One of the things I love about our seasonal readymade templates is how they inspire our customers to take a break from their regular email programming and try something different. Our Valentine's Day collection is no exception.
Check out how these Emma customers are using free Valentine's Day template in addition to regular branded emails.
Love note #1: Dina Ellen
Beloved Pittsburgh boutique Dina Ellen has simple branding that always lets products shine in email promotions (like the email on the left).
But for Valentine's Day, Dina Ellen designed an email promo (on the right) on our Love is in the Air template. The bright blue background pairs beautifully with a striking image of a bracelet.
Love note #2: Write Life
Write Life is a collaborative publishing company that sends regular newsletters on a custom designed template (like the email on the left), but this week they mailed a sweet note (right) to subscribers on our We {Heart} You template.
The pink hues in the template design play sweetly with the pink accents in Write Life's content images.
Love note #3: Morada Blue Swimwear
Online swimwear shop Morada Blue makes me wish it were swimsuit season all year long. Some emails (like the one on the left) go out on a basic template with their own image as a header, but Morada Blue's February promo (right) was designed on our Valentine's Day Sale template.
The rosy background and photos with overlayed design elements and copy work together to make a beautiful, memorable email.
Hosting a gathering for the big game this weekend? Why not use a free football themed template to send your invitation? They're free, and we just added them to every Emma account.
These templates come with built-in color swatches for the Ravens and 49ers, so no matter who you're cheering for on February 3rd, you can customize your email's design in just a couple clicks.
You can also find just the perfect shade of green to match your spinach artichoke dip. (That's who I'll be cheering for.)
We used Vine to show off how easy it is to switch out the colors on these fun new designs, so take a peek and then log in and head to the Winter Collection in our new drag & drop editor to see them for yourself.
Game on! Watch how easy it is to customize new football templates for your favorite team: vine.co/v/b5QgPpbzpAI
We're pretty excited about our brand new content editor and email template gallery (have ya noticed?), and we're even more excited to see how our customers are using the editor's shiny new features to create stunning email campaigns. I rounded up a few recent examples to show you how folks are communicating in style and getting great results.
This campaign looks lovely on the Toronto postcard template.
Why we like it:
It's just the right use for the postcard template. We realize folks don't send a newsletter-style email every time they create a campaign, so we created shorter template formats as part of our new template collections. The postcard nicely frames Pottery Merchant’s concise content, enhancing the announcement, rather than overpowering it.
Colors complement the content. Emma allows you to customize the template's accent colors to match your brand and photographs. Pottery Merchant matches the accent colors to the photograph, lending a cohesive feel and professional look.
It hit just the right audience. Pottery Merchant segments their audience to differentiate current customers from prospects. Not only can they can track the engagement of those groups with Emma's search tools, but they can easily send targeted campaigns that strike just the right note with those audiences.
Nashville Children’s Theatre took advantage of our newsletter template from the Faraday collection and our new content editor's flexibile layouts to spotlight information about upcoming shows.
Before Smart Sizing
After Smart Sizing
Why we like it:
The images are perfectly balanced. We're big fans of moderately-sized images that work in conjuntion with each other. Even if your original images are different sizes, our Smart Sizing feature automatically matches their sizes more closely to give a completed look. Plus, the images fit within the framework of the template without expanding too wide on the left and right. The campaign's images look all buttoned up and ready for display.
Every image has a purpose. Now that our content editor allows you to arrange images and text boxes almost any way you’d like, it's easy to find the right spot for each piece of content. Here, the Nashville Children’s Theatre adds centered images down the campaign and three across the bottom, highlighting each upcoming event.
The mailing arrived right on cue, and no one had to wake up early to hit send. Nashville Children's Theater used the schedule mailing feature to ensure this campaign was the first thing readers saw in their inbox when they woke up.
The image caption and background color stylishly match the template accent color.
Why we like it:
The background color adds pop. Emma's classic editor didn't allow for the easy addition of background colors – so we made sure to address the issue with the new editor. With the addition of a background color, this campaign's Facebook contest really stands out.
The captions give context. Image captions are easy to turn on or off with the click of a button. Add a caption when the situation calls for it, or allow the photos to speak for themselves.
The purpose is clear. This thank you note manages to highlight three calls to action without making the email feel cluttered or confusing. The result? A 17.6% click-through rate from people who want to learn more.
The newsletter template of the Toronto collection looks completely different than the Toronto postcard above, thanks to some customization byDovetail Solution. They added their own logo and spin for a professional-looking company newsletter.
Social buttons are easy to add - and look great.
Why we like it:
The column adds visual interest. Different campaigns call for different content layouts. Choose from one-, two- and three-column layouts to neatly arrange all of your images and text.
Social icons encourage sharing. I love that Dovetail Solutions pulled in their social properties. It's a cinch to do, so don't overlook it. Just drag over individual icons from the left side of the content editor and link each to your corresponding profile page or wall.
It's a team effort. Each article is authored by a different member of the Dovetail team, which means readers get to know the people behind the brand and hear a variety of voices. It makes for a more interesting email and keeps one person from having to do all the writing.
A little design boost, thanks to Emma's divider tool
Why we like it:
It's easy on the eyes. We wanted customers to have the ability to add subtle design additions, like these well-placed dividers, to break up content into story sections or add a bit of design appeal to images. Series of underscores, be gone. Emma’s dividers can be customized by color, height and line height. Feel free to make dividers dashed or dotted, if you’d like.
The subject line is specific and engaging. Inbox scanners saw "The Water and the Blood at the High Museum of Art - July 28, Dusk till Midnight," and 40.78% of them opened the email – that's twice the industry average!
We hope you’re enjoying our new editor features and finding ways to incorporate email best practices along the way. We’d love to see some of your handiwork! Share your campaigns in the comments, and we may just feature you in a future post.
Emma designers share the inspiration behind the templates they created
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Jul 10, 2012
Recently, you may have heard us talking about our brand new template gallery, a slew of free, readymade email templates created by Emma's design team. Each template collection comes with three stylish designs – a newsletter, postcard and note – and they're easy to customize with your brand colors, logo and more.
I asked four designers to choose one of their favorite template designs and tell us its inspiration. Read on to get to know a few members of Emma's creative team.
I created Faraday to look technical, but not stodgy. I like that the graph paper establishes a bit of a scientific feel, while the rounded corners and bright colors keep things playful.
Of course, the colors I chose may be a little too loud for some brands out there.
Don't let that keep you away; thanks to our new content editor, the colors can easily be changed to fit your taste. Try changing the header and footer colors to a dark grey, and you'll see the template instantly takes on a more formal tone.
I can't wait to see how our customers adjust Faraday to make it their own.
My favorite template is Lida Rose. I wanted to design a template that would be ideally suited for invitations and similar campaigns. I think the template works well for weddings, an art gallery opening, a special event or even just a company hangout.
As I designed it, I combed the web for other classic, clean invitation designs and drew inspiration from them.
This is my own twist, and I'm looking forward to seeing how you add yours to it.
I really love the simplicity of Pacific Heights – it's got a bit of serene look.
And it allows you to add flair with your own colors and content.
The paper texture in the background adds a nice contrast and will make an email look similar to a printed letter. And how lovely is it to receive a real letter from someone?
This template also has a special area for navigation – use it to highlight important links or special parts of your site. It's a great way to integrate your website with your email campaigns.
My favorite from the template gallery is Push Pin.
It's a really clean design, and like most of our templates, it'll allow you to make adjustments to fit your brand.
I designed this template with myself in mind. I asked, "What sort of email template would I use over and over, and love the results every time?" Push Pin was the product.
Take a peek at the collections in our template gallery
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Jun 26, 2012
Last week was a busy one at Emma, and we're not slowing our pace anytime soon. Our design team is hard at work, creating even more template collections for you to use with Emma's new content editor. Each collection comes with three templates – a newsletter, a postcard and a note – so you have what you need when creating monthly email campaigns, special announcements and periodical communications.
Just log into your Emma account and visit the campaigns page. You'll see both our classic editor and the new drag-and-drop editor there. The fancy, new editor is paired with the equally-fancy, equally-new template gallery. When you begin a new mailing, you'll have the option to use one of your custom templates or choose a new one from the gallery.
What's so great about these email templates, other than how lovely they look? Well, we've tricked them out (tricked out is a totally acceptable phrase in 2012, right?) with built-in font styles, customizable headers and footers, and editable image spots to place your logo.
We're giving you a look at some of the newest templates in this Facebook album, and we'll be adding even more templates soon.
Our all-new drag & drop editor and template gallery are already being revealed to customers on a rolling basis, so if don't see these in your account yet, you will soon.
We wanted all the design around the new stuff we're sharing to reflect this more Emmafied Emma -- something of an exclamation point on the story of these new features and design tools. Today, I'd like to give you a glimpse at a few of the *visual* changes you'll see starting this week:
An updated app
There's a brand new look for the Emma application itself. Everything is still in the same place, but we've refined the colors and simplified the graphics so Emma's an even more pleasant place to do your work.
A new website
This morning, we launched an entirely new website featuring our new look and features. It includes a dedicated resource center so it's easy to search across our collection of videos, blog posts and account help in one central place.
An updated logo & brand
We took this opportunity to make some refinements to our brand and logo. Emma's hair is smoother, her glasses are a bit hipper and her face is just subtly more balanced. She also has a modern new color palette to wear around town.
What do you think of the changes? Let us know in the comments.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Jun 15, 2012
Dear Emma customers,
Starting next week, you’re going to notice a few changes at Emma. And I thought it might be helpful to provide a bit of context around what you’ll see and how it all fits together.
Eons ago – you were probably really young and still listening to Wham! and don’t remember this – we created Emma based on a handful of things we were quite passionate about: elegantly simple product experiences, stellar design and great customer service. A fourth passion, for Scandinavian collectible figurines, did not seem particularly relevant at the time. (Just you wait.)
See our all-new drag & drop editor in action. Like, really fast action.
All these years later, here we are still hard at work bringing those themes to life, spending countless whiteboard, and regular, hours working on ways to improve our product, our designs and our service.
So what’s all the change about? Well, over the past year or so, we’ve been:
Building an entirely new email editor, replacing our intuitive but fairly inflexible editor with a slick drag-and-drop editing experience that makes it much easier (and fun?) to create fabulous email campaigns.
Creating a brand-new template design gallery to complement our custom design services. It’s a collection of really smart, readymade design templates that will expand over time and make stellar design instantly available to all.
Adding more smart marketing features, like expanded social sharing, subscriber notifications and Google Analytics integration. You can read about those in this blog post and know there’s plenty more to come on this front, smart marketing friend.
Rearchitecting Emma’s underlying platform, so that it performs better (read: faster) as we grow and includes an API layer that sets up Emma to integrate with lots of other great marketing products and services.
Designing a new website with an updated brand treatment and even a subtle account makeover to reflect all the newness and make the overall Emma experience more consistent, not to mention more modern.
These changes will be unveiled on a rolling basis beginning next week. In fact, some of you have been gracious enough to help us test the new platform and early versions of the editor and related features. You’ve helped us spot bugs, offered us lots of great feedback and lived through a not-always-awesome and sometimes-downright-crappy beta testing process. To each and every one of you, I offer a huge note of thanks. You are Emma’s champions, and I don’t mean that in a cheesy “We Are the Champions” or “Wind Beneath my Wings” kind of way, unless those are your two favorite songs, in which case that’s exactly what I mean.
And for everyone reading this, know that the culmination of this work isn’t a finish line of any sort. It’s a starting line, with lots of great improvements and additions planned and an entire team of people pretty dang fired up to make it all happen.
Behind these changes is a team of people obsessing over your experience. We're so excited about what's to come, we made a video about it.
The team is so fired up, in fact, we felt compelled to make a video about it. Just like we can’t talk you through the new features nearly as well as we can show you, we can’t really capture the energy of the Emma shop without pulling back the curtain on the office, even though we’re moving that office to the brand-new, really old historic Trolley Barns in a matter of days.
Feel free to reach out to the team with any pressing questions about any of this, or email me directly with any big thoughts you have on the future of Emma, whenever those thoughts happen to strike you. And thanks so much for being part of the Emma journey with us. Entrusting us with even a small part of your brand and business is a big deal, and it’s a responsibility we truly take to heart.
Just last week, Daniel’s post about Emma’s new Template Gallery spurred a flurry of excitement among customers and fans.
Daniel mentioned that the templates will work with our new drag and drop editor, and I’m here to fill in some of the details of what you’ll see when we release the editor and Template Gallery a little later this month. Our goals for the new editor and Template Gallery are simple:
Provide world-class, accessible design
Whether you use one of the new, hand-crafted templates in our Template Gallery or a custom design by an Emma designer, our new editor gives you the tools to create stylish, professional-looking campaigns that represent your brand.
Keep the workflow simple
Let Emma auto-save your work, and if you’ve created a campaign you want to use as a starting point each time, you can save that campaign as a template for future work.
Make layouts flexible
Drag and drop text and image blocks into your campaign, add a sidebar with a couple clicks, then rearrange the whole thing in no time flat if you change your mind.
Hand the creative controls over to the person creating the campaign
Within minutes, you can customize a template with your brand colors, adjust margins and padding, move your content around, and give your images an extra polish.
Want even more details on the many ways we’ve made our new editor simple and fun to use? We’ve listed ‘em (and added more sneak peeks at how it all looks) below.
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Workflow that makes sense
We’ve designed the editor with a streamlined workflow to save you time.
An auto-save feature that saves as you go. No more clicking back and forth between edit and save.
A nice big canvas for work. Get a view of the campaign’s look without a whole lot of scrolling.
Live preview and proofing.
Move or lock your editing toolbar. Place it wherever makes the most sense to you as you work.
Emma's new editor has a streamlined workflow.
Customizable templates
With our Template Gallery offerings, you have control over the color scheme and branding.
Change a template’s accent colors with just a couple of clicks.
Add your logo, tagline and contact information in editable areas.
Save your changes as a new template to skip a few steps next time around.
Most Template Gallery offerings let you edit your logo and accent colors, then you can save your settings for next time.
Flexible layouts
Choose from one column, left column, right column or three column layouts, then customize them as you please.
Assemble text and image boxes easily by dragging, dropping, rearranging and editing them as your email campaign comes together.
Adjust the alignment of your content blocks, add captions and set text-wrapping to suit your campaign’s content and style.
Use our Smart Sizing feature for images to automatically make them the same size — and make sure they’re in proportion to your campaign.
Our new editor lets you reorder your content and edit settings to get just the right look.
Creative formatting
Give your campaign a professional look with a bunch of handy features.
Background colors. Call attention to important blocks of content using color, or set the background color of your entire campaign.
Borders. Highlight a section of content and add design interest, plus create coupons and call-out boxes.
Styles. Quickly apply coordinated styles for headlines, body text and captions.
Images. Choose an image from your computer or Emma library, or connect to pictures on Facebook and Flickr.
Crop, apply filters and more with a powerful image editor.
Built-in testing features
It’s super-easy to make sure your campaign looks great before you send the real deal.
Send free tests to up to any 25 people.
Emma automatically adds “test” to the mailing’s subject line.
Add a note for your test recipients to call out sections you’d like them to proof or pay extra attention to.
You can send a quick preview to up to 25 recipients and even add a note to the top of the email.
We’re testing the Template Gallery and new editor with a small group of Emma customers, and we’ll let you know when they’re available in your Emma account. If you don’t have an account but still want to know when the Template Gallery and new editor go live for everyone, sign up for our emails so we can stay in touch.
And if you’d like to see a few more of the Template Gallery designs that we’re working on, click to view an album here.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | May 30, 2012
What do you get when a company known for custom design turns its attention to readymade templates? You get campaign templates with all the love and care of custom design, of course.
That’s what’s coming in our Template Gallery, and we couldn’t help but share a small sampling of the brand new email template designs you’ll have access to in a few weeks.
We’ve always believed in making great design accessible to everyone, and these templates represent a tremendous step toward fully realizing that vision.
If you’re an Emma customer, the gallery will allow you to instantly add templates to your account and customize most of them on the fly with your own brand colors and logo. (Of course, custom design will still be available with even more personalized service.)
They’ll all look great and deliver beautifully to all popular email inboxes. But that’s not all. Every template has a built-in, coordinated suite of styles for text, links and captions. And each comes with three variations in design and content styling, so you get an entire collection for newsletters, postcards and memos.
And of course, these templates work with our new drag & drop content editing system and new image editor, both of which are currently being tested by a smaller group of Emma customers and will be rolled out to everybody in a few weeks.
Together, it’s an entirely new kind of thinking about email design, and it’s all, ahem, designed to make sure your email looks great from top to bottom — and gets great results, too.
Oh, and did we mention that it’s all free for Emma customers? Take a look at some gorgeous examples.
Old Havana gives vintage texture a tropical twist. Make it yours by editing the header with your company name and tagline.
Reminiscent of old world adventure, Cartographers Society features an editable headline and tagline.
Minimal and natural, Inverness lets you change the banner and footer color to support your own branding. Of course, you can change the title, too.
Pacific Heights, with its clean lines and fresh look, gives you space to add quick links and a note to readers above the first featured article.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing even more sneak peeks of our Template Gallery, and we’ll let you know when they’re available in your Emma account. If you have any questions along the way, please don’t hesitate to ask.
