Let’s start our award ceremony with the Best Picture category. We perceived this category as a place for emails that are awesome in every respect — be it an inspiring, creative or just funny copy, clear and efficient structure leading to the needed action, stylish trending looks and quality visuals. Every email has something distinct that makes it a work of art of current email marketing. Above all, every email has something that we call the mood. Away with the dull and boring!
The competition was tough! And our winner is this little ingenious email from Aura Bora:
It’s not sophisticated or grand, it’s just about selling something, but it has a creative approach, appealing visuals, nice design that’s both on point and trendy with those gradients, and some fun. C’mon, shop now!
But there’s more, much more. Swipe to see the rest of the outstanding nominees (there’s a second Aura Bora email there, even more creative:
Who rules it all in the world of emails? The author! Some people say the author is dead but we decided to prove them wrong — and chose the best independent newsletters. Although our blog is dedicated to email marketing, emails are more than a vehicle to distribute discount codes — they can be a fun and interesting medium to broadcast thoughts and ideas.
Meet our Best Director, Karl Delossantos, the author of the movie review newsletter Smash Cut.
Walls of text are hard to read and Substack doesn’t allow a lot of customization when it comes to design. However, Smash Cut organized a long-form article in a digestible way despite the limits of the platform. We also appreciate the use of videos — when you talk about movies, you need to illustrate your hot takes, and bringing some life to a text-centric newsletter wouldn’t hurt.
Check out other nominees — click the slider!
For the Best Actor category, we decided to go with email campaigns featuring male influencers and celebrities. These collaborations add value to products and draw new audiences in. Not to mention it can be a milestone for a brand to team up with a famous person.
Our winner for the category is this Imogene and Willie email. It’s dedicated to the brand’s collaboration with musician Billy Strings.
We appreciated the bold black and white banner image and the atmospheric photographs at the bottom. The feeling of sincerity (maybe even vulnerability) and authenticity is conveyed in the text and its no-capitalization formatting.
On top of all, this isn’t even a promotional message! The link to the collection is buried at the bottom of the email and has a “sold out” remark.
Want to see the email runner-ups? Click the slider:
Brands team up with girls and fem-presenting folks too! For the Best Actress category, we’re choosing the best email campaigns with female influencers. Collaborations with actresses, models, bloggers, musicians, and so on help brands find new audiences and draw extra media attention.
Meet our winner: We Are Knitters x Marzia
We appreciate the idea of the collaboration itself. Influencers often play the role of a face on merchandise — and this collection of sweaters was made by Marzia herself. Even better, she gave some insights about the idea behind each piece in this email. And of course, the pictures and the layout are drop-dead gorgeous!
Want to see more examples of great influencer campaigns? Click the slider.
Even the best director in the world can’t make a good movie without a screenplay — and even a well-designed email won’t work without a copy.
Here’s our pick for the best-written email over the last few years:
This email from 3rd Ritual shows how creative marketing emails can be. The brand has a consistent writing style — beautiful, almost fiction-like, mysterious, soothing, and a little cryptic in the way Co—Star daily updates are.
There are many well-written emails online though — click the slider to see other nominees.
And here comes the first award on the list that’s closely linked with the world of cinema. For the Best Animated Feature Film award, we decided to select emails by brands that show a masterful use of videos in emails.
Our winner is — quite fittingly — Filmsupply, a platform for licensing premium stock footage
Video in emails is a controversial subject, not easy to embed right. This email though is very stylish, minimalistic and cinematic looking like a crossover between a movie trailer and a landing page for the next big Hollywood hit. In the video box, you can see the “goods” as they are with a little elegant CTA inviting you for more. A photo gallery also acts as a sneak peek of the whole collection.
Filmsupply is not the only brand that mastered the use of videos in emails. Swipe to see the rest of the nominees:
Emails in this article come in all shapes, sizes, and languages too! In this category, we gathered the best examples of emails written in any language, but English.
The winning email is this one from Milk Magazine, written in French:
What made us choose this one? The photographs are full of light, air, and nature. The texts are clear like the visuals making this email as poetic and pleasant as a childhood memory. All in all, a great addition to any inbox.
Click the slider to see other email nominees — in German, Spanish, and French too:
We perceive documentaries as true-to-life stories. And in emails, what can be more truthful than a testimonial? Reviews of the audience make brands’ claims more valid and offer a perspective potential clients can relate to. Plus, user-generated content such as this is a free, no-efforts-needed source of content.
Our winning email for the category is from Harry’s. The brand took on a creative approach to its deodorant’s reviews:
The idea of the email is apparent from the headline that reads Sweater Weather. It refers not only to an eponymous song but also to the product and theme — sweat. The testimonials are accompanied by stylish illustrations that portray different deodorant users — sweaters — in, well, sweaters! This email shows that even the body odor theme can be cleverly played out.
Want to know what other brands competed with Harry’s? We gathered all the great contenders for the title in the slider:
Say no more. Just go shorts!
In many cases, brevity is just the thing that makes great emails. As the struggle for the audience’s attention continues, brands try different ways to convey information and at the same time not overload the reader. This email from Elementor is simple but has everything you need for a great shortie — it has a visually distinctive style, a big and bold title conveying the main message, clear structure and CTAs.
Swipe for more examples of short emails:
What can be more Academy Awards-like than the actual moving pictures? For the Best Animated Film, we have the best usage of GIFs in emails.
Our winner is Baggu:
GIFs in emails can be used for all sorts of things: to intrigue, to shoe the process, to educate or just entertain. This email is concise, clear, fun, pretty and just simply clever. It uses GIFs for one of their most popular goals — to show a product in action. You can say a thousand words on how to make the most of a new reusable bag, but take a few cute moving pictures, and you don’t need those words.
It wasn’t easy to pick a winner for this award — GIFs in emails are very popular, so there are tons of awesome examples. Swipe to see a few more:
Emails are to be seen not heard — that’s why we had a hard time choosing the email version of this Oscar nomination. But music has tones, and so do brands. That’s why we decided to choose an email with the best tone of voice. We hope that the winner will be music to your ears…
Drum rolls please 🥁 It’s Frank Body!
A friendly tone, a digestible delivery, and the way how the brand presents itself as a person that is talking directly to you — this is how you express brand personality in a marketing email!
Want to see other nominees? Click the slider and enjoy!
They are elusive, poetic, and imaginative. They make us want to learn more. Do you know what we’re talking about? Songs and subject lines, of course! For the Best Original Song category we found the most interesting subject lines and preview texts.
Who took the prize? It’s this combination from Saje:
This subject line and preview text exude positive energy. It’s common knowledge that people are motivated by the fear of missing out and other anxieties. But this example shows that anticipation of joy can be a powerful tool as well. It breaks the ordinary and makes the email intriguing in an enjoyable sense.
Our runner-ups for the category are great too, though. Take a look at the use of emojis, rhymes, and curiosity in the slider:
In our opinion, Best Design is an award that has a lot to do with the Best Picture category. Sometimes it was hard to discern between the two and decide which pic goes where. After all, every email in the Best Picture category also features great design, otherwise, it wouldn’t have gotten there.
Still, while we see Best Picture as something that encompasses all features and combines them into something entirely new, you can say that Best Design goes deeper — it’s a bit more technical category for emails with great structures, choices of color and typography, remarkable visuals and effective CTAs.
The winner is this email from The Sill:
It’s easy to understand and navigate through, it has a pleasant color harmony, professional-looking photos as well as some illustrations, elegant use of CTAs and all the elements in all the right order.
Below is the slider with more examples of quality email design. Enjoy:
We like our emails the way we like our movies — bold and beautiful! For the Best Cinematography nomination, we chose an email with the best promo photo shoot.
Meet this gorgeous piece from Dolls Kill!
This alternative fashion brand knows how to present its clothes in the best way possible. The mustard yellow background, the greenish blue neon, the poses, the looks — everything about this is carefully curated. We think this photoshoot is giving 2000s goth aesthetics meets 1990s rave parties.
And, you guessed it, for our honorable mentions, click the slider and enjoy!
And last but not least, the visual effects! In this category, we evaluated the illustrations, the calls-to-action, and what have you. The elements that make emails worth a look and even a share.
Our winner in the Best Visual Effects category is this email from Ritual:
The greatest — and winning — feature of this email is the pill breakdown illustration. This colorful and imaginative graphic shows the vitamin contents creatively yet clearly to the reader. The combination of yellow and dark blue ties the email together and makes it even better.
Take a look at the runner-up emails in the slider. The competition was tough!
