Retail Email Design Inspiration: Unique Ways to Feature Products

Spring fever is heating up our inboxes. With the change of seasons, retailers and ecommerce businesses are shifting gears from winter sales to spring promotions. The email designs we're seeing for these emails reflect the freshness and newness of the season. Check out the best retail email design tips we gathered from messages showcasing products in unique ways.

Focus on one special product

Instead of showing a breadth of new products, zero in on one that's really special, and go behind the scenes to show what makes it so great. It's not enough to tell readers to buy your product; you have to tell them why. A deep-dive look at the design behind a favorite product is a smart way to visually show customers exactly why it's great.

Feature great customer feedback

There's nothing more persuasive to potential customers than seeing how excited and satisfied existing customers are with your products. Show off great reviews you've received to demonstrate how happy your clients are. Pairing high-quality images with recognizable star ratings makes for a potently clickable email, and it's a great way to reinvigorate attention toward existing products using content that already exists.

Think outside the box with photography

One way to grab readers' attention is to present your products in a way they haven't seen before or didn't expect. It shows readers your dedication to email design that's both playful and sophisticated, positioning your brand as one that pays attention to the details, thinks creatively, and knows how to engage its audience. Take the time to plan an eye-catching email campaign with creative photography, and readers will take note.

Show your digital product in action

Maybe your product isn't one customers can hold in their hands. If that's the case, you might have to get creative with how you can liven up emails and show readers how your product functions and how it can improve their lives. Animated GIFs are easy to implement in email and powerful for catching reader attention, a great option for "intangible" products. Lacking time or resources to create a GIF? Simple, high-quality screenshots are a good option too, paired with headers that tell readers each featured benefit.

Engage readers with a clever CTA

Instead of the expected structure of presenting a product, showing why it's great, and giving readers a clickable CTA button, some brands reframe the whole CTA — for example, letting readers choose between two options when they subscribe rather than simply deciding whether to subscribe or not. It's a smart customer engagement tactic that benefits readers when they have an opportunity to customize their experience.

Create a curated list

Presenting readers with a small selection of hand-picked products can call attention to items in a new way. Inspire customers with a product they might have otherwise skimmed over by showing them how to pair it with other products or by calling attention to it in a special email. Showing readers a shortlist of items inspires and creates focus, a dynamic approach retailers can recycle in multiple ways in spring campaigns.

Optimize for mobile screens

Spring email campaigns need to be optimized for mobile devices where we're most likely to see them. While image-only emails can look beautiful, that approach isn't an email best practice. A great alternative is to break up your email into modules and use HTML background colors with stunning photography to build a responsive email that looks stellar on all devices, paired with email-safe fonts and a well-styled bulletproof CTA button.

Wrap up: Retail email design tips for spring

• Choose one product and feature it. Go deeper to tell a story, add infographics, and show readers why it's worth the buy.
• Need content? Use customer reviews. Show readers your 5-star ratings and give them a reason to experience your product's benefits along with their peers.
• Photograph your product in unexpected ways. Catch readers off guard and get them talking, and shopping, with playful product photo ops.
• Visualize digital products, too. If your product lives on a screen, you can still show it off with screenshots and animated GIFs.
• Change up your CTA. Engage readers with a call-to-action that's unexpected, interesting, and beneficial to them.
• Curate must-have items. Too many choices might lead readers to click on nothing. Instead, offer a small list.
• Use responsive design best practices. It's a must!