5 ms·

Really Good Emails

97 points by rayshan 12y ago

robbyking 12y ago
I like the idea -- a browsable archive of quality email layouts -- but most of the ones I looked at were pretty mediocre.
- rayshan 12y ago
  I agree, I think it's mostly just what the admins are getting themselves. There's a way to submit emails [1], but maybe the best model is to be the hacker news of email design (open submission, upvotes etc). [1] http://reallygoodemails.com/contact/ http://reallygoodemails.com/contact/
  - eli 12y ago
    Comments and voting and community features are really hard to pull off. You can't just throw an up vote button and wait for good stuff to float to the top.
- chrislloyd 12y ago
  If you'd like to see a better submission process, it's an open-source product on Assembly: https://assembly.com/really-good-emails https://assembly.com/really-good-emails. There's been lots of talk about just forwarding an email to an address and having the community vote on what they think are great emails. It also made $1350 last month which is split between contributors so there's some financial incentive for you to jump in :)
  - robbles 12y ago
    How did it make $1350 in revenue? I can't see any revenue-generating aspects at first glance... it just looks like a user-submitted gallery site to me.
    - AVTizzle 12y ago
      "Sponsored by Mailchimp" is absolutely a revenue-generating aspect.
n0body 12y ago
I was hoping for comedy. Instead I got the emails I mark as spam/unsubscribe from. :(
- the_af 12y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking. Seriously, the overall vibe I get from many of these emails is either "email from some service I subscribed to, sending a generic greeting/reminder", or "outright spam". Definitely nothing that would strike me as important.
bitsweet 12y ago
By the way, Really Good Emails is being built on Assembly as a community product. This means, its open sourced and revenue is split between the people developing it. You can see some of the improvements to the site everyone is planning: https://assembly.com/really-good-emails/posts/latest-priorities-for-really-good-emails https://assembly.com/really-good-emails/posts/latest-priorit... https://assembly.com/really-good-emails/projects/29 https://assembly.com/really-good-emails/projects/29
- fiatjaf 12y ago
  Which revenue?
untilHellbanned 12y ago
These are meh. GitHub does email right.
chipsy 12y ago
I was expecting more of a focus on content of emails instead of design.
LeoPanthera 12y ago
I suppose I have become too old. In "my day", HTML was just beginning to creep into email, and there was the beginnings of a huge religious war to keep mail in plain text. I guess we lost. But my mail clients will be configured to send mail in plain text until the end of time.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - LeoPanthera 12y ago
    My signature has been a little ASCII-art box for years. Probably decades, now. It renders correctly in almost nothing, these days.
    - subsection1h 12y ago
      Yeah, I recently configured my email client to use a proportional font when I compose plain text emails so that I stop forgetting that most email clients nowadays use proportional fonts to display plain text email. :-( Now I'll never again make the mistake of sending an email that includes a plain text table that I copied from my Org mode-powered personal wiki.
6d0debc071 12y ago
What makes these good emails? Are there some metrics on the engagement/response that these got or is it...? I'm confused what the take away from this is supposed to be.
steveplace 12y ago
Are these "good" from a design aspect, or "good" because they convert?
- cookiecaper 12y ago
  Like most of these things, they're good because whoever is running these sites thinks they're good. They like pretty pictures. There are a lot of people out there who want to try to justify their tastes by making them sound like they're rooted in some kind of scientific consensus but it's rather rare for that to actually be the case. Designers are especially vulnerable to this and the way that industry jumps on the bandwagon and self-righteously snubs anyone who doesn't do so with them is amazing. To some of us, a good email is 1-2 lines of pure text, and we'd rather go without the bells, whistles, and tracking images.
e12e 12y ago
So, I get that a lot of people prefer html-email to email (text/plain), and I'm not going to argue with that. But if these are "really good emails" -- do they embed all resources in the email in order to be off-line friendly, and privacy-friendly? Do they supply good, standards-compliant text-parts? If not, they certainly don't fit my definition of "really good emails". Judging by the fact that there's no preview for text-only view, I'm guessing not...
tomrod 12y ago
They're not text. They'd be better as text.
squaredeye 12y ago
Hey folks, I started Really Good Emails to get more exposure to what people were doing. I'm hoping to have good critical dialogue about email campaigns on a forum more like hackernews or Product Hunt at some point soon. What else is it missing at the moment that you'd like to see?

97 points by rayshan 12y ago

I like the idea -- a browsable archive of quality email layouts -- but most of the ones I looked at were pretty mediocre.

rayshan 12y ago
I agree, I think it's mostly just what the admins are getting themselves. There's a way to submit emails [1], but maybe the best model is to be the hacker news of email design (open submission, upvotes etc). [1] http://reallygoodemails.com/contact/ http://reallygoodemails.com/contact/
- eli 12y ago
  Comments and voting and community features are really hard to pull off. You can't just throw an up vote button and wait for good stuff to float to the top.
chrislloyd 12y ago
If you'd like to see a better submission process, it's an open-source product on Assembly: https://assembly.com/really-good-emails https://assembly.com/really-good-emails. There's been lots of talk about just forwarding an email to an address and having the community vote on what they think are great emails. It also made $1350 last month which is split between contributors so there's some financial incentive for you to jump in :)
- robbles 12y ago
  How did it make $1350 in revenue? I can't see any revenue-generating aspects at first glance... it just looks like a user-submitted gallery site to me.
  - AVTizzle 12y ago
    "Sponsored by Mailchimp" is absolutely a revenue-generating aspect.

n0body 12y ago

I was hoping for comedy. Instead I got the emails I mark as spam/unsubscribe from. :(

the_af 12y ago
Exactly what I was thinking. Seriously, the overall vibe I get from many of these emails is either "email from some service I subscribed to, sending a generic greeting/reminder", or "outright spam". Definitely nothing that would strike me as important.

bitsweet 12y ago

By the way, Really Good Emails is being built on Assembly as a community product. This means, its open sourced and revenue is split between the people developing it. You can see some of the improvements to the site everyone is planning: https://assembly.com/really-good-emails/posts/latest-priorities-for-really-good-emails https://assembly.com/really-good-emails/posts/latest-priorit... https://assembly.com/really-good-emails/projects/29 https://assembly.com/really-good-emails/projects/29

fiatjaf 12y ago
Which revenue?

untilHellbanned 12y ago

These are meh. GitHub does email right.

chipsy 12y ago

I was expecting more of a focus on content of emails instead of design.

LeoPanthera 12y ago

I suppose I have become too old. In "my day", HTML was just beginning to creep into email, and there was the beginnings of a huge religious war to keep mail in plain text. I guess we lost. But my mail clients will be configured to send mail in plain text until the end of time.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- LeoPanthera 12y ago
  My signature has been a little ASCII-art box for years. Probably decades, now. It renders correctly in almost nothing, these days.
  - subsection1h 12y ago
    Yeah, I recently configured my email client to use a proportional font when I compose plain text emails so that I stop forgetting that most email clients nowadays use proportional fonts to display plain text email. :-( Now I'll never again make the mistake of sending an email that includes a plain text table that I copied from my Org mode-powered personal wiki.

6d0debc071 12y ago

What makes these good emails? Are there some metrics on the engagement/response that these got or is it...? I'm confused what the take away from this is supposed to be.

steveplace 12y ago

Are these "good" from a design aspect, or "good" because they convert?

cookiecaper 12y ago
Like most of these things, they're good because whoever is running these sites thinks they're good. They like pretty pictures. There are a lot of people out there who want to try to justify their tastes by making them sound like they're rooted in some kind of scientific consensus but it's rather rare for that to actually be the case. Designers are especially vulnerable to this and the way that industry jumps on the bandwagon and self-righteously snubs anyone who doesn't do so with them is amazing. To some of us, a good email is 1-2 lines of pure text, and we'd rather go without the bells, whistles, and tracking images.

e12e 12y ago

So, I get that a lot of people prefer html-email to email (text/plain), and I'm not going to argue with that. But if these are "really good emails" -- do they embed all resources in the email in order to be off-line friendly, and privacy-friendly? Do they supply good, standards-compliant text-parts? If not, they certainly don't fit my definition of "really good emails". Judging by the fact that there's no preview for text-only view, I'm guessing not...

tomrod 12y ago

They're not text. They'd be better as text.

squaredeye 12y ago

Hey folks, I started Really Good Emails to get more exposure to what people were doing. I'm hoping to have good critical dialogue about email campaigns on a forum more like hackernews or Product Hunt at some point soon. What else is it missing at the moment that you'd like to see?