Every morning I look forward to checking my email. No, really! I love opening my inbox and checking out the emails I get from the brands I follow. I enjoy seeing the unique content and call-to-action buttons they come up with to market a hot new product or the season’s newest line. Some brands get pretty creative, and that’s when I tuck some examples away for inspiration.‍

Z-Shaped Layout
The Z-shaped layout was the first thing to catch my eye in this example. It helped guide me smoothly down the email, from the exclusive “limited time only” deal prominently displayed in the hero image to the Dipper 2 Pant.

And did you notice the images and the customer reviews? Pay attention to how the women are actually pointing to or facing the customer reviews. This helps draw your eye from the lifestyle image to the user-generated content gushing over how amazing the clothing is.

This layout is extremely readable, but before you implement this tactic, there are some things you must consider – particularly around responsive design. Think about how you want the content to look on a mobile device – do you want the text under the images or next to it? If the text is next to the images, will it be large enough to read? Planning out the layout in advance will ensure your entire audience can read, click and respond easily.

A Single Message or Theme
There’s so much I love about this message. Cute pups, clever puns, and colorful illustrations? More, please! One thing in particular that called out to me in this message was the theme.

To not overwhelm your reader, it’s important that each of your marketing emails have one purpose or a single theme.

This message does a great job of focusing on one thing and one thing only: “dog-tor” products. Even if your dog doesn’t get the joke, you will! This message does an excellent job of hilariously calling out the fun products you can buy. The cool mix of photography and illustration adds a nice design touch and the gigantic call-to-action buttons make this extremely user-friendly and clickable!

These messages work well when you target your audience by only sending this message to people who have recently browsed dog toys or who have purchased dog toys in the past or have it marked as a preference. To learn more about personalization tactics, check out Julie Wahl’s latest blog “Email Personalization: Dynamic Content in Listrak Composer”.

Multiple Messages Done Right
Though it’s important to focus your message on one thing, it is possible to talk about multiple things if you do it the right way. This message does a fantastic job of pairing together food, wine, and dessert to get multiple products in one spot without overwhelming the user.

The simple design makes it easy to scan the headlines, and the incredible photography alone helps me engage in the message.

You can automate messages like this using Listrak’s Personalization Suite. It lets you take all of the great messaging, articles, blog posts and site content that you worked so hard to create and automatically populate emails with the content that is most relevant to each recipient. You can see how it works by testing the demo on our site.

Are there any brands’ emails you look forward to receiving?