Case study
A magazine that happens to sell.
THE HUB — a branded editorial issue for York Aromatics, delivered as a single self-contained HTML email, with the products built into the story rather than bolted onto it.
York Aromatics · Branded email
Case study
THE HUB — a branded editorial issue for York Aromatics, delivered as a single self-contained HTML email, with the products built into the story rather than bolted onto it.
York Aromatics · Branded email
Zero remote assets
All seven images embedded, so nothing breaks when images are blocked
One self-contained file
Most brand newsletters are assembled in a drag-and-drop builder and it shows. The type is whatever the template allows, the layout resets to a stack of boxes, and the finished thing looks like software rather than the brand that sent it.
THE HUB was built the other way round. Velvet Studio art-directed and hand-coded it as an editorial issue: a masthead, a lead feature, a four-step ritual, product notes and a maker’s section, set in the brand’s own typography and spacing. It reads like something published, not something generated.
The commerce is structural, not decorative. Each step of the ritual is a product doing a job, so the reader arrives at the shop link already understanding what it is for — the issue does the selling before the button ever appears.
The brief, in four problems
A drag-and-drop builder imposes its own type, spacing and layout, so every issue looks a little less like the brand and a little more like the tool that made it.
The fix —Hand-built HTML, set in the brand’s own typography and rhythm. The masthead, rules and small caps carry over from the York Aromatics site, so the email is recognisably the same brand.
Most clients block remote images by default. An email that hangs its layout on hosted image files can arrive as a column of empty boxes to a large share of the list.
The fix —Every image is embedded in the file itself, so the issue renders whole with no external requests. Nothing to load, nothing to block, nothing to expire.
Product-only emails give a reader no reason to open the next one, and lean on discounting to earn the click.
The fix —The issue is structured like a magazine: a lead feature, a step-by-step ritual, a maker’s section and a welcome for new subscribers. Products sit inside the story rather than replacing it.
A grid of products and a discount code asks for the sale before the reader has been given any reason to want it.
The fix —The four-step ritual gives each product a job — set the mood, unwind, lock in moisture, drift off — so the shop link lands after the case for it has already been made, not instead of it.
An email is the only piece of a brand that arrives uninvited. It should be worth the intrusion.
Services delivered
Timeline
Branded HTML newsletters, art-directed and hand-built. Tell us about your list and what you want to say.
Velvet Studio Ltd · Company No. 17216315 · Registered in England & Wales · York YO26 6DZ