Recently in Imagery Category

• I like how Ballard Designs encouraged subscribers to join their social networks (including Pinterest!) with this creative, textured email -- and I LOVE the banner at the bottom asking me to add my birthday to my customer profile for a special birthday surprise!
  
  
• J.Jill suggested two casual looks for Superbowl Sunday using both the Giants and Patriots team colors. A pretty creative tie-in.
  
  
• This email from Burton does a great job of using animation to call out features of their new jacket.  Check out the email here, and the gif here.
  
  
• TO THE BATPAGE >>  This Batman promo from MSN is great!  It's eye-catching, breaks away from a traditional frame to utilize inbox space nicely, and even includes a directional line to guide your eye through the content.  Really great stuff.
  
  
• Honda sent a pre-release of their epic Ferris Bueller Superbowl commercial to subscribers a week before the big game.   And for that, I say danke schoen.
  
  
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• Pun of the month goes to Piperlime!  And this one's a twofer. 
  
  
• Lucky Jeans announced their new blog launch through a personal letter from their style director.
  
  
• This email from J.Jill does a great job of incorporating a video gif into the hero, and I also love the series of static images below that helps convey the concept for Outlook users (who can't see the gif).
  
  
• Neiman Marcus also featured a few video gifs this month, to highlight some clips from Milan Fashion Week.  In this case, the gifs really help to show the flow and movement of the fabric on the runway. Check out the email here, and the gif here.
  
  
• There's nothing worse than someone forgetting your name.  Dell's attempt to add value through personalization backfired because they didn't have my information.
  
  
• Gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches are a hot topic these days, and Crate & Barrel does a good job of serving up this cheesetastic email with a recipe and a special section for "What you need to prep this recipe."  Nice way to pull a themed email together.
  
  
• JCPenney sent this somewhat cryptic email with a lot of "NOs" and a mysterious message that "Things are changing 2.1.12." What the email is referring to is JCPenney's new marketing approach, and the blowing up of their old brand.  I'm really excited to see what these changes will mean for their email program.  [Spoiler: of their first three emails in February, two have been animated, and one is a horizontal scroller - way to come out of the gate swinging!] 
  
  
  

• "Dude food" - it's "Mantastic!" -- Some really cute copywriting in this football themed Betty Crocker email.
  
  
• West Elm did a great job of using popular bloggers to show their office furniture in real-life applications.  They used bloggers to choose gift ideas over the holiday season last year, too.
  
  
• This Harley-Davidson email includes a really neat animated gif to show all the different customization options.  See the email here, and the gif here.
  
  
• Clorox Classrooms asked subscribers to "Give us a grade!" in a survey request email.  Very cute copy.
  
  
• The Container Store made Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list, for the thirteenth time in a row - and sent a fun shout out email to celebrate.
  
  
• charity: water always does such a nice job with their newsletters, and this year-end wrap-up was no exception.  Nicely done!
  
  
• Brooks Brothers promotes their monogrammed shirts with a little presidential trivia.
  
  
  

• These boots were made for horizontal scrolling at DSW.
  
  
• Helzberg Diamonds also tried out a horizontal scroller this month - with clear arrows and a flowing ribbon image to help encourage the scroll.
  
  
• This Banana Republic email is NOT a side-scroller, but the cut-off images on the right and the arrow are reminiscent of one, indicating there's more to see.
  
  
• Wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle... West Elm proves you don't always have to get complicated with animation to add a little delight. See the email here, and the animation in action here.
  
  
• If one nav is good, then FIVE is better!  Backcountry included 5 sets of winter gear links divided by outdoor conditions (and a thermometer to show the temps).  Cool way to shop.
  
  
• Ugg Australia made an interesting attempt to mobilize this recent email.  It seems what they were trying to achieve was an email that would scale nicely into an iPhone - so they created a 640px email with HUGE text and images that would scale down to the iPhone's 320px mobile screen beautifully.  Unfortunately, while the iPhone experience will be great, that's about the only advantage to this.  Android devices do not scale (and only display the first 480px of screen width) and the desktop version appears awkward this way, stretching all the way down to 2,600px in length.  A better bet for optimizing across devices would have been to design the email for 480px of width, which would still appear great on an Android and a desktop, while scaling to look fine on an iPhone as well.
  
  
• Charles David's "sale got even bigger" and so did their email - coming in at a whopping 760px wide.
  
  
• Dillards accidentally sent an email to thank me for purchasing something I did not purchase. They promptly sent out an "oopsy" email - and also replaced the image in the original email with one that said "oops! We sent you this email by mistake."  Although I appreciate their prompt recognition of the error, their oopsy is still missing a clear apology for the mistake/inconvenience.
  
  
• In what might be the most relevant email -- ever, Albertsons sent me a reminder to pick up some supplies before our big northwest snowstorm last month.  Really, so smart!  

• Move a call-to-action above the fold
• Create a primary message focus by expanding the hero image through to the left rail, or by bringing down the font size in the left rail so it's more obvious that it's a secondary message
• Use a unified headline and copy treatment (as well as HTML text for body copy)
• Clean up a bit of the cluttered imagery at the bottom

From: Coach
Subject Line: have you seen it? the new coach.com
Date: Monday, April 4, 2009

Coach.com announced their website revamp via email this morning. In contrast to the very focused approach taken by Williams-Sonoma in 2008, Coach's message is an explosion of screenshots and pink. While I could go on about the lack of standard logo and navigation, the unfortunate, not-so-easy-to-read tiny graphical text and the endless scrolling, that would just be boring. By now, we've all taken a trip on the best practices train to 516 W34th Street and back. (Check out our Email Insider "Break the Rules" article for more on this topic.) What I like about this email is that while it's absolutely overflowing with content and screengrabs, it's also overflowing with enthusiasm and excitement. I get the sense that Coach is excited about the new coach.com, and therefore, so am I. As an email viewer, do I have the patience to actually squint through the fine print and all the little screenshots? Not so much. But I am inspired to click through and check out the new website (and I'm not really even a Coach shopper), so in essence, this email has more than done it's job.

I like to make this analogy: a promotional retail email should act like a retail store window. It needs to be compelling enough to bring passers-by inside.