To aid you in your online marketing efforts this year we’re pleased to announce that 12 brand new, free email marketing templates have just arrived in all Sign-Up.to accounts. The templates are available in the Campaign Designer email editor. You can add as much content as you need to them and easily customise them to your brand.

The templates include a cool retro theme, a set of ‘courgette diner’ emails, perfect for restaurants and the like, and two ‘Uhoo app’ templates, ideal for showcasing apps or smartphone updates.

Courgette diner voucher	Courgette diner news	Courgette diner menu
Retro	Uhoo app 1	Uhoo app 2
Dotshop main	Dotshop products	Showcase
Louder	Page curl	Featured

We rolled out 10 templates in December and a further 10 a couple of weeks ago so we really hope you’ll find the perfect design for your brand. Please drop us an email (or comment below) if there are any template themes you’d like to see in your account.

To kick start the new year we’re very pleased to showcase 10 brand new free email marketing templates, available in all Sign-Up.to accounts now! The templates include a snazzy thank you template (perfect for post-Christmas niceties), two gallery themes and a couple of rustic ‘Teabreak’ templates (my personal favourites!).

As always, all of the templates are available in the Campaign Designer email editor and are customisable and suitable for any amount of content you might need to add.

Letter	Burger geeks	Burger geeks promo
Quickshot	Teabreak news	Teabreak triple
Template noir	Cup of Joe	Gallery
Gallery small

Watch out for even more templates arriving in your account very soon. We hope you like these, and look forward to seeing you use them. Please get in touch with us if there are any template themes you’d like to see!

Christmas is all about being generous and in the spirit of giving we’ve just added 10 exciting new free email marketing templates to all Sign-Up.to accounts. The templates range from themed save the date, gift voucher and offer emails to birthday templates and a couple of cool product showcase designs.

All of the templates are available now for you to use in our Campaign Designer email editor. They’re highly customisable and suitable for any amount of content. If you’re looking for some festive themed templates for the Christmas period, why not check out our seasonal templates? Perfect for the occasion.

Outdoor	Voucher	Save the date
Gift offer	Stack	Birthday
Retro gift grid	Retro gift showcase	Best sellers
Flight Inc

We’ll be rolling out even more templates in the New Year, but enjoy these in the meantime. We can’t wait to see how you use them! Please do get in touch if you have any email template design ideas.

Christmas time; it’s all about giving. I know we might be a little early on the gift front, but we’ve got a great Christmas themed treat for all Sign-Up.to customers – some free and festive email marketing templates. The Sign-Up.to design team have been hard at work putting together these fun, seasonal creations which are perfect for promoting a Christmas offer or event. You could even use one simply to bring some extra cheer to your newsletters at this time of year.

We’ve got five brand new designs for you, which are all highly customisable and suitable for any amount of content. You can get your hands on the new festive templates right now in your Sign-Up.to account! Simply head over to the Create section and open Campaign Designer to utilise these and many other free email marketing templates.

We hope you enjoy the new template designs and we look forward to seeing how you utilise them! Questions or feedback? Leave us your comments in the box below.

Hello again, and welcome to our latest ‘Good website design’ post. This time I’ll be taking a look at the website of a product that I’m personally a big fan of: Camera+.

Camera+ augments the iPhone’s standard camera with a cargo ship’s worth of additional features. As a photography enthusiast I find this app makes taking photos on the iPhone quicker and more enjoyable, giving control over some fine tuning elements and adding an array of post-processing effects. It also makes sharing your photos easy as you can share directly from the app to Twitter, Facebook and Flickr or send it to a friend via email.

It’s no surprise then that the Camera+ website compliments the app in several ways. The background of the site tiles a dark camera grip texture seamlessly across its width and the main content area sits slim and centred on the canvas with a subtle drop shadow border.

The various feature sections contain different photo-centric textures from a dark gloss to a vivid lens flare, each broken up with elements familiar to the Camera+ app itself. The top section features a grained metal background containing dark text that is highlighted with a white text-shadow – this subtle effect makes the text look as if it has been punched out of the background, giving it a crisp look that integrates well with the texture.

A clear call to action sits on the left with a link to the App Store where you can buy the app. On the right sits an image of an iPhone which loops a demonstratory video of the app using the new HTML5 video tag. To the average visitor (with an up to date web browser) this means that the video will play seamlessly without the need for additional plug-ins or user interaction. When browsing on an iPhone, the video will be available to play externally by tapping the play button and for those with older browsers which do not support HTML5, graceful degradation ensures that a still image fills the seat.

Useful snippets of information on the many features of Camera+ are scattered in the below sections with minimalist icons illustrating their functionality. This makes scanning the page for attractive aspects of the app very easy.

An example gallery is included at the bottom of the page to show the many ways that Camera+ can improve your photos, however it would be nice to see this take a more prominent seat within the site by utilising some of the excess horizontal space. I also feel that they have missed an opportunity to gain some community involvement with the gallery section, along with promoting their Twitter and Facebook pages to encourage sharing and enforce their brand identity.

If you’d like a few ideas on how you could strengthen your brand with social media, visit our Social sharing series or our Social media blog for some inspiration.

Have you got a firecracker website you want to show off? Seen a site worthy of our periodically published presentation? Drop a comment in the box below and we’ll check it out!

Along with Facebook and Twitter, you may recall that Sign-Up.to recently got on board with social media/blog platform Tumblr. I personally love Tumblr; it’s a growing platform that’s massively versatile. I find it a great place to discover and share visual inspiration and though slightly different from our traditional social media approach, this is the exactly the way we use it for Sign-Up.to. Mainly we focus on great design, but we like to dabble in many different mediums, including photography, illustration and typography. We also rate general geekery pretty highly; so whether it’s technology, comic books, sci-fi or video games, there’s a high chance you’ll see some of that too.

Leanne and I take great joy in compiling posts for the Sign-Up.to page, and the Tumblr interface makes it really easy to reblog other people’s posts and to be reblogged yourself. Similarly to other social media platforms, you can follow blogs and posts from those you follow are displayed in feed form so you can easily keep tabs on what people are publishing.

We follow a real variety of blogs through Tumblr and many of the posts on our page have originated from or been discovered through them. Leanne and I wanted to showcase some of the Tumblrs we take particular inspiration from, so here are some of our favourites.

My top picks:

We love illustrationDoes exactly what it says on the tin really. Many fabulous illustrations to be enjoyed here.	Design a emporterA mixed bag from these guys. Whether it be paintings, illustrations or photography, it’s always top class.	Oliver PhillipsA great blog to follow for design, branding and general interesting, quirky content.
Gaks designs Some architecture and sculpture here, as well as some interesting and unusual visual art.	The awkward gamerThis blog indulges both my love of art and design, and my love of video games. It provides humour, art and geekiness, so it gets my vote.	Wildcard! - Hotties from history This is my wildcard choice, as the concept is pretty bizarre. They post about significant people from history, that also happen to be good-looking. Educational and entertaining.

Over to Leanne!

1000 drawings  One of my favourites, this is perfect if you love illustrations. Their theme is varied but most of the time I end up going ‘awww’ to their posts. Very sweet.	Things organized neatlyIf you like being organised, this is the place for you. Honestly.	Awesome people hanging out togetherI love my celebrities and this page provides some rare (I’d like to think) photos of famous people together – some you’d expect to see together, some that take you by surprise.
Minimal movie postersThis arty page is a favourite amongst the Sign-Up.to team. They find original artworks representing films and TV shows – old and new – and make them something special. You can even buy some of the images.	Dear photographTake an old photo and place it in today’s setting. Original, different and a little heart warming. I’d love to do this with some of my old childhood photos.	Wildcard! - Kitties and cakesThis is my wildcard choice. I love cakes and I love cats and this page is the perfect combination of the two. Even if you don’t like cats (or cakes), some of the photos/creations are impressive!

We hope that you’ve enjoyed browsing our selection of favourites as much as we enjoyed compiling them for you! Are you on Tumblr or do you have any Tumblr recommendations for us? Leave us a comment below with details, as we’d love to check them out.

The Sign-Up.to design team have been hard at work again, and this time they’ve rustled up a pair of Halloween themed email templates for use in all Sign-Up.to accounts. Perfect for promoting your seasonal offers and events in suitably spooky style.

‘Hill 14′ is a dark, atmospheric template with plenty of ghoulish touches and room for you to make the layout your own. My personal favourite though is ‘Happy Halloween’, featuring Frankenstein’s classic movie monster in a bright and simple email design.

Both templates are now available for use in our Campaign Designer email editor alongside our full range of free templates. We look forward to hearing what you think of the new designs, so leave us a comment below!

To coincide with the launch of Sign-Up.to’s brand new Business Class Social Marketing tools, we’ve put together a selection of new social media themed email templates. These are free and available in the Campaign Designer mode of all Sign-Up.to accounts (even our free demo accounts!). Use the new templates to promote your business social media pages and reel in those fans and followers! Don’t forget to utilise our Go Social tools in your emails to allow your subscribers to share your campaign with their friends.

A little birdie told me	Follow us	Go Social
Become a fan	Keep in touch	My name is
	Tweet

We hope you enjoy the new designs and that they assist in growing your social media fanbase. Any template styles you’d like to see in your Sign-Up.to account? Drop us an email and let us know!

We return this month to a normal good email design blog after last month’s post on the Sign-Up.to design competition winner. Now you may recognise the following company as being someone who entered our competition; sadly they didn’t win the iPad 2, but I felt they definitely deserved an honourable mention for being a real favourite in the Sign-Up.to office.

Personally I really like the style of Peyton and Byrne’s email campaigns and also their approach to email marketing. The restaurant group send a campaign to subscribers each month, and while each one has it’s own distinct theme, as a series they are wonderfully consistent. The same concise layout is used and it contains the same number of articles and photographs each time. Apart from the familiarity this creates for subscribers, it also means that they are effectively utilising a template which will save time and complication when producing appropriate content and images.

Content wise the recent Peyton and Byrne newsletter below also ticks all the boxes. The branding is clear and the email perfectly matches the styling of the Peyton and Byrne website. I like the navigation type menu in the top right corner of the campaign which allows subscribers to visit some general areas of the site with ease. Also included in each article are clear links to additional information and opportunities to book for the events on offer.

The tasteful mixture of serif and sans serif typefaces, combined with the grey text and delicate article borders gives an air of class and quiet confidence to the campaign. I also like how Peyton and Byrne have employed custom icons to link to their Facebook and Twitter pages, rather than using the standard social media logos.  Overall I think it’s a great design and would enjoy seeing it in my inbox each month.

I’m afraid that’s it for this month’s inspiration fix, but we’ll be back next month to showcase another delightfully designed email campaign. In the meantime be sure to keep an eye on the Sign-Up.to blog for more online marketing news and advice. As always if you have any questions or comments on this month’s post, please leave them in the box below!

Back in June we spread the word that we were looking for the best examples of email marketing design, offering a brand new iPad 2 to the winner of our competition. The Sign-Up.to team picked ten finalists from the many entries, before handing procedures over to you to decide on a winner! A big thank you to everyone who entered and also those who voted. We’ve tallied up your votes and are now proud to announce the winner of the Sign-Up.to email design competition. Drumroll please…

Congratulations to Barcadia Media who have won an iPad 2!
The people have spoken and they liked your design best. Good work!

I think the design is great because it’s bold with many prominent links through to their website. I really like the colour scheme and this is maintained throughout the whole email. A particularly nice touch at the bottom of the design is the ‘Creatives at FYC’ section, where images are used as links for each featured business. Even though each of the logos is distinct, they look great as a set and work well in the wider context of the email design. There is also really nice consistency in the size of images used throughout the layout.

We’ll be returning next month with our regular Good email design blog series. In the meantime tell us what you like about Barcadia Media’s winning email design in the comments box below!