Kitchenaid mini launch
Role
Visual Design, Dev
Platforms
Photoshop
Illustrator
Dreamweaver
Deliverables
Email Campaign
Overview
During the summer of 2016 I partnered with KitchenAid to create a product launch email for their new mini stand mixer. At Sur La Table, we knew that KitchenAid would only be launching their new mixer at two retail companies to start: us and our main competitor, Williams Sonoma. We immediately got competitive (in a fun, lighthearted way) and set out to create the more impressive launch experience.
Campaign Requirements & objectives
I was tasked with creating the launch email campaigns. Our VP of design had very specific requests to highlight all of the features and selling points of this new mixer, which meant that I knew the design would be long and that we’d have to figure out a way to take the content and photography from the two-page spread in our catalogue and translate that into a more slimmed-down version for email.
Normally I try to educate my business partners on the importance of keeping our emails down in size, as we’ve seen with tests and studies that the more content and the longer your email communications are, the more customers tend to not want to read the entire thing. There’s also proof that the more image heavy and content heavy your email is, the more likely it is to be sent to spam boxes by certain email service providers.
However, with this specific campaign and product launch, our VP and key stakeholders were very firm about keeping select information in this email.
Email Design
Another request was to keep the main hero module of the email as visually close to the layout in the catalogue as possible. I partnered with our copywriter to shorten the the copy so that it would better fit the constraints and ratios of email. We slimed down sentences and headlines where we could, and worked on ways we could visually show our customers the features and benefits fo this product without having to spell it all out.
Because the hero module was so image and text heavy, I chose to use silhouettes of the product elsewhere throughout the design to break up the flow and create more visual interest. It was also a way to showcase all the fun colors the mixer came in.
Results
So did we knock the socks off our KitchenAid reps and provide a more impressive launch experience (at least when it came to the email campaigns)? The answer is yes! Our first week of sales excited expectations and the KitchenAid Mini was a hit with our customers. KitchenAid applauded our email design for its outstanding treatment of their mini stand mixer, thrilled that we included so many details and features. They even sent an email to our VP of Sales, who in return forwarded the email to me and thanked me for my design efforts.
It turns out that we were able to launch the mini a few days sooner than Williams Sonoma. When their launch email hit our inboxes the following week, there was glaring similarity to their design and layout, meaning they likely took inspiration from our approach, which made me feel good about my design decisions.