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The Freshview team are big fans of t-shirts, so much so we even have Campaign Monitor shirts available. So we're always on the lookout for cool new shirts, and the local postal workers must get sick of delivering shirts to us.

HTML email newsletters are a great way to publicise shirts, because having a picture of a great new shirt delivered directly to your inbox is an instant stimulus to buy. Of course, the classic example, and one I use in my talks and articles often, is Threadless.

The SkinnyCorp guys are long term Campaign Monitor users, and their newsletter for Threadless is hugely popular. Here's a recent example:

It's very focused on the goal of showing you which new shirts are available this week, and is instantly scannable. We love it! This is not the only way to go though. Recently I read a comment from top designer Khoi Vinh about another t-shirt newsletter:

For fans of the more popular, generally excellent, community-driven tee-shirt site Threadless, you may already be finding similar amusement in their regular sales newsletter, which more brazenly hocks their latest wares. The Rumplo newsletter, though, is much less hard-sell, and feels more expansive in its culling from the most obscure corners of graphic tee-dom. In a way, it’s very much a weekly review of what’s happening in this hidden-in-the-open medium.

As it turns out, Rumplo are also Campaign Monitor users, and have sent out some great emails recently. Here's the most recent edition:

Design wise it is not hugely different, but there is certainly less of an emphasis on buying, and more on exploring. That works well for Rumplo. Campaign Monitor seems to be a haven for t-shirt sellers actually - a quick review of campaigns found some more great examples.

Even when handling basically the same content, there are plenty of different design approaches to take. You can choose to emphasise particular designs, to drive purchases directly from the email, or you can just push people to the website.

Different goals will create different designs, from visual positioning, to copy writing, length and frequency. One factor not focused on by any of these examples is the shirt construction - no mention of the shirt fabric or printing technology. No mention of environmental impact or location of manufacture.

I'm sure there are more examples out there that cover these areas too. Where do you buy your t-shirts? Do you subscribe to these emails? Are you loyal to a store, or just focused on the shirt designs?