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The best Christmas emails of 2006 - winners announced

Posted by Mathew Patterson on January 4, 2007

Back in November we posted about our search for this years best Christmas emails. We've been checking out all the fantastic email campaigns, and we've got 60,000 email credits to give away.

This year we again saw the full range of Christmas and holiday emails, from well written plain text messages to high impact graphical productions. Last years encouraging trend of companies donating to charity in lieu of a printed card seems to have grown further, something we would expect to see continue in 2007.

2006 Best Christmas Email Winner

In a crowded field, this years winner is not the flashiest or extravagant entrant. However, for elegance, readability and simplicity we could not ignore Glasshouse Multimedia's seasonal message to their clients. Click the preview below for the full email.

Glasshouse Multimedia, from Cape Town in South Africa, have produced here a model of effective HTML email design. The organic leafy background is a subtle holiday reference, avoiding that Christmas cheesiness. It also has the advantage of being relatively compressible, using only shades of green.

The body copy is all in HTML text, potentially avoiding spam filtering issues and remaining readable with or without images enabled. We particularly like the links to online stores, giving the email an additional practical benefit. Congratulations to the team at Glasshouse Multimedia; we've just topped up their account with 30,000 email credits.

Honorable mentions

We couldn't stop at just one! The following three emails all stood out for us, and the designers behind each have had 10,000 email credits added to their accounts.

	Vitamin When a lot of companies go over the top with festive design, Vitamin chose a subtle, appealing design that highlights their well crafted message.
	Primer Inc Primer produced a fun email that took us back to our Primary School days, cutting out Christmas decorations with safety scissors. A simple idea that tells a story about the company behind it.
	Three Sixty Media Who says Christmas emails can't be useful? Three Sixty Media manage to pack some business advice in with their greetings and their news, and all in an attractive, bold design.

Well done to all our winners, and we hope you use your credits for email campaigns just as effective as these ones. Also be sure to check out the winners from our 2005 competition and see how they stack up 12 months later.

What do you all think about this years winners? Have you seen something else that really worked this Christmas?

17 comments so far

Nick Coyne

wrote on January 4, 2007 5:59 PM

Thanks Mathew!! An honour to have our email design win the contest. We took a chance with a different look and feel to our regular newsletters, and did a design that tied in with the print cards that we sent out for Christmas.

Credit goes to our creative team - Du Toit, Paula, Cara, Emile and Taya. Great job, guys!!

Cheers
Nick

Jake Rutter

wrote on January 5, 2007 12:25 AM

Excellent Idea to send out Happy Holiday Email Blasts! These designs rock!

Vitamin

wrote on January 5, 2007 1:24 AM

Thanks for the recognition.

Vitamin

Anna

wrote on January 5, 2007 3:35 AM

Have I missed something - these seem to have been programmed with CSS. I thought tables were the rule for email HTML?

mali

wrote on January 5, 2007 3:46 AM

Ahh, the layout has gone funny in IE6!

Michele Melcher

wrote on January 5, 2007 3:46 AM

Nice work done by all. Congratulations!

PRIMER

wrote on January 5, 2007 4:24 AM

Hooray! Our first ever "award" as a company!

We'd gotten a lot of positive feedback from the campaign, but this is the best yet! A nice way to start off the new year... Thanks guys!

PRIMER

Dave Greiner

wrote on January 5, 2007 9:42 AM

Anna, CSS emails are certainly very possible, you just need to be aware of what is and isn't support. Check out this comprehensive article with a free template to get you started.

Mihaela Lica

wrote on January 5, 2007 12:05 PM

Indeed excellent designs. Pity I haven't received any of those newsletters. I've got though some lame advertisements from cosmetic companies I've never heard about. But hey, the Web is a free world. Too bad that not all advertisers understand the power of good web design!

John

wrote on January 5, 2007 10:50 PM

The winning design seems to have forgotten about the use of alt tags for images.

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