West elm has a slew of what look to be templates that are super clean in their design. They rely on the great product photography for the most part and always have a grid as the foundation. There is care taken with the typography and this helps the designs sing. The photography is very high quality with beautiful staging.

Note that the text footers were longer than what I’m showing here. My screenshots only show the first part to make sure the images aren’t too long. But you can get an idea of how they are formatted.

The emails are generally monochromatic and always complement the colors in the product photography (which are usually neutrals, so this is easy). West Elm has the freedom as a brand to use their logo in different colors which is great to tie the entire email together in one primary color.

The email above is just about as over-the-top holiday-themed as I saw from West Elm. One thing that I appreciated was that West Elm didn’t only stick to the typical red and green color scheme for this time of year. They weren’t afraid to use yellows, interesting shades of green, or just gray.

Another technique for keeping the emails interesting is the different layouts that are seen in the main area. Some of the emails here rely on one image, the email above has a three column layout and you’ll see the last one in my list has a nice rectangle message area followed by a grid of products.

These emails and products are obviously geared toward an audience who appreciates aesthetics so it does make sense that they are so image heavy. Although, after having said that, the emails fare well if you have your images turned off, too (the offer is stated in the pre-header).

The email above is an example of how they handle an email that is mostly typography-based. West Elm is not afraid to keep it simple (as evinced by their product line as well.) This email was refreshing to see admist some of the more hectic things going on in my inbox.

Another element that I like that West Elm added for the holidays, is an added “ship it in time” area at the top of the functional footer. It isn’t intrusive but gives an overview of the key dates you need to purchase by to send gifts by Christmas and Hanukkah for different types of shipping options. This is a really smart idea!

I’m just about always happy to see an email from West Elm, and if nothing else, it is to check out what they are doing design-wise. Their subtle changes day to day and overall aesthetic are really successful in this medium. Nice work West Elm!

What retailers have you seen that have consistently good design in their emails?

Often email gets overlooked as a space for telling stories. The primary function is, rightfully, prompting action. However, sometimes the right mix of elements can come together to bring both of these things into one piece. This project was one of those opportunities, so we wanted to share it here.

Icebreaker is an apparel company focusing on a very special product that mixes the versatility of an outdoor technical product, the sleek aesthetic of an activewear product, and the sustainability few companies can boast with its refined merino wool fabric. They have a fantastic brand story and push the envelope with their presence, often using provocative and mythical imagery to support their ethos that reminds us that “it’s about our relationship to nature, and to each other.”

In this instance Icebreaker wanted us to help announce their newest line of clothing for the Spring 2010 season (It’s spring in the Southern Hemisphere). We took this opportunity to not only elevate the presence of their brand in email, but also to use some unique ways of getting their message across. We created two versions of this email, one vertical and one horizontal. Some background on why we wanted to try this out can be found on this previous post by Dylan over on Email Wars.

We were excited about trying out this technique, and thought this highly refined brand deserved an equally beautiful email. Fortunately for Icebreaker, the retail space often uses lots of imagery to communicate with their audience, so we could feel comfortable knowing this would not be out of line. We did, however, make sure we covered our bases with the standard preheader and good alt tags to make sure those with images turned off knew they were missing something important.

One of the unique challenges was with making sure folks knew to look for more content on the horizontal version. We tried to keep the main call to action within the normal viewing pane realm, but added a call to “explore the landscape” with and anchor tag that would push you to the right to reveal the hidden content.

Overall the response to the email was very favorable, with lots of great traffic to their site. Without hard analytics from the client to help make the outcome crystal clear, we can only report that the client was very pleased with the outcome and the resulting traffic it drove to their website. The vertical and horizontal email both performed strong, so the debate over whether one format will win out is still unclear.

Anyone have experiences using this horizontal technique? It may catch on in more places, but right now it’s just great to see a brand willing to take chances and keep their audience guessing what they will do next.

Just yesterday a link came through to the group here that eROI has a few nods in the category of email newsletters over on the site BEN (Beautiful Email Newsletters). The content here is user-generated, so its rad to see our stuff show up multiple times. There’s really some great work here to get the ideas a flowin’. Check it out!

Most of the visual elements are borrowed from the site design, which makes a seamless experience. What is so impressive to me is that the design speaks to history and things that are old; yet the emails have a clean, modern, relevant look.

The pairing of browns and greens works well for the palette. It mirrors that old/new idea. The sepia tone or black and white photography is always beautiful and touching. The typography is well-loved. The design employs plenty of white space which helps to achieve the modern, clean feel. Nice.

Details that I am especially fond of:

• the ornaments used: check out how they are used in the the “we’re here to help” area above
• the rules: the double rules that are used to divide sections, as well as the outlines around color fields

The only beef I have with the design is that some of the drop shadows do seem a bit heavy handed (see for instance the shadow on the book under “Save $50″ in the uppermost email). But overall, I think the design is well executed.

Even the “simple emails” that could have been text-only are well planned and easy on the eyes:

Well done Ancestry.com, well done.

While we work with and begrudgingly support Microsoft products this Outlook 2007 is really throwing up some roadblocks. Most recently, anchor tags. Has this always been an issue? To be honest we’re not sure. The anchors work in some emails and not others. What is up with that? Too bad were not scientists and can bust out the beakers, mix together some liquids and create a solution. The rhyme and reason of this latest issue is a mystery.

Our main conundrum is to press on and leave Outlook 2007 behind or modify the entire email to get along with everything. Is the anchor tag a deal breaker?

So we set sail for today and we’ll see what we can come up with tomorrow… stay tuned.