Gallery: Announcement

Simplicity is the key in the announcement email for the ButiClub Exhibition, by designers Hungry Castle. The animated GIF image becomes the focal point of the design, rotating at a pleasant, subtle pace while contained within a neat, structured layout. The Hungry Castle logo, the Like button and the RSVP button are all given plenty of room to breathe and are easy to spot.

All up, this is a light and bright email invitation that puts these unusual butifarra in the spotlight. You would be a silly sausage to not go to this event!

Are you feeling a bit Booki.sh? Well, feast your eyes on this slick little template from Inventive Labs.

Heavy on style and light on images (only two used), this newsletter features really well-considered use of type. The outline around the content is very subtle, but really ties everything together. Finally, the footer presents an assortment of useful links in a nice and simple way, although the text colour is a bit light.

The only tiny issue for me is the second image doesn’t feature alt text, however this hardly detracts from all the things I like about the simplicity and execution of this campaign.

How can it be? Is this really a video embedded in an email?

I can’t blame you for thinking so after viewing this email announcement by Graphite. Upon receiving it in my inbox, I instinctively clicked on the video controls to see if they worked, only to be linked through to a landing page featuring the video. It was a bit of a “gotcha!” moment - admittedly, a very effective one at that.

Unlike a lot of the campaigns in this gallery, I selected this one not on artistic or technical merit, but because it demonstrates how a single, familiar visual element can drive engagement. The Graphite team knew that they couldn’t actually get the video to display in many email clients, so decided to focus on an approach that would not only prompt their subscribers to click through, but provide a result that wouldn’t leave them feeling tricked. Personally, I feel this design achieved just that.

Not wanting to base this critique on my single experience, I got in touch with Andy Rosenthal at Graphite to find out how this campaign fared. From Andy:

“46% of recipients opened the email and from this group, 41% clicked through on the send day. We’ll probably see an additional 10% on both figures through the week. More importantly however, is the high number of replies we received and new business dialogues it opened.”

That’s a solid result from what’s been a highly-instructive email. If I were to offer any design advice, it would be to feature a little more copy on what the video has to offer, as well as a text-link for the benefit of email clients that have images turned off by default.

Download the template

If this campaign looks a little bit familiar, it’s because it’s an adaptation of our ‘Widgets Monthly’ template. Featuring our new template tags and mobile-optimized code, it’s not only a flexible starting point for any campaign, but a sure-fire way to learn how you can make the most of our editor. As Andy explained:

“We hadn’t had the opportunity to design a new layout from scratch that took advantage of the new template editor, and so I literally re-worked a couple of the code samples you guys had posted as a means of learning how to best take advantage of the new features (which are amazing by the way).”

To download this template and select from 100+ more, visit our Template Gallery.

We’ve showcased a couple of web app promos in the last few months, however we have to say that this email announcement from Alertful for Business, by designers Email Spring is really up there amongst the clouds. While many designers (and clients) would have been quite content to borrow the basics from a company’s website and be done, it’s the addition of original pieces like the rocket ship and postage stamp illustrations that really propel this design sky-high in our estimation.

When we selected this design for the gallery, we weren’t simply distracted by good looks under equally good conditions. We were also impressed at how this email design had been optimized for a range of scenarios such as images off, or background images not displaying in email clients like Gmail and Outlook ‘07. In fact, the message here really makes no assumptions as to how it’s going to be viewed and even features a backup call-to-action text link, should the ‘Try for Free’ button not be visible. Important bits like this feature above-the-fold when the email is viewed in most desktop and web clients, as does a summary of core benefits.

Overall, Email Spring have skillfully executed a design that communicates their mastery of email as much as it promotes Alertful’s features. They’ve shot for the moon on this one and landed amongst the stars.

What we have here is a no-nonsense, but easy-on-the-eyes email announcement from Webfit, the team behind a particularly useful integration between Magento and Vend. Using some of their web-dev expertise, they’ve created an email that not only separates potentially heavy, technical content into readable chunks, but uses language that’s appropriate to both web developers and your tech-savvy store owner alike.

Despite the ample use of background images here, the email newsletter still displays nicely in Outlook and Gmail, or even with images off - after all, this is a mostly-text newsletter. The one-column layout also ensures that it’s easy to read on mobile devices.

That said, this announcement does come across as well, an announcement. I was expecting to see at least a call-to-action like, ‘For more details, get in touch with us’, or an invitation to reply. That would certainly make recipients feel like they have a say, as well as lighten up the tone. We’d also love the permission reminder in the footer to be more meaningful - something like, “You’re receiving this email because you signed up for Magento + Vend integration updates on our site” would be appropriate. We’ve featured a couple of tips for writing effective permission reminders on our blog.

Overall, this is an attractive design that could easily be adapted for use in our editor. The quality of work here reflects very kindly on the Webfit team - well done, folks!

I love the narrow, single column-layout and richly-hued photos stretching across the content area of this email design by Mark Shingleton. The header is simple and straightforward, with an understated logo. Plus, the content of the email is immediately available to the reader via a table of contents, not to mention very mobile friendly, thanks to the one-column layout.

But what you’re sure to notice is the gorgeous imagery featuring some envy-inducing homes. We can’t help but ask - I can haz Lakes House?

I love the use of typography in this email by Calligaris and you know what’s best about it? It’s all text! This makes it so friendly to all email clients and gets the message out regardless of whether images have been blocked in the email client.

The designer had mobile devices in mind too, taking heed of advice from our mobile email design post. For instance, the one-column layout and large text display effortlessly on small screens. Furthermore, that first line of text is has been placed to display in inbox summaries on the iPhone and in Gmail, so that without opening the email, recipients see the subject line “SOFA SALE at Calligaris Toronto Store” followed by the first line of text: “Come in to Calligaris Toronto Store for 25% off our sofas and more!” Read more about how you can get Gmail and other clients display a snippet of text to summarize the message content in the inbox.

Providing meaningful and catchy summaries like this in a crowded inbox really helps get readers’ attention and sets up expectations before they even open the email. It must have worked - I peeked at the open rates for this email and it was well above industry standards. Providing a meaningful inbox summary in this manner is something to think about if you are looking for ways to increase engagement.

Designed in-house, this fun and fresh update from MarketSpace captures readers’ attention with a bright and friendly illustration (I especially love the clouds being held up by string). The single column layout is compact and beautifully executed - with good typography and color consistency helping to create a beautiful, eye catching design.

Fantastical looking announcement template from Rogie King for Flexibits. For starters, it’s really simple, lightweight and pleasing to the eye, with clever CSS flourishes like the page curl in the bottom right corner.

I would suggest that the unsubscribe text in the footer use a darker, more contrasting colour, just to stand out a bit more. As an announcement, it could have also benefited from the addition of Twitter and Facebook social sharing links to help spread the word.

This announcement from Cody My Concept nicely summarizes how their service has changed, and highlights the benefits in an easily digestible format. This all leads to a call to action that you simply can’t miss. But beyond what is immediately obvious, what sets this design apart is the subtle details, such as the delicate background patterns, shadows and separators.

If we were to suggest an improvement, more of the text could be coded as styled text, instead of using images.