MindComet

Borders’ Death Rattle In Email Form

If you aren’t already aware, Borders Books & Music are closing all of their stores for good. Call it a sign of the times or a changing of the guard with web stores replacing brick & mortar shops, it’s undeniable that Borders certainly won’t be the last corporation selling media to close up and go out of business. But this post isn’t all about them folding, its about how they’re reaching their subscribers with news of massive sales.

Look at this email:

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Now look at an example of what their emails USED to look like:

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I discussed this with Jeremy Carrus, one of MindComet’s designers, about the inconsistencies and stilted nature of the design. Here’s what we came up with…

Just cause you’re going out of business doesn’t mean you should change your brand or hide it.
Even if your doors are closing you can still go out with some dignity and use the look everyone remembered you for. I had to look closely to see who this email was from at first. It almost seemed like a knock-off, spammy email.

Why have social media links if you’re company is going under?
Why would anyone want to connect with a brand that is about to die? Is this due to the fact that social media buttons are a standard element like a forward button / link for any and all emails no matter what the subject or condition the brand is in?

Give users direction and a call to action.
If your goal is to get users into the store then put the locations link at the top of the page and not in the footer. Maybe even employ geo-location methods for users (not too hard to pull off nowadays) and dynamically insert the location closest to them.

Give users a deadline.
There is no time associated with this email so I could probably go in a few weeks and get the same deal. But if they said “Our Doors Will Be Closed On…“ it would result in some urgency, which might get me into one of their stores sooner rather than later. Even if they’re not closing they could prolong the sale and make me want to go later.

Show off the good.
Show users what you have to sell. Simply listing discounts associated with the categories of items isn’t too compelling. Sometimes folks need a visual to get excited. Images help support the sale.

Even though this is clearly a LAZY attempt at an email marketing campaign, I wouldn’t be surprised if an intern or some other lowly employee put this together. I’m sure Borders fired all of their marketing and creative assets a long time ago. It doesn’t surprise me that it looks this way… there’s really no accountability or a sense of trying with this email.

In short, the email is essentially a guy on a street corner waving a going-out-of-business sign to oncoming traffic:

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Aug. 18, 2011

Mobile Email Design DOs and DON’Ts

Style Campaign has always been one of my favorite email marketing blogs, primarily because they seem to focus on niche topics such as video, animated gifs and now, mobile.

Mobile is on top of every marketer’s minds who have any involvement in email. It’s an exciting time for us in the industry. In a relatively short time, the entire email landscape is going to be effect by mobile’s influence. It’s not a question of “if”, but more a question of “when” it will take over the majority of email client market share.

So with that it mind, it is becoming increasingly clear that email designs must be able to conform to mobile devices. This article at Style Campaign goes into much detail about the do’s and don’ts regarding email design. It’s a fantastic read for anyone interested in mobile-centric revamping your newsletter.

Key takeaways:

The peak of mobile email use is around 7AM, when everyone is waking up. This means people’s vision is bleary and their overall effectiveness of handling their phones properly is decreased. Because of this, we must design our emails to make it easy for the beleaguered, pre-caffeinated masses.

44x44 is the perfect dimension for a fingertip to touch a link, according to Apple. With this in mind, there shouldn’t be any competing links within that block. Convenience for one-handed users is key.

Big buttons make for a better mobile user experience than tiny ones.

Most people handle their phones with their right hands. Keep general ergonomics in mind when and where you place specific icons and links.

Text under 12px will scale up, which in turn can break your design. Auto-scaling can be prevented by adding the style ”-webkit-text-size-adjust:none”

While it is a best practice for your email’s navigation to resemble the site’s navigation, that’s not necessarily the case for mobile email.

So with the increase of mobile use, will we see all best practices slowly change and evolve? Will we see mobile’s influence effect all email designs from this point on? Time will tell.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jul. 06, 2011

Mobile Email Usage On The Rise

According to a recent study conducted by Campaign Monitor, mobile email is on the rise. Now this shouldn’t be much of a surprise as mobile devices are becoming more and more prominent pretty much everywhere in the world, but what is surprising is the rate at which mobile use is rising.

With the release of the iPhone, iPad and Android phones, the mobile market share has gone from 4% to 20% in 24 months. This, to me, is insanely quick growth. Of that 20%, iPhone unsurprisingly accounts for the vast majority with iPad and Android falling behind in pecking order. Even more alarming is the rate at which Desktop clients such as Outlook, Apple Mail and the like have dropped: almost 11%.

Go here and check out this fantastic article. It’s well worth your time.

If this isn’t evidence for more mobile-centric email designs, I don’t know what is. If your ESP allows for a mobile alternative, be sure to utilize it.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jun. 16, 2011

Your Facebook Page As An Email Design

When one of the purposes of your email is to increase likes / fans of your Facebook page, what design tactics and strategies would you use? Would you design your email in any specific way for the sole purpose of increasing your reach on Facebook?

LA Fitness recently employed—what I thought was—a fairly brilliant design for their Facebook email campaign.

As you can see, their email design very closely resembles their actual Facebook page, all the way down to the site’s standard navigation. This email could’ve been finessed somewhat with better typefaces and logo placement, but all in all it works. Essentially, LA Fitness’s Facebook page landed in my inbox… it’s nothing too complicated or convoluted. Its simple and straight to the point. Sometimes a similar approach is the best solution to your email campaign’s design.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on May. 23, 2011

The Best Looking SPAM I’ve Ever Received

This email “from” Apple is SPAM.

I must say, this is some of the best looking SPAM emails I’ve ever received. I almost marked it as “Not Spam” until I began looking at it with a bit more scrutiny. The subject line (way too long with some share code tacked onto the end), reply-to (some gobbly-gook hotmail address) and links (all directing to a Polish domain) were all huge warning signs. It’s engaging, convincing and has clearly gotten the Apple email look and feel down pat… right down to the correct Cupertino physical address. But make no mistake, this is SPAM.

I’m sure that if this has made it through any of the major ISP filters and into users inboxes, it’s duping them left and right to click through. This just goes to show that SPAM is constantly evolving and becoming as sophisticated as ever. Make no mistake, with emails like this out there, ISPs will be battling uphill for years to come.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jan. 28, 2011

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.

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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.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Oct. 07, 2009