In the build up to our new website design, we’ve now got our blog redesigned and in my opinion, looking great.

To celebrate, we’ve decided to do a double blog post series with our IHM web design team.

This series is a look from two different angles of the email marketing world.  My posts will be based upon the fundamentals of email marketing whilst Chris’s (one of our designers) posts will be based purely on the design aspects of the campaign.

First up is Chris’s choice of email – One from Font Shop Digest.

The subject line is a bit of a tame affair (Digest | FontShop News | October 27, 2009).  It repeats the send from name in the Subject Line which is never impressive and it doesn’t really entice me into opening the email. 

In terms of offering some improvement of the subject line; it’s a bit tough as I know virtually nothing about the font industry (about the last 10 minutes looking on their site) but if they could mention what the main feature of the email is in the subject line, that may see an increase in interested openers.

My Suggestion: “This months new and exclusive fonts plus all the latest news”

Okay so onto the actual email itself.  The first thing you nice is the date – I mean, there’s no way to miss it; it’s huge. I eventually decided though, this isn’t a bad thing. 

The logo is near by so that the branding is still coming across and it gives the beginning of the email a quirk to it – something I’m sure the design community love.  The addition of a link to the font that has been used to create the date is something which I quite liked as well; the large date initially draws the eye and then there is a clear call-to-action to satisfy any further interest.

The email itself is nicely put together – the obvious gripe I’m going to have with it is due to the overuse of images in the email – the ratio is in the favour of the images far too much.  Understandably, it is going to be an uphill struggle for a font company to advertise their fonts without having them as images and in there defence, they have made use of text wherever possible so I can’t really make improvements on what they have done.

They do get minus points for the use of the search function in the email – nice idea, if it worked in most email clients.  As it doesn’t, it’s a bit of a waste.

In terms of the campaign on a whole, it has more than just a sales pitch which means that even if the recipient isn’t interested in purchasing at the time of the email, there is still interesting content for them to read through; meaning the recipients interest is maintained throughout.

You can view Chris’ take on this email here