Trade tool and hardware supplier Screwfix have a cheeky offer in their latest email – I’m not sure if this is intentional or not, but it’d definitely boost open rates!

Elsewhere there’s lots of good stuff going on – they’ve got an effective email pre-header, a well formed navigation and buttons that drive to their social media activity.

Update – it was intentional, good work guys!

Apple Emails always seem to go down well – there’s a good balance of inspirational design and email best practice (although there’s a few simple wins that seem to get missed off). This one promotes the educational discount for students (and probably also targets parents/siblings of students too).

In a departure from the usual Apple style, the hero area is a full bleed photo, as opposed to the more regular product shot predominantly on white. This helps differentiate the education campaigns from the Apple store ones, and seems to be a running theme in non-store campaigns.

ps. please can I have a free iPad? (worth a try)

This recent email from UK travel agent STA Travel shows that designers shouldn’t be afraid to make use of the page background in email. Whilst the overall width of this campaign sticks to a best practice 600px,  some clever coding with tables means that the hero image breaks out into the background area if there’s enough screen space available.

Clever innovations like this really help add value for those users that see them, and, if care is taken, can be made to degrade gracefully so they don’t negatively affect those users with smaller screens or less able browsers.

Made.com are a furniture retailer with a difference – users vote on the next product to get made, and then once enough orders are placed they go into production.

Their email is refreshingly bright, and employs a simple spectrum of colours – this really helps the product stand out from the rest of the email. The minimalist, non-bloated copy also matches the non-cluttered style of the products and brand.

We’ve looked at Swell emails before but here’s an example of how cheeky copywriting can really make your subject line punchy. I like the design and products in the Swell newsletters and look out for them anyway, so when the subject line is out of the ordinary (and probably borderline offensive)  it’s extra intriguing – Good work!