4 Examples of Swipe Files in Action

A swipe file is a record of your top-performing subject lines, emails and landing pages that you return to for learnings and inspiration. Every brand should keep one. To demonstrate how a swipe file can be used, I’m going to share examples from four brands that clearly keep good records and return…

Minimalism Trend in Email Design

Mobile is driving big changes in email design and one of the niche developments is a trend toward minimalism. Emails contain fewer messages, and those that remain are getting simpler, shorter, and more image-driven. In The Best of the Email Swipe File, we represent this trend with a Kickstarter email that consists…

The Many Uses (and 2 Drawbacks) of Animated Gifs

While there are a growing number of video in email options, each with their own limitations, the animated gif is still the predominant way to add motion into an email design. Since the eye is immediately drawn to motion, animated gifs are a wonderful tool that can be used to accomplish a…

Webinar on the 5 Design Trends behind ‘The Best of the Email Swipe File’

Email design practices are being shaped by five major trends: (1) a growing requirement to be mobile-friendly, (2) increasing relevance through personalization, (3) greater sophistication for triggered messages, (4) a stronger editorial voice, and (5) a continued evolution of inspired fundamentals. Join me and Andrea Smith, Design Lead of Content Marketing &…

The Trends Guiding Great Email Design

We recently released The Best of the Email Swipe File, which identifies five trends affecting email design and highlights 20 examples that best exemplify those trends. The Mobile-Friendly trend addresses the shift from wide screens and mice to narrow screens and fat fingers, which includes mobile aware design, responsive design, text-heavy emails…

Check Out the Curves on These Emails!

Earlier this week I discussed 9 Ways to Get Subscribers to Scroll, one of which is to use S-curves. This design tactic takes advantage of saccades, the fact that the human eye jumps around as it scans things. So rather than designing things in a linear fashion, try arranging content in an…

9 Ways to Get Subscribers to Scroll

While there’s a trend toward shorter emails—even very short emails—don’t be fooled into thinking that subscribers won’t scroll. They will. Consistently delivering great email content is one way to get your subscribers to scroll, but there are also some design tactics you can use to encourage scrolling: 1. Ask them to scroll….

The 1, 2, 3 of Defensive Design

Despite Outlook.com and Yahoo Mail recently moving to enable images by default, there are still many email clients that block images by default. Upwards of one-third of your emails are likely opened with images disabled. That makes “defensive design” techniques like HTML text and alt text a must. I have a three-pronged…

JCPenney’s Mobile Aware Email Makeover

While responsive design is getting all the buzz, there are many gradations of email design between the old desktop-centric designs and full-fledged responsive designs. For marketers with smaller budgets or ones looking to take gradual steps toward being mobile-friendly, there are options. Many brands have taken the first step and adopted what…

The Last Word on May 2013

A roundup of articles, posts, tweets and emails you might have missed last month… Must-read articles, posts & whitepapers A False Dichotomy (ClickZ) Most Effective Emails Are Personal (MediaPost) Make Your Memorial Day Email Messages Memorable (E-Dialog) Emails We Love: Hyatt Reservation Reminder (Movable Ink) Four Types of Email Content that Your…