Blog: Tips & Resources

Derek Harding put together a great read on the increasingly more important problem of email clients not loading images by default.

Some of the most popular email environments including AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail, Outlook 2003, and Thunderbird have images turned off by default. This can obviously have a huge impact on the design and effectiveness of your email campaign.

Derek offers a number of suggestions on dealing with this issue, namely:

• Designing and testing your emails to get the message across even when images are turned off.
• Getting added to the recipients address book, bypassing the problem altogether for the majority of email clients.

Definitely worth checking out.

A great looking email newsletter design for keeping up with the latest downtown Columbus has to offer.

I love the use of simple icons and color coding to differentiate each section of content. Although the newsletter is quite content heavy, this technique still makes it very easy to scan and find something of interest.

One thought. Given the content of this newsletter and the potential viral nature for passing on to friends in the same area, I’d recommend adding a Forward to a Friend link in the next issue to complement the sign up message below the introduction.

Designer:  Grip Technology  |  See the complete design

A nicely designed email for one of the many smoothie bars that seem to be popping up everywhere these days (at least in Sydney anyway).

A fluid design using the full width of the screen is used. We don’t often see this technique in email design, but I expect to see more of it as time passes. My only gripe would be that the email doesn’t contain an unsubscribe link or any clear instructions for getting off the list.

Designer:  Emma Gray  |  See the complete design

A nice example of a clean and simple corporate email newsletter. What can I say? We’re suckers for clean text and rounded corners. The promo to download the PDF is done well and is a much better option than including the file as an attachment.

We also like how the newsletter has been given a consistent theme (The MFN Insider), which is also used in the email subject. This makes the email instantly recognizable to all recipients and improves the chances of being opened each and every month.

Designer:  Schok  |  See the complete design

I’m sure a few of you have come across this scenario before - you’re putting together a newsletter for a client and they want to jazz it up by adding some flash to the email. You might be left wondering, is that going to work?