If There Were Oscars for Email Marketing, These Brands Would Sweep the Awards

The 95th Academy Awards have just concluded. All golden statues are awarded, all pastries eaten, all champagne popped and all acceptance speeches made. 

Then again, we can prolong this feast for a bit. What if there were Academy Awards for emails? Who would win? Email marketing is so vast and rich with magnificent examples of art and craftsmanship. 

We at Selzy analyzed hundreds of beautiful emails and picked some that touched us. Some of them are classic, others you probably haven’t seen yet — we tried not to limit ourselves to how well-known a brand is, just whether an email works or not. So, grab if not champagne but your favorite drink and here comes some inspo!

 And the Oscar goes to…

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Like what you saw? We have even more in our email marketing section, come inside to take a look. Holidays, seasons, occasions, industries – we have it all.

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