Designed and built to be mobile first, the template was refreshed after Worldstores acquired ACHICA. Originally an all-black design, the ambition of the new welcome email campaign was to make the brand feel more open and inviting.
As such, lighter coloured shots were used with an emphasis on lifestyle photography that conveyed the breadth of ACHICA’s range.
A company built on flash sales and end of season stock that suppliers were aiming to move on; ACHICA’s customers enjoying the large discounts, it all had to be quite generic whilst still keeping to the same theme.
ACHICA’s emails were primarily sale focused, with a daily broadcast email being sent out every morning. To counter this, the start of every week would begin with an editorial style of email introducing the customers to things that they could expect for that week and tasters of what to look out for.
With a different objective, to keep the customer interacting with the brand, the content was much shorter and the tone kept lighter. An introductory story, a few related sales and inspirational blogs, the focus was for more organic interactions to contrast the more obviously sale driven daily emails.
This email template was set up before I started working on the emails at ACHICA, with the sales fed in through a piece of script that linked with the website. However, soon after I had taken over responsibility of the emails I was asked to include more descriptive sections to the email to highlight some of the more profitable brands.
For example, Anglepoise lamps may have taken the top slot, in which case it would be beneficial to include some introductory copy for customers who were unaware of the brand.
Following the existing structure, I added stacking tables to the design which allowed a description next to a hero product and a lifestyle to further push the quality of the brand being sold.
At ACHICA, brands would often provide us with lifestyle photography or hero shots that they would like us to use on the site.
However, if it wasn’t provided, we’d have to take products and add them to stock photography by photoshopping them in. I did this for the full year and a half that I was at ACHICA, assisting the artworkers in between email jobs and other online asset creations.
I would create, on average, around 30-40 photo compositions a week.
In addition to the banners that would be created for the individual brands, I would create Sale vouchers that would be attached to the top of emails or highlighted on the site’s homepage.
Similarly composed as the banners, these would usually require a bit of photoshopping to add lettering to stock photos, adjusting lighting and adding texture to the typography to appear as though there’s foiling or some sort of printed material in the shot.
As part of Worldstores’ marketing plan, to introduce like-minded customers to the brand, printed vouchers were given to customers of certain brands. As an example, Naked Wines.
One of the few print jobs that I had to do at ACHICA and Worldstores, I designed and created the templates for all of the vouchers that would be sent out.