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From: Ann Taylor
Subject Line: The New Collection is Here, with an Exclusive Offer
Date: Tuseday, February 28, 2006
This is a such nice, clean creative execution. It has a light, refined quality that really says "Ann Taylor in the Spring." I think it captures the overall brand cleanup that's been happening recently at Ann Taylor.
On a separate note, since January, Ann Taylor has been doing a notable job executing multiple messages within each campaign. This email manages to address the Spring Collection, a Shoe Sale AND an Online Sale without overwhelming viewers. A rare achievement. Bravo, Ann.
One recommendation for improvement: the New Arrivals main message features the PETITE call-to-action so prominently, we loose sight of the opportunity to click through to the main collection. The two call-outs should really be given equal weight.
From: Burberry
Subject Line: Invitation to Men's Made-To-Order Clothing Event at Burberry
Date: Monday, February 27, 2006
From: Barneys New York
Subject Line: Men's made to measure clothing
Date: Sunday, February 26, 2006
We've got ANOTHER double-message today - Burberry and Barney's sent out Men's Made-To-Measure messages within 24 hours of one another. This is getting uncanny! I wonder whether this dup has anything to do with Tom Ford's announcement of his own new Made-To-Measure collection.
While the bright colors and stitching element in the Barney's campaign are cute, I find the Burberry treatment most effective: it's refined, classy, and more relevant for the older, monied customer who is more interested in "THE PERFECT FIT" than "THE ULTIMATE HIGH".
On a separate note, it looks like Burberry has fixed their HTML footer misalignment issue. Thank you!
From: Anthropologie.com
Subject Line: a vision of summer...
Date: Thursday, February 23, 2006
Anthropologie is actually my favorite store, but this is a "vision of summer" I could do without. Yikes! Since when did Crackozian Refuges living in tenements have enough money to spend several hundred dollars on a smock?
From: Ann Taylor
Subject Line: Our Spring Favorites, and $5 Shipping Ends Sunday
Date: Thursday, February 23, 2006
While this creative treatment is pretty, and grahical patterns and polaroid framing are "so hot right now," their usage here seems a sort of gratuitous. This message might have been better-served by a simple 3X3 grid.
From: UrbanOutfitters.com
Subject Line: Shorts for Spring Break and all season long!
Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Spring break is a trip to Cancun, not the local Funeral Home! This is a classic case of message/execution mismatch. The message is all about springtime and shorts, but it's executed in washed-out greys, and the logo and font treatments have a dusty, almost Transylvanian feel to them. Maybe the models look so limp because they just had their blood sucked.
From: Safeway.com
Subject Line: Great deals on Great wines Under $10
Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2006
This email message was brought to my attention by a colleague. Thank you!
The story here isn't so much the wine or the meat. ("The Great Meat Sale!" just sounds weird to me.) What's smart about this message the structure; they did a really nice job handling their main and submessage placement. The light grey bar dividing the two breaks the separate messages while keeping the unity of the design as a whole. Yay, Safeway!
From: CB2
Subject Line: Now serving great prices on cool barware.
Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Here, CB2 uses a novel dot-whack device to list product prices. It's cute; it works with their logo and their modern aesthetic.
Speaking of modern, a question about the copy: "bottoms up to affordable modern" what? Modern what!?
From: dELiA*s
Subject Line: Save $10! Swim Sale online only
Date: Saturday, February 18, 2006
From: gap.com
Subject Line: Find Your Perfect Swimsuit
Date: Monday, February 20, 2006
We've got yet another campaign "double" today - dELiA*s and gap.com sent out strikingly similar swimwear messages. Check out that photography! Those layouts! Kind of creepy.
The obvious opening comment is "ouch!" - gap.com's HTML broke in my email browser, thereby breaking the illusion of their overall message. This is the worst browser break I've seen in a long time. How embarassing!
If we can "see beyond the break", however, gap.com's execution is more successful because the message is deeper and more focused. It's all about the swimfinder and it's many uses; just by reading the links we start to think about finding our suit and are compelled to click through. In the case dELiA*s, even though we've got a sale and a free shipping offer, the triple-combo of sale, free ship and mix & match swimwear dilutes any one message and does not pull us into the process the same way gap.com does. Plus, after all, "buy 2, save $10!" isn't really that great of a deal.
From: BananaRepublic.com
Subject Line: Our favorite espadrille has arrived
Date: Thursday, February 16, 2006
From: J.Crew
Subject Line: Editor's pick: the Fulham shoe
Date: Thursday, February 16, 2006
Both J.Crew and Banana Republic presented single-shoe-family messages yesterday, which makes for a great side-by-side comparison.
Banana Republic has been going a little overboard with multi-messages, submessages and "Free Shipping" promos lately, so it's refreshing to see them doing something simple; something closer to J.Crew's usual MO, actually. While the executions are somewhat different, these messages are comprised of remarkably similar components: a "collection" hero image, a basic romance copy block, and a direct call-to-action. So which wins my click-through? While I personally find espadrilles remarkably ugly, the Banana Republic message convinces us with smart copy that "If you only allow yourself one shoe this season, make it this espadrille," positioning it as a "must-have" rather than a nice-to-have "editor's pick" like the J.Crew Fulham shoe. So I guess we'd purchase the Fulham only if we were buying two pairs of shoes this season.
On an unrelated note: the espadrille hero image is several pixels thinner than the copy block above it and the menu bar below it, making an otherwise clean email look sloppy. Count those pixels, kids!
From: Barneys New York
Subject Line: New York Warehouse Sale - starts today!
Date: Thursday, February 16, 2006
Barney's almost redeemed themselves after yesterday's "Cannabis" EDM with this unique Sale message. How novel! What fun!
One recommendation for improvement: make better use of inbox space. This message is only 432 pixels wide, which, according to best practice, leaves us with almost 200 pixels of extra horizontal space. Take advantage of that space rather than making us scroll down so much to read the very vertical message.
From: FreePeople.com
Subject Line: Go with the flow in Free People dresses
Date: Tuesday, February 14, 2006
From: Barneys New York
Subject Line: Fresh Cannabis
Date: Wednesday, February 15, 2006
There's a Pot Party in my inbox! Today Barney's surprised me with a crazy "WE LOVE CANNABIS" message! Seems a little off-brand for Barney's, despite their attempt to cloak the idea in an elegant, minimalist black box. And maybe it's only because I read it in tandem with the Barney's message, but Free People's dress campaign looks more like it's recommending we let body odor and Marijuana smoke "flow around and through" us. But heck, at least it's on-brand. 4:20, dude!
From: Bliss Beaut-e-mail
Subject Line: winning news from bliss
Date: Friday, February 10, 2006
While I love Bliss products, I sometimes don't love their brand tone. "I-can-have-it-all" sassiness can look too much like "I-can-have-it-all" bitchiness, as is the case with this smirky gal "who's been two-timing." To send something like this so close to Valentine's Day comes off as, well, bitchy.
From: Burberry
Subject Line: Introducing the Burberry Spring 2006 Catalogue
Date: Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Yikes! As you can see from my screenshot here, we've got a coding error in this EDM. The footer's been split from the main message and appears outside of the main email viewing pane. I've seen this happen with campaigns from Burberry, Saks, Land of Nod, Williams-Sonoma... the list goes on!
This error can be easily avoided by encasing ALL of your HTML body code in one big enclosing table. Additionally, stay away from the nowrap tag - it can produce a similar "splitting" effect, especially within the Hotmail email browser.
From: Athleta.com
Subject Line: Leap Into Spring With Athleta
Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2006
Athleta makes a beautiful, dramatic use of whitespace with this "Leap Into Spring" campaign. In an inbox cluttered with super-saturated multi-messages, this EDM was a nice breath of fresh air (which is an appropriate sentiment to associate with the "climb a mountaintop and do your sun-salutation"-like Athleta brand.)
"Leap Now" was a little much for me as a call-to-action, but nonetheless, I'd recommend making it "Leap Now >" to distinguish it as clickable.
From: Abercrombie & Fitch
Subject Line: New at Abercrombie & Fitch
Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2006
Although I do have objections to Abercrombie & Fitch's usual soft-core porn approach, I like the use of rainbow imagery in this particular message. A grudging "good job". One recommendation for improvement: add more obvious click-throughs to the mens and womens collections.
The Subject Line calls out what's "New at Abercrombie & Fitch", so it would have been appropriate to add "shop mens" and "shop womens" links.
From: Barneys New York
Subject Line: Love it!
Date: Friday, February 3, 2006
Barney's put together a fun, simple suite of EDMs for Valentine's Day; they've used this same format for a series of messages featuring this season's gift picks. The creative is pretty cute, although it doesn't include a single call-to-action... but I just love the concept of "Love it!" as a Subject Line and Headline because we're always saying "Love it!" around here, about everything. It's sunny out. "Love it!" It's lunchtime. "Love it!" It's a $1,200 Mini Croisiere handbag. "Love it!"
From: Safeway.com
Subject Line: We Deliver Your Football Party
Date: Wednesday, January 25, 2006
This EDM came to my attention via a colleague - thank you!
I'm not an expert on Football or Deli Trays, but this is some of the weirdest imagery I've ever seen. At first I wasn't sure if it was a gag, but it's true, the glowing deli tray is hovering over a football field.
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