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4 of our Favourite Email Marketing Examples and Why They’re Brilliant

4 mins read

Over the years, the quality of email marketing has been consistently rising to keep up with the education of the recipients. People are becoming wary of emails and their genuineness. Because of this, email marketers have had to overcome challenges and evolve so that they can capture the attention of their recipients. 

In this article, we will discover some of the most effective and efficient email marketing campaigns to ever grace the internet. I’ll highlight the little aspects that we too can incorporate into our own email marketing campaigns.

Sound fair enough?

Let’s get into it.

  1. Buzzfeed - “Buzzfeed Today’ Newsletter”

buzzfeed-email-example

Buzzfeed are the pinnacle of informal marketing (they basically post memes all day). Because of this, they target youths who are growing into their careers. This means that they use entertainment from the internet in their marketing campaigns. This is really effective in targeting Millennials (people born from 1981 - 1996) and some from Generation Z (1997 - present). It involves using relevant information and most importantly, humour. 

Here are a few ideas from Buzzfeed that you can use in your email marketing campaign:

  • Relevant topics - Buzzfeed always keeps their content fresh and based around trending subjects, which makes them more relevant and appealing to show that they are “with the times”. 
  • Humour - humour will always be an effective method of attraction, especially when it comes to your target market. This means that you should analyse what your target market finds entertaining and use that to entice them into viewing your content.
  • Style - Buzzfeed have a bespoke email approach of being very informal. This means that they have to identify the right people to send it to. Because of their email style, they will only send emails to people who will enjoy informal content.
  1. TheSkimm - Calendar Sync

uber-email-campaign

This is one of my personal favourites. TheSkimm’s email has understood how long it usually takes for a person to understand an email. 

Normally when a person receives an email, they will spend a very short amount of time skim-reading it in order to understand its meaning faster. Rather that ignoring that fact, TheSkimm have encouraged the reader to skim-read the email, resulting in a strange but clever experience for the receiver which could then lead to a higher CTR as it’s so striking.

Here are a few highlights from this email marketing campaign and why they are so effective: 

  • Analysing the behaviour of recipients - TheSkimm have seen how people respond to emails and have decided to utilise that. This makes for a very innovative, personal effect in the email as it promotes a sort of “gotcha” response by catching the reader out for not reading the email fully.
  • CTA position - In order to captivate the attention of the reader, TheSkimm have placed the CTA at the top of the email. This means that the email gets to the point first and explains what happens if you “sync” afterwards.
  • CTA reiteration - TheSkimm have used two CTAs in their email with two different designs. This keeps the recipient reading the email as they get to the end and are hit with another CTA, reminding them of the action they should take. 
  1. Nike - Summer Essentials

Screenshot 2019-10-03 at 13.48.25

Nike is one of the biggest brands in the world, but even they have to come up with ways to attract new customers (as if they didn’t have enough). A good question to ask would be “how does Nike attract more customers in such a saturated market?”. 

The answer is simple - KEEP. IT. FRESH.

Nike uses its brand dominance to keep on top of trends and therefore at the forefront of the clothing market. They emulate this through their marketing campaigns such as Summer Essentials. If you look at the layout of this email, you can see that it’s stylish, simple and also promotes some of their clothing items visually. 

Here are some tips we can take from this email campaign that could inspire us in our email marketing campaigns: 

  • Design - Everything about this email is both professional, yet stylish. Because of how crisp, clean and direct this design is, it makes the reader want to keep looking. We can implement this into the design of our email marketing campaigns by experimenting with our background images, colour, CTA design and text placement.
  • Minimalistic text - The way that this email uses different text fonts is optimised to make the reader keep reading even if they’re skimming it. The fact there’s not a lot of text means that the reader will be invested enough to read the email - especially if they’re using their phone. Less body text is better than big chunky body paragraphs.
  • Logo placement - the fact that Nike have used their logo at the very top of their email means that when the recipient opens the email, they know exactly who it is from and can immediately decide if they want to keep reading it.
  1. Nintendo - Nintendo Labo

Nintendo

Nintendo is highly regarded across the world as one of the most creative brands out there, and here is a prime example. Nintendo have utilised GIFs in emails and created their own. This gets their point across in a way that is unique, offering a memorable experience for the recipient.

This email got the word out about Nintendo’s Labo to all of its recipient and Nintendo’s Switch users quickly downloaded it. This is because of the experience it gives to the reader. Even as the writer of this blog, I can say this provided me with a lot of entertainment while I was typing this up.

Here are a few tips we can get from this email marketing campaign to use in our own: 

  • Effort - Nintendo has put effort into creative thinking and easily-applicable email features. We too can take a look at the features we haven’t yet implemented from platforms like Gmail or Outlook.

Creativity - If you notice on the GIF, Nintendo have included individual animated features within the GIFs (GIFception if you will). This has an even more powerful effect as people will find more enjoyment in their email. We can implement this type of creativity in our emails by putting a tiny bit more effort in just to add more value to the reader’s experience.

What we think

As a digital marketing agency, we have a lot of experience with emails and email marketing campaigns. We’ve tested some of these techniques and when compared to previous campaigns, they perform so much better. 

The most effective technique we found was to put more effort into your emails, even if it’s just a tiny bit. It makes your message stand out a lot in your recipients’ inboxes. It’s common knowledge that change intrigues people, so when a person receives an email that may include a GIF or an image, they’ll be more likely to stay and find out what it is about. 

So how can you develop your marketing campaigns and increase interaction?

Using HubSpot to get the most out of your email marketing campaigns

Email marketing is incredibly important, but only with the right CRM and segmentation will you be able to gain the most benefits. 

Download our HubSpot Essentials Guide for a look at handy email templates you can use in your marketing campaigns.

It also includes the essential information on CRMs and the respective setup processes, as well as tips for social media and website integration.

Click below for your download.