience extremely well.  The calls to action in this email are broken up into three parts: $15 tees, $10 tees and $5 tees.  Easy enough to figure out and well-executed.

—-

Here’s a breakdown of all of the B2C emails I received over the weekend:

Hit me once in three days:

Simple Shoes
MINI
Quiksilver
Paul Frank
Inmagine
Starbucks

Hit me twice in three days:

Levi’s
adidas
Target
NHL
The Home Depot
Playstation
Threadless
New Balance

Hit me three times within three days:

Dickies
Restoration Hardware

View Comments

Posted by MindComet on Dec. 01, 2008

Email Design Showcase

I thought I would take this post to present a few emails that I’ve been impressed with recently. The emails below have landed in my inbox within the past month and all have exceptional designs for their own unique reasons.

eROI: Sales / Marketing Blast

I love everything about this email, from the subject line, the content blocks & calls to action… Especially the overall design with the cutting board & bread.  They really seem to nail the tone with this blast—beckoning to join their team if you’re currently unhappy with your online marketing efforts and general presence on the web. I’d really like to know the stats for this email, what the terms of success were and how many conversions they scored.

Jupiter Images: Special Deal / Promotion

I can honestly say that I’ve never seen an email designed this way.  Although, it lacks any HTML supporting text (it’s basically just 3 images in their own table row), the idea behind the design is a winner.  The angles drew me in… I scanned the entire email and spent a lot of time below the fold once I got there, inspecting the smaller images carefully.  Points off for not hot-linking the “EMAIL US AT” call to action to the email addresses, but all and all great job.

Blue Sky Factory: Sales / Marketing Blast

I can’t remember ever receiving an email with a newspaper / traditional newsletter design.  And for that reason, this email really made an impression on me.  It may also be due to it’s simplistic nature, the small call to action on the bottom right hand corner, its good balance of imagery and text, or how it makes the case that email marketing still works and still consistently provides the highest ROI out of any other form of marketing.  Either way, it put a smile on my face.

If you have received any exceptionally designed emails recently, post them below!

View Comments

Posted by MindComet on Nov. 14, 2008