CRATE&BARREL — Deals of the Week: Wine & Dine up to 25% off. Free Shipping details…
Recommended subject line length can go anywhere from 50 to 60 characters. A two year study from 2008 mentions that promotional subjects should stick to 50 characters. And that it’s okay for newsletters to stretch to 80 characters. This one hits 70 characters.
Also avoid “Percent off”, “Help” and “Reminder” in your subject lines. Mailchimp’s research show negative open rates with one of those words in subject lines.
Aside from that, Crate&Barrel take it to the extreme with this four column email. The content table’s width is about 700px and it shows that four columns can be achieved in html email.
THE LAND OF NOD — Name that gift.
If you could see this email with images disabled, you’d probably send it straight to the trash. Never waste your reader’s time.
Readers deserve a chance to decide for themselves if they want to enable images. It’s better to risk them not viewing your pretty images than not reading your copy at all.
If pixel perfection is what you need, it’s best to split the image. Separate text and call to actions from pure imagery. Then supply the appropriate alt text for the graphics with text in them.
BUSTEDTEES — Free International Shipping and 3 New Shirts
See that fancy background? It doesn’t show in your email client. There are ways to get this working however. Campaign Monitor has a guide with a two step quick fix.
Other than that, BustedTees makes good use of alt text by displaying “Click to see _____” when images are disabled. This takes the reader straight to the product in the browser.
THREADLESS — There’s no “i” in Threadless…but there is free shipping!
Show don’t tell. That’s always been the mantra for selling anything. (Except for selling ice to an eskimo. I imagine it’ll take a lot more effort than that, but I digress.)
Threadless knows they send image dependent newsletters. They also know that the best way to deal with image blocking is to get into address books.
“Ensure delivery! Add newsletter@threadless.com to your safe sender list”
Click that link and you’ll see a page with instructions for different email clients. Nice.
The only thing I don’t understand is why it says ExactTarget (Their email service provider) instead of Threadless. But that’s beyond the scope of this post.
THREADLESS — Free shipping, reprints, and oh tee wiz, it’s our top scoring tee of all time!
Good stuff. The header isn’t too long. They squeezed in promotional text in the top right. They laid out their items in 3 columns and still had room for whitespace. Brilliant and readable design. Looks great with images turned off too.
SKYPE – Are you getting the most out of Skype?
I love Skype’s emails for many reasons. One of those reasons are that their Call To Action buttons aren’t images. They’re text in a table styled like a button.
So when images aren’t displayed, it’s white text on a green background. Rudimentary but very effective. Turn on images and you’ll see a gradient and rounded edges. Beautiful. Always style your buttons this way.
Another thing they’re doing right is the use of whitespace. Whitespace is always an issue with HTML Email. Use the right amount and your email looks too long.
Think “scrollability” (even though this debate is never-ending). Skype’s managed to shorten an email without compromising on readability by effectively and ingeniously using whitespace.
MOZILLA. Two column newsletters can be hard to pull off. It’s usually best to include a “In This Issue” section like this one did. I also like how it says “Thanks for reading!” in the footer. Random people don’t sign up for this newsletter. I would say it’s highly targeted. Even then, it finds space to thank their readers. That said, they need to increase their paragraphs’ line-height to increase readability.
STYLECAMPAIGN. I love this email for 4 reasons.
- It’s optimized for mobile devices with that skinny layout
- It looks great with images blocked
- It’s a welcome email packed with a PDF, 2 cool techniques and a video (link)
- It’s got a favicon (How cool is that? Most people don’t even bother, myself included)
LYNDA. Very basic, simple and straight to the point. I like how they have play buttons on images to substitute for embedding video.
THINK GEEK. I love some of their gear. But to be honest, this is way too long. It could have easily been split up into a bi-monthly digest. Also, they use an animated banner and I must say this technique as much as it might make you cringe, actually works.
