Welcome back to our monthly series, where team Litmus shares their favorite emails picks for the month.
This October, our inboxes were filled with thoughtful feedback emails, animated GIFs, and, of course, spooky emails.
Read on, or jump ahead!
Reese’s Book Club
Subject line: Spooky Season 
Preview text: Happy Friday the 13th! 
Reese’s Book Club Edition #134
Angie Weyman (Product Marketing Manager, Litmus) says: Love when spooky season and books come together! This email from Reese’s Book Club was incredibly engaging with great imagery (not just of books), costume ideas, word games, and yes, spooky book recommendations—which I am looking into each and every one…
Violette_FR
Subject line: Your thoughts mean everything
Nicole Swift (Customer Support Senior Manager, Litmus) says: I’m sure we all get emails all the time asking for reviews and thoughts. This one from Violette_FR stood out though for a few reasons. It was written as a note from the founder, which humanizes the request versus the generic “tell us what you think!”
I also love how the founder reiterated her mission and pulls you in as part of that community she’s building. It makes you feel a part of something by leaving feedback. The voice of the customer is so important and the authentic feel of this request really compels customers to share.
Atlassian
Subject line: What if you had 115 extra hours per month?
Hannah Tiner (Marketing UX Designer, Litmus) says: The design of this email from Atlassian is fun and visual while also utilizing lots of live text, which makes it easy to search for in the inbox and accessible to screen readers. I like the subtle use of photography and hand-drawn accents. The bottom call-to-action (CTA) provides a nice way to stay involved if the subscriber can’t get to the main event by offering local options.
Nintendo
Subject line: See how you can get moving in the WarioWare
: Move It! trailer.
Preview text: Dance, wiggle, and more in over 200 hilarious microgames!
Carin Slater (Email and Content Growth Marketing Manager, Litmus) says: Honestly, I only opened this email because I was looking for an example of a good email for something else, saw Nintendo, and thought “That’ll be a good email, probably.” I was not disappointed. That opening animated GIF is amazing and adorable, and the adorable-ness is carried throughout the email. The CTAs are clear and fit the design, and while they’re images, they have relevant ALT text.
I did take a look at the email code and was kind of upset to see that they double coded the email—there’s a full desktop and a full mobile version, instead of only coding the elements that needed to be swapped out. I re-coded with image swaps it and cut the file size down by 31%. The email wasn’t even close to the 102kB Gmail clipping limit, but there’s no reason not to make your email file sizes smaller—and as Alice Li detailed at her keynote at Litmus Live, lots of reasons to make them smaller.
What is Carin talking about? 
When it comes to coding emails, you should aim to keep file size down, always include ALT text, and build emails with efficiency (and scalability) in mind. Learn more in Foundations of Email Development →
Who Gives A Crap
Subject line: RE: Re: An email in which we shame our parents
Preview text: Dance, wiggle, and more in over 200 hilarious microgames!
Carin says: CUTE PENGUIN!!!!! But seriously, I responded to a marketing email from Who Gives A Crap with a funny story. Points to them for not having a no-reply email.
I wasn’t expecting anything back, but then poof—cute penguin in my inbox. I freaking love the use of the cute animated GIF in this automated email. And the friendliness is on brand and feels more personable than any other email I’ve gotten from writing in to other customer supports (which I have been doing a lot these days for some reason).
Only advice I’d give them is that they mention the webpage having a ton of information but don’t link to it. It’d be nice to have a link right there so I could follow up if I did have questions.
Stay tuned for next month!
That’s a wrap on our monthly round-up of favorite emails! We hope you enjoyed perusing our collection from October 2023. We’ll be back next month with our picks!
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The post The Litmus Team’s Favorite Emails for October 2023 appeared first on Litmus.
