Victim One: Edmonton Rush

This Canadian team has an awesome website and compete in a very vibrant, fun industry: professional indoor lacrosse. If you haven't seen a game featuring teams from the National Lacrosse League, think of it as hockey without the ice. Hits, goals, fights and more player accessibility than in the NHL are a reason why crowds are flocking to these games.

So why are the Rush's email templates so bad? Between the bland gray background/black letter combo and the questionable above-the-fold layout, I especially like the subject line spelling error ("Predications" instead of Predictions), which is then repeated in the body of the email. Yikes.

Victim Two: MediaPost

I really, really expected more from these guys, but wow, this one is bad.

 

For beginners, if your template is brown, STOP. There's nothing good that can come out of a brown template...ever.

Next, there's a philosophy we have of letting text 'breathe' a bit with spacing at the edges. Most designers take this into account, but not MediaPost's. Right up to the edges, baby!

Speaking of this text, could there be a more boring font to use? What, Times New Roman wasn't available?

If you're a "Premier Sponsor," are you excited about seeing your logos in an isolated white box that seems like an afterthought? How about centering the box or just building...never mind.

Amidst all of the punctuation mistakes, two additional items stand out: one being the </td> tag below the sponsor logos and the www.mediapst.com unsubscribe lnk. Isn't it MediaPost?

When you do rush jobs, it always looks like you did a rush job.

Victim 3: Domino's

They did it again! Remember what I talked about the other day with Domino's and their 100% graphic email mess, complete with a subject line featuring HTML code? Guess what? On Wednesday, they did the SAME EXACT CAMPAIGN, complete with the HTML code! They can't be this asleep at the wheel, can they?

If you'll excuse me, I need to mix myself an Advil/Tylenol cocktail.