From: Lands' End
Subject Line: $10 off Outerwear: do you know where your coat is?
Date: Friday, November 2, 2007
Happy Friday! Woo hoo!
This definitely isn't my favorite creative ever - it's kind of a flat sea of blah muted blue - but I'm interested in how animation is employed to walk recipients through how to use a website feature. Check it out here. I do believe this is the first time I've seen an image rotate in tandem with words highlighted within a paragraph, effectively pairing copy points with associated visuals. Neat idea.
From: Saks Fifth Avenue
Subject Line: Want It! Our Spring Trend Line-Up + FREE SHIPPING
Date: Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Saks' new "Want it!" campaign tagline is such a shameless rip-off of Barney's " Love it!" campaign from last year. It's just too similar not to blow the whistle on it. I do think they made fun use of the rotating GIF though - click here to see it.
From: CB2
Subject Line: wait til you see this chair
Date: Tuesday, March 6, 2007
This campaign from CB2 is a breath of fresh air. It's simple, bright, seasonally-appropriate, and just plain happy. And the subtle butterfly animation makes the whole thing that much more "just so." There's a tangible sense of creative and marketing teams getting excited behind this one, and subscribers can feel that. You guys win the spring spirit award this week for sure.
From: Restoration Hardware
Subject Line: Save 20% and Color Coordinate Your Bath
Date: Monday, January 15, 2007
Folks have been comfortably using the animated GIF to feature multiple colorways for some time now. While I generally see it done with a hero image, I believe this is the first time I've seen it happening with alt shots. It's a pretty effect. Will it sell more towels? Click here to see it.
In order to achieve this, Restoration Hardware has used image mapping, which we all know is an absolute no-no in email marketing due to email program incompatability. (Some email programs strip out image maps.) However, I don't believe RH did this out of laziness or ignorance. The problem is, if you put more than one rotating GIF image in a single campaign, it seems to be next-to-impossible to get them to rotate in unison. So one way of tackling that issue would be to save the separate images as a single rotating GIF, and tack on the image map to get them to link to their respective locations in most email browsers. I'd be curious to see, in this case, whether the trade-off was worth it.
I'm even more curious to know whether anyone has a solution to the multiple-rotating-GIFs-in-unison issue. Major props to anyone who can offer advice on that.
One last totally unrelated note on Restoration Hardware marketing in general: they're promoting "annual" sales way too often. Even if the last was lighting and the next is bath, they all blur into one "annual" category, and feel more like a year-long sale than special events.
From: west elm
Subject Line: Bold Neutrals: slip into a new bedroom for spring
Date: Tuesday, January 2, 2007
This is a nice use of a rotating GIF, even just on a purely visual level. Click here to see the animation.
From: The Land of Nod
Subject Line: Introducing Furniture Color Previews
Date: Thursday, June 15, 2006
The dynamic color swap is a great innovation in ecommerce, and I applaud Land of Nod for implementing a Furniture Preview Tool. Also, although it's a little jerky, they make great use of the rotating GIF here to illustrate this new functionality. However, this email suffers from a Land-of-Nod-centric perspective. Rather than touting their own amazing functionality, the copy should focus on how this functionality serves the customer. The text should highlight how easy and fun the customer's furniture shopping experience will be, not how impressed they'll be with the Land of Nod. Remember who you're selling to!
To view the animation, click here.
From: CB2
Subject Line: Introducing the CB2 Gift Registry
Date: Monday, June 12, 2006
Building upon last week's novel usage of animation, CB2 brings us yet another delightful employment of the rotating GIF. While this works wonderfully as an announcement, I could see it working equally well for sale by category messaging. To view the animation, click here.
From: CB2
Subject Line: Now back in stock by popular demand
Date: Tuesday, May 30, 2006
What a novel, effective usage of the animated GIF! Here, CB2 uses animation to their advantage in two primary ways:
1) By rolling in the 12 restocked products one at a time, CB2 guides us to follow the progression, influencing us to actually look at each item individually.
2) Combined with the grey circular grid design, the animation diverts our attention from the fact that the products are a mish-mash, effectively avoiding the dreaded "garage sale" look.
To view the animation, click here.
From: Crate and Barrel
Subject Line: Custom Color Outdoor Collections
Date: Tuesday, April 25, 2006
From: Lands' End
Subject Line: Family Summer Fun Starts Here
Date: Tuesday, May 9, 2006
While the rotating GIF image image can be a fun, dynamic addition to any EDM, it is rare that the animation ultimately edifies the actual message. Here we have two examples in which the rotating GIF is used efficaciously.
Like Pottery Barn's April 17 Chesapeake Collection ourdoor furniture message, Crate and Barrel's "Custom Outdoor Collections" campaign engages shoppers in the furniture customization process using color swatches. Here, going one step further, Crate and Barrel applies the color options to the product using the rotating GIF. Unfortunately, we run into some image dithering here, a common scenario when saving photography in the GIF file format, however, the sacrifice is well worth it in this instance. On an unrelated note, I applaud the inclusion of four lower pricepoint "Coordinating Items" in addition to the furniture product, as full-price furniture is often a difficult sell via the EDM vehicle.
View the animation here >
Let's move on to the Land's End message. For the purpose of this discussion, let's ignore the jumbled lower half of the message and focus on the animated GIF. I truly admire the way they've synchronized their category names with correlating imagery. This could be a great way to do a New Season Intro message (for instance, What's New for Summer for "Boys", "Girls", etc.) or a Gift Finder campaign (Great Gifts for "Men", "Women", "Coworkers", "Kids", etc.)
View the animation here >
As internet bandwidth increases and email inbox capacity skyrockets, consider the animated GIF as a way to add another dimension to your next campaign.
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