Email Inspiration: Next Christmas Newsletter
This newsletter design from UK fashion retailer next is chock full of little bits of best practice for retail emails.
The one line summary and quick call to action right at the top function well as a Johnson Box, plus they have the added benefit of showing up as text in the outlook preview box and in web clients such as Gmail. Adding the date in the top corner helps make feel like part of a sequence, and something to look out for each week.
It’s interesting to note that the “contents” style links in the hero area don’t link to different parts of the email, but click through to the site. As the various pages on the next website function well as landing pages, and contain similar content to the bulk of the email, this isn’t a big deal. The vertical menu is less commonplace in email marketing but works well here, and the design of the hero area ensures important information such as the company logo, introduction and key navigation all fall within both the horizontal and vertical preview panes.
Under the introduction area we have various sections detailing ranges of products for men, women, children etc. It would be relatively simple to custom publish this content based on the sex of the recipient, for example, however as many would be gift buying perhaps it’s prudent to include “irrelevant” content in this case.
Despite being rather image heavy, the mailing is sprinkled with web text links to the next site, which still render even when images are turned off.
The Christmas background pattern is a nice touch, and would be easy to switch out for different seasons and events.