Overview
Designing and building high volume email campaigns from concept to delivery.
During one of my previous roles at Getting Personal, part of the wider Card Factory group, I was predominantly responsible for designing and building email campaigns. My working process ranged from sketching initial wireframes and creating high-fidelity designs in Photoshop, through to coding the final emails in Dreamweaver and uploading them to RedEye, with XCM Solutions used for audience segmentation and targeting
Getting Personal
Creating engaging email campaigns across the retail calendar.
Working predominantly across email, I developed creative throughout the retail calendar, from Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day through to Halloween and Christmas. Promotional offers and discounts were a particularly important part of the Getting Personal communications, requiring designs that could make the offer immediately clear while keeping the product and brand front and centre.
Promotional Focus
A large part of the work focused on promotional and discount-led campaigns, where creating a sense of urgency was often key to encouraging immediate action. From a design perspective, I used bold typography, strong visual hierarchy and clear calls to action to bring the offer to the forefront, while consistent brand colours and clean layouts kept the emails engaging and easy to scan.
Card Factory
Adapting email creative for a larger retail audience.
I also designed email campaigns for Card Factory, adapting my experience in high volume email production to a larger and more established retail brand. The work covered seasonal campaigns, product promotions and customer communications, requiring a flexible approach while maintaining consistency across a busy promotional calendar.
Seasonal Shift
Working across Card Factory’s seasonal calendar meant regularly shifting the visual direction to reflect different occasions and audiences. From Valentine’s Day and Easter through to Halloween and Christmas, I adapted colour, typography, imagery and composition to give each campaign its own character while keeping the brand recognisable.
Adapting the Brand
Each seasonal campaign brought a different creative challenge, from playful and colourful occasions to more considered gifting moments. I adapted the visual treatment around the personality of each occasion, while maintaining a clear hierarchy and consistent brand presence across the emails.
Consistency & Conversion
While the visual direction changed with each seasonal campaign, consistency remained important across the wider email programme. Clear hierarchy, recognisable brand elements and strong calls to action were maintained throughout, helping customers quickly understand the offer and take action.
Working within a highly competitive retail period, these campaigns typically achieved strong conversion rates at the time, reinforcing the importance of balancing creative variety with a clear commercial purpose.
Outcome
Building speed, consistency and commercial awareness through high volume email design.
Designing email campaigns day-to-day across Getting Personal and Card Factory strengthened my ability to work quickly without compromising on visual quality or brand consistency. It also gave me valuable experience understanding how design, promotional messaging and clear calls to action work together within a highly competitive retail environment – from the initial concept through to build and delivery.