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We mentioned a while back that we'd been seeing some great Christmas card designs being sent through Campaign Monitor and that we'd be awarding 10,000 free email credits to the designer who put together the best card before Christmas.

Since then, some of the coolest and most original Christmas emails we've ever seen have been delivered. These ranged from simple, low budget cards with a unique twist, to high budget flash masterpieces.

Perhaps the most encouraging trend among many of the cards was the options to donate to a charity. Because of the cost benefits of sending a card via email as opposed to creating, printing and delivering a traditional card, loads of companies were donating their Christmas marketing budgets to their charity of choice.

And the winner is...

Judging the best card concept was never going to be easy, but by Christmas Day there was one true stand-out. We just couldn't go past a unique e-card sent by San Francisco based Active Ingredients. While the email itself was relatively simple, it was the entire card experience that won us over. We've put together some screenshots below, but you can check out the entire email and web site here.

Because of their amazing work, we've just topped up the Active Ingredients account with 10,000 email credits. Congratulations guys.

Honorable mentions

The range and quality was so high across so many other campaigns that we've decided to give away 5,000 email credits to the designers of the following cards.

	Shelton Fleming We loved the great use of CSS in this email from Shelton Fleming. When you run your mouse over the text, key words are highlighted to deliver a hidden Christmas message. Simple and very original.
	Olive Design This simple email from Olive design leads to a landing page with a holiday message and amazing quicktime movie for their clients through the Olive Winter Wonderland - look out for the ending.
	T-bone Productions Anyone who goes to the trouble of wrapping a huge Christmas bow around their front door deserves a prize in my book. This combined with a clean, simple design made it a stand out.
	n-tara n-tara didn't muck around this Christmas. They created a truly addictive Flash based Christmas game to keep their recipients playing for hours.

Congratulations again to the winners. I'd love to hear what you guys think of these designs, plus a mention of any other Christmas emails you thought stood out this season.