Design
It’s no shock that Mailchimp do email marketing well. It’s their thing! The simple design and colours are warm, friendly and invite you to learn more.
Similarly to Nike, the header is clutter free, allowing space for the logo icon and then dives right down to the header message.
The headline is simple and strong, there’s no misunderstanding what the email is about. My only critique here is that they could have been a little more friendly, it’s more Mailchimp!
The blue background colour and hero image that blends in with it, rather than stands out, means you are drawn into the email. A nice touch.
I would argue the text is slightly small, and if I were them I would cut the amount of copy down, allowing you to click to read more. Perhaps remove the video section and get right to the CTA.
I’d perhaps make the CTA text more appealing, rather than a boring ‘Read the blog’ you could go for ‘Explore’, ‘Learn more’ or ‘Discover how’… Something that entices you to click a little more.
Remember, use email as a gateway to your product or blog post, don’t give everything away in the email itself. Drive people from the email to your website, use email as a channel, not the end medium.
On brand
Their current website is drastically different from the email, but they just gone through a rebrand, so all is forgiven.
Mobile view
The email looks fairly similar on mobile screens than on desktops, the layout doesn’t really change much. This approach isn’t called responsive (which refers to content that shifts around to adapt for smaller screens), it’s called scalable, where the content squashes to adjust to the screen as it shrinks.
The one thing that is notable is the button, which expands 100% on mobiles. This is a best practice, as you need wherever possible to get people to click the CTA.
Layout
This is precisely what we expect to see, a simple email layout made up of HTML tables, more so than the Nike email. Remember what I said earlier; if you can use HTML over images, use it.
Images turned off
The key benefit of using HTML over images, is that when images are turned off, or fail to load super-fast, you still get the message.
What you’ll notice is the word MailChimp in place of where the logo sat. This is what’s called an alt tag. The alt tag began life in web development as a way to tell search engines what was there if the image doesn’t load, but it’s now more used for SEO purposes. In an email, an alt tag is really to display the text where images are turned off (damn you Outlook). One thing most people miss, is that you can style the alt tag to closely match the logo colour, style and size.
See this example below from one of our clients Roskill.
Subject line
The use of emojis in this subject line works really well, and injects a bit of fun into the email (chimp, photo, party).
The subject line almost word for word repeats the headline within, so it means there’s a clear path from email to web. Think of the journey the recipient takes, and make it as seamless as possible:
Email in the inbox = subject line entices them to open it
Email opened = the headline is relevant to the subject line
Email read = what is this email about, why do I care, where do I click?
Email CTA clicked = website or landing page headline and offer
Ref: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/introducing-instagram-ad-campaigns-in-mailchimp/
