From: Piperlime
Subject Line: Wonderful work shoes and sale now up to 50% off.
Date: Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Here, Piperlime uses smart, propped silhouette photography. The propping both contextualizes the product and helps prevent the image from looking too austere. At the same time, this type of photography allows us to avoid some of the tricky creative production issues that come with using environmental shots, such as matching type and color blocks to the photo (which would be particularly difficult for a brand heavily drawn in lime), as well as manipulating the image to make overlaid type legible. Smart stuff!
From: UrbanOutfitters.com
Subject Line: Who are you? And do you like Free Shipping?
Date: Thursday, August 10, 2007
This EDM uses a compelling offer to gather subscriber data. At the same time, it throws production values out the window in favor of humor. UO pokes fun at it's own categorization process, adding "Mama's Boy", "Blog", and of course, "Lindsay" and "Hilary" menu items.
From: J.Crew
Subject Line: Crewcuts has arrived.
Date: Friday, March 31, 2006
From: online@luckybrand.com
Subject Line: New Lucky Kid for Summer from Lucky Brand Jeans - Plus Free Shipping
Date: Wednesday, June 7, 2006
I understand experts have observed a cultural phenomenon wherein American parents are casting their children more and more in their own images, right down to the $120 designer denim. Here, two national retailers jump on the "Mini-Me" bandwagon. The forecast:
1) J.Crew: What TOOK you so long? I forsee success and many mini-polo-wearing babies. (I heard from a retail associate that Crewcuts merchandise is flying off the shelves.)
2) Lucky Brand Jeans: I anticipate a more uncertain future. While I don't know for sure, I would imagine Lucky's target demographic falls into a pre-marriage pre-baby-making age bracket. I see folks in tie-dyed Janis Joplin t-shirts balking at the thought of matching kiddies in Skull & Crossbones onesies.
On an unrelated note, Lucky Brand Jeans puts so much effort into their retail stores - the look, the displays, the whole experience is very unique and well-done. While their website and email campaigns integrate some of the retail location feeling successfully, the overall production quality is disappointing in comparison.
From: Scoop NYC
Subject Line: New for Fall: Tory Burch + Kooba @ scoopnyc.com!!
Date: Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Luxury retailers in particular need to pay attention to their EDM production values. While www.scoopnyc.com is a respectible-looking website, quality standards drop off on their email campaigns. This particular campaign body is coded as a single low-res graphic using an image map for linking. Image mapping doesn't work in several popular email browsers, disablings click-through for a substantial percentage of subscribers. The rest of the message was coded without browser-compatibility in mind, apparent from the random positioning of the search box, a stray call-to-action carrot, and even several special characters appearing in the upper-left corner of the message.
We can look at email campaigns as flashes in the pan, and from this perspective, details aren't so important. But we can also look at email marketing as an opportunity to cultivate an intimate, ongoing conversation with our customers. If we take this stance, what message does low production quality communicate?
We have to sweat the details and give customers the respect they deserve! They are the only reason you have a job!
From: Diesel
Subject Line: Give your money a holiday
Date: Thursday, June 15, 2006
What a fun, well-produced sale campaign. It manages to scream sale without screaming sale.
From: BananaRepublic.com
Subject Line: New casual pants have arrived + spring sale continues...
Date: Tuesday, March 28 2006
This is the second time in a single month we've had to scold BananaRepublic.com for their production values. This time, the violation is not only sloppy, it's weird. Check floating out the Banana Twins on the right. Double your pants, double your fun.
On a separate note, all Gap Brands websites were down again this weekend. Saturday was one of the first times I'd attempted to visit BananaRepublic.com since experiencing the aggravation of it's initial noncompliance with Safari web browser. On Saturday the site was not working at all, and on Sunday, while the homepage and category pages seemed to work, the product pages themselves were not functioning properly. I guess this is just another issue factoring into Gap's disappointing sales results. And yes, now you know I spent the whole weekend in front of the computer. Oy.
From: Athleta.com
Subject Line: Surf's Up and so is Athleta's New Summer Lineup
Date: Tuesday, April 4, 2006
While I find Athleta's consistent use of full-width outdoor photography appropriate to their product, the images are consistently undersaturated and dull, begging for whiter whites and brighter colors. Notice how the surf in this shot is a dull grey? It's depressing. Now imagine it a crystal blue. This is a happier picture: infinitely more effective. It's all about the PhotoShop Hue/Saturation, baby.
Additionally, I'm curious about the use of capitalization in the main body text. We should be grammatically incorrect only when it benefits the overall aesthetic or meaning of the message. I don't think miscapitalization improves this campaign in any way.
From: BananaRepublic.com
Subject Line: Hurry, last week to save 15% + new suits for spring...
Date: Tuesday, March 7, 2006
This email campaign was brought to my attention by Shinn Chen. Thanks Shinn!
In fact, two other collegues have also mentioned the following issue in connection with recent BananaRepublic.com messages: the image quality is too low. While there's something to be said for keeping images on the light side for faster loading, blurry product photographs and, in this case, copy blocks, do not a good impression make.
Additionally, over the past several months, BananaRepublic.com's clothing imagery has shown wrinkles. PhotoShoppers, employ the blur tool!
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