Tis’ the season for lots of email. We curated our favorite emails from November (before the holiday chaos began) and a few Black Friday stand-outs.

Email 1: You’ve Got to be Kitten Me

If you haven’t visited reallygoodemails.com head on over for some amazing email inspiration.

Why we like it: First, who doesn’t love a gif of a head bobbing cat? It was also an extremely creative way to get us to click through to look at their “Cat”alogue of cat-themed email inspo.

✅ Subject line: Smelly cat, all the world will smell as one
✅ Enticing gif image
✅ Fun cat facts but short, legible copy
✅ Very clickable CTA “It’s meow or never”

Email 2: Another Wawa Honorable Mention

Why we like it: This one was selected for its clever subject line—but when we opened it we found it had more than just a snappy subject:

✅ The subject line was: Sip, sip, hooray! 😊
✅ Good use of a personalization token within the body of the email—most brands just use these in the initial greeting, it was unexpected to see my name integrated into the body copy
✅ Simple enticing visual

Email 3: Personalization Paradise

Why we like it: Sometimes personalization can go wrong…but in this case it went so, so right

✅ The email included the domain name that was eligible for the upgrade
✅ Great use of a count down timer
✅ The email included an image of the website it wanted me to upgrade—really attention grabbing tactic

Email 4: Black Friday Email Trend

Why we like it: It seemed like almost every email this Black Friday looked like these 4. This is a good reminder that during key sale days like Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday (and the snappy list of sale days goes on…) you can use this same kind of tactic.

✅ No product images
✅ Lead with the big discount number
✅ Huge, simple, legible, skimmable text
✅ Count down timers
✅ Free shipping

Email 5: Black Friday Subject Lines

It was hard to pick…there were so many good ones, but here’s a few that stood out:

We’ve never seen so many emojis used in preview text—until Black Friday. Tons of brands (big ones) were using this tactic to seemingly extend their subject line and explode email boxes with a splash of festive emojis. Also Overstock did a great job of using trailing subject lines to attract our inter…est.

Treat Yo’Elf was petty good. Check that send time, 5:09 AM—well done Zazzle, both sending off the hour and early in the morning before the mess of email traffic (you know at 8:00 AM). The preview text could use a little love since it’s almost the same as the subject line—but A+ on the subject!

I put an item in my cart at Williams Sonoma as a test…I wanted to see what would happen during Black Friday.

✅ Yes, I got abandoned cart emails
✅ Yes, I got discount offers (for products like the one in my cart—what I had picked didn’t go on sale *bummer*)
✅ Yes, the emails had pictures of what I had in my cart
✅ Yes, I opened every single one of these emails

Still think SPAM words are a thing? Would DSW use the word FREEEEEEEE (8 E’s for those counting) if it was? I think not.

There was nothing impressive about this subject or preview text—it blended right into the mess of other Black Friday emails. What was well done though was the send from name. By adding Black Friday to Best Buy this email did catch my attention. A great reminder to update send from names to align with key campaigns.

Join us next month for more email inspiration!