From: Graham and Green
Subject Line: 20% off your Christmas shopping at Graham and Green!
Date: Tuesday, December 10, 2009

I received an email last week that got me thinking, could an email creative ever be so captivating that even if all best practices were ignored, it could still turn in a decent performance?

Scrolling down this email by Graham and Green, I was instantly struck by a glossy image of table lamps. I'm in the market for a nice table lamp, so I clicked on the product category and was unceremoniously dumped on the company's home page. Normally I would have given up at this point - offer or no offer, if a retailer can't be bothered to show me the particular product I'm interested in, I can't be bothered to go looking. Despite the obvious discount incentive, my curiosity got the best of me and I continued to click through.

At second glance, I realized that this "email" was actually a collection of horizontal images lovingly crafted in Photoshop. There's not a single font tag or HTML text character between the "Having trouble reading this mail?" at the very top, or disclaimer at the very bottom. Furthermore, all the URLs are pointed to the home page, despite the fact that the email is bursting with merchandise from numerous product categories.

This email breaks all best practice guidelines but it has managed to achieve the end objective - to capture my interest and get me from the email to the purchase page. Even though this was an unconventional journey, does this make it a bad email? Not necessarily, but making a few basic changes would have massively improved user experience and reduced the friction from click to purchase. I'm sure this retailer is losing out on potential sales. Whether you're a small or large retailer, in order to maximize all retail opportunities, the user experience should be as smooth and painless as possible.