Quark Systems Ltd. wins the InboxVision Email Gallery Design of the Week Award
This email may not be the most exciting out of the bunch we’ve had this week but it certainly has the right content and structure to make this week’s award. Below we’ve added a break down of why we think this email is terrific from head to toe.
TOP
#1. Web version link – This should always be loaded at the top of your email, should you decide to incorporate any images. This should also be in text!
#2. Thin header image - This is an opportunity to describe your company visually and engage your audience. It isn’t always necessary to visually describe the company in the case, as the user will already be familiar with the company because they’ve signed up to the news letter, but this can be a good tool to describe what you’ll be discussing. This may be more useful for customer acquisitions. Limiting the image to a thin letter box shape means that more of your email can be seen if viewed within a narrow preview pane.
#3. Repeated image title - The Header image text “Quark Express Newsletter” is repeated in the body of the email to ensure that if images are turned off that the text won’t be lost and the user will understand the purpose of the email.
#4. Styling reflects their website - Similar colours for headers and links makes the newsletter easily recognisable. You’ve probably already spent a lot of time and money on branding, so keep it up in your emails!
#5. HTML optimised right hand column – Titles on the right hand column are bold and contained nicely with a small amount of cell padding. The dark green breaks up the different offers nicely.
#6. Great offers – One great way to develop a good relationship with a customer is to be useful. We recommend doing what Quark have done here and incorporating 3 offers into your design in a grouped format for relevance, with a short description. Quark have decided to show apps for inspiration, seminars, and a trial. The seminars are particularly useful to make sure their existing customers get the best out of their products and also show off to new customers with an interest in Quark. The test drive also rounds this up nicely and should entice recipients to the latest software.
We would actually add more weight to these offers by putting them in a 3 columned row for greater impact similar to what Apple inc. have done in last week’s Email Gallery Design of the Week. Then placed to break up the content of the email or at the bottom.
#7. Red Text – The seminar ending soonest is coloured in red to draw your attention. This is a good example of how to use this, limiting the text colour change to one instance for greater effect. Unfortunately the email has not been timed especially well as the seminar is on that very day and users are like to be leaving from work and haven’t time to plan ahead.
#8. Other useful and social links – These are small enough not to distract the recipient and have once again been optimised with text. These links have also been appropriately grouped so the left column are ways of contacting them and the others show ways of finding out the products features. Good job Quark!
If you have a lot of links, we would recommend putting the ones you would most like more users to be directed to at the top or bottom of the list as these tend to be clicked through more.
#9. “Boring bits” – Depending in which country you’re emailing to, you’ll need to add:
- Privacy Policy
- Legal information
- Address
- Unsubscribe link
- Website
This might not be essential for certain countries, but we think adding this is a top tip for a professional practice! We also like that Quark has neatly centered this information and made the text smaller, to indicate that this is not part of the body.
BOTTOM
We’ve selected the email from InboxVision’s “be inspired” Email Gallery, a small extract from their Email Intelligence database of a million promotional email designs.
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View the full email details here Brand: Quark Systems Ltd. |
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For more examples of emails or Newsletter email designs click here.
Here are a few other highly-commended email designs:
| View the full email details hereBrand: Codestone Communications Ltd Market sectors: Technology Email Type: Customer Acquisition Subject line: Integrated Business Management Software for SME’s |
View the full email details hereBrand: Computing.co.uk Market sector: Media Email Type: Customer Acquisition Subject line: Great Cooking Classes for Father’s Day |
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Subject Line Alert – here are some recent notable subject lines
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The Co-operative Group Ltd - “Add your voice to help feed the world fairly and sustainably”
Tweet Alert – here are some recent InboxVision Tweets
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Need more inspiration?
All of the email examples came from the InboxVision “be inspired” Email Collection which contains lots of free examples of email design. The gallery is a small extract from the InboxVision Email Market Intelligence database – you can read about the Free 14-day Trial or you can go straight to the Free Trial Registration Page.
