MindComet

Must Subscribe: Moosejaw, Threadless & Swell

Threadless:

Seemingly influenced by Tim & Eric, this is an obnoxious, tacky and hilarious email and I love it so. Comic sans? check. Hot pink background? you got it. Eye-catching? you bet. Well done.

Sign up for Threadless’s email list here.

Moosejaw:

Simple creative. Witty copy (FTF call to action). A very unique basis for a sale. These things amount to the email below from Moosejaw.

The main call to action is the extended 10% off sale, but there’s a subtle aspect to the sale which makes it above average and slightly interactive. Enlarge the screenshot above and see for yourself.

Sign up for Moosejaw’s email list here.

Swell:

This email struck a chord with me, mostly because it doesn’t employ some overpaid model enjoying themselves way too much while wearing the shoes. It’s just two angles of the product. That’s it. It’s simple and sweet.

Sign up for Swell’s email list here.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Mar. 08, 2010

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

Must Subscribe: REI - A Lesson in Call to Action

REI has always been consistent in their email-marketing. They tend to try new things, which I always respect them for. For example, their implementation of animated gifs (as a replacement for embedded video) was brilliant. That is something I’ve been dying to test and apply to one of our future campaigns.

REI’s sales emails have the same look & feel (wireframe, font selection, etc), but differ enough from one to the next so each one grabs my attention in their own unique way. The email they sent on Friday afternoon sucked me right in.  See below:

Everything about this email screams “BUY BUY BUY!!! CLICK!!! BUY!!!!“ From the stark “SALE” text with the father and his two kids riding their mountain bikes to the “sale & clearance” navigation link to the sub call to action consisting of a “SUPER CLEARANCE”... they all get the point across. The point being, “click through and save & spend money with REI!“.

Some might argue this email is desperate and may come across as being a bit obnoxious and pushy… maybe so. But it worked on me, as I’m the happy owner of a new Half Dome Tent. I wasn’t really in the market for a new tent really… but I was compelled enough to click through, saw the tent, saw how much I was saving and couldn’t help myself.

I think a lot of B2C companies can learn from REI’s emails in general. Their call to action strategy is solid, but so are other aspect of their designs. They always include links for mobile / text versions, their email navigation reflects their site’s navigation and they embrace all of the major social media sites. All of these components are absolutely necessary for a successful email campaign.

If you haven’t already, you should sign up for their emails here.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Aug. 31, 2009

Must Subscribe: The Toilet Paper - (Almost) Daily Email

The Toilet Paper has been unrolling spared squares of wisdom via email since January of this year. The (almost) daily email (Tuesday-Friday) was born out of a love for the “introspective time spent on the can”.  Sometimes these potentially introspective times would be squashed from a lack of interesting reading material. This is where The Toilet Paper comes in. Their mission statement sums it up perfectly:

We don’t lose sleep over taking ourselves too seriously, but we work hard to provide you with provocative, intelligent and reliably good content; stuff fit for the thinking man in everyone.

Be it be ripped from the headlines or the current buzz in pop-culture, we take one interesting news topic each day and put our spin on it. You’ll get the basics boiled down into quickly digestible bits including quotes, facts and cool stats and numbers on the subject.

One e-mail a day.  Whether you laugh, learn something or nod in appreciation, The Toilet Paper will be there for you when you need it most.

I received a confirmation email after signing up and they really knocked it out of the park. It included witty copy (“Thanks for rolling with us”), a contest to win an iPod and all of the standard best practice elements such as a whitelist request, privacy policy link and a physical address.

Their emails are organized and laid out intelligently. They reflect a similar daily email that I praised about before, Very Short List. Each has a main focus with six related areas of interest: number, quote, word, fact, list and the bottom line. I really can’t do their emails justice in trying to explain how awesome they are. They include something absent from a lot of emails I receive these days: personality. Check the email sent out today and see for yourself…

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jun. 30, 2009