The end of 2025 is approaching, and we’ve decided to celebrate it in a special way. Stripo is holding an email design contest, and the winners will receive some exciting prizes. The first round of voting begins today, so we’d like to introduce some of the participants and share their thoughts on email design.
Stripo Choice Awards 2025: Celebration of creativity
The Stripo Choice Awards celebrate creativity and innovation in email marketing. Our goal is to set new industry benchmarks by showcasing the outstanding results our clients have achieved using Stripo’s powerful functionality.
This year, we’re proud to feature 38 participants who submitted 66 impressive emails across three categories:
- best email design;
- best interactive email;
- best email idea and results.
The competition consists of two stages: a public vote is held from November 20th to December 15th, during which everyone can choose their favorite emails in each category; and then a jury reviews the top three finalists per category. The winners will be announced during a live webinar on December 16th.
Now it’s your turn to take part. Explore the entries and cast your vote for the designs that inspire you most!
Meet the participants
This year, 38 talented professionals and teams joined the Stripo Choice Awards. Each of them brought something unique, from bold visual storytelling to experiments with interactivity and motion. We had the pleasure of speaking with six participants, who shared their thoughts on what makes an email design truly effective and inspiring. Here are their stories and entries; this is just a glimpse of the creative minds behind the shortlisted works.
The email marketing team at Cleverbridge is recognized for striking a balance between performance and emotion. Their campaigns are designed to deliver measurable results while maintaining a sense of delight and brand confidence.
View Cleverbridge’s email entry:
(See all emails and add your voice)
Magnetik — A Stirista Company
Magnetik — A Stirista Company is an agency that partners with leading global brands to strategize, create, and manage award-winning newsletter programs and acquisition email campaigns. Under the leadership of Doug Steinberg, Magnetik’s team continuously pushes creative boundaries in email marketing.
View Magnetik’s email entry:
(See all emails and add your voice)
Hope Golden, graphic designer at Hoehn Motors
Hope is an in-house graphic designer in the automotive industry. She enjoys going beyond ready-made templates by adding custom illustrations, fun GIFs, and playful iconography that make each campaign stand out.
View Hope’s email entry:
(See all emails and add your voice)
A tech-driven performance agency that combines data, technology, and creativity to deliver personalized, measurable marketing experiences. Their unique strength lies in turning insights into action: connecting CRM, media, and content to create seamless, data-powered customer experiences that drive measurable results.
View KINESSO Greece’s email entry:
(See all emails and add your voice)
Tamara Marar, HR director at Fine Hygienic Holding
When she took over internal communications, Tamara transformed traditional company emails into colorful, visual, and personality-filled messages. For her, email design is not just about aesthetics; it’s a way to make corporate communication more human and enjoyable.
Three years ago, I was asked to take over internal communications, and I didn’t want to simply send another “Dear All” text email that everyone scrolls past. So, I introduced a new way of communicating: colorful, visual, and a bit playful. I come from an HR background, but I’ve always loved marketing and design. I still design a lot of our internal posters myself; it’s my creative outlet and the most enjoyable part of my work. It’s how I sneak a bit of personality into a corporate world that tends to play it safe.
View Fine Hygienic Holding’s email entry:
(See all emails and add your voice)
Annelies Leitner, graphic designer at Grafik.it
A graphic designer and illustrator working in the hospitality and food industries, Annelies focuses on thoughtful, high-quality designs that reflect a brand’s essence. Her approach blends strategy with artistry; she creates emails that feel both beautiful and authentic.
I’m passionate about what I do and truly enjoy bringing creative ideas to life.
View Grafik.it’s email entry:
(See all emails and add your voice)
Each participant proves that behind every outstanding campaign, there’s not just a tool but a person or a team who dares to experiment, analyze, and create something meaningful.
Email design principles
We asked participants two questions about email design principles: What does a powerful, eye-catching design mean to you? What are your top three “yeses” and “noes” in design?
Their responses convinced us that professionals always consider not only the visual appeal of images but also email structure, user-friendly design, brand consistency, and many other factors.
Here are their insights:
To us, good email design is all about being clear and creative. It grabs you right away, feels personal, and guides you like a real chat with the brand.
Things that make a design great:
- an easy-to-follow layout that works well on mobile devices;
- fun, custom content that makes emails feel like real talks;
- consistent branding with calls to action that feel natural.
Things that ruin a design:
- too many pictures or words;
- styles that don’t match or weird colors;
- ignoring how easy it is to use, how it looks on different devices, or how people experience it.
KINESSO Greece agency.
To me, a strong design grabs attention without needing to beg for it. It feels natural and smooth.
- my top YES: Clean layout, color that carries emotion. Human and a little imperfect;
- my top NO: Stock photos of “smiling models” and overly serious corporate tone.
Design must always be clear and convey the message in a way that fits the client.
My top YESes in design:
- packaging the message appropriately;
- creating a design that truly suits the client;
- executing the work with precision and care.
My NOes: The opposites of the YES points:
- a design that looks nice but doesn’t fit the client;
- a design that fails to communicate the intended message;
- a design that is poorly executed, with no real thought behind it.
Top three yeses in design:
- a clear hierarchy is key in order to get your message across;
- legibility;
- the design needs to match the mood and style of the brand it’s promoting.
Top three noes:
- lack of organization (designs where the recipient has to seek out crucial information) making it easy on them;
- using too many fonts and colors, especially if they don’t match the brand;
- not having fun with your design when you have the opportunity.
A powerful design is a design that grabs attention and tells the story instantly, all while staying true to the brand.
- yes: clear hierarchy, consistent branding, mobile-first thinking;
- no: cluttered layouts, too many CTAs, ignoring accessibility.
The best practices for email design are:
- cleanliness and simplicity: a clutter-free layout that directs the reader’s attention effectively;
- consistency in branding elements like logos, colors, and fonts to reinforce brand recognition;
- usability across devices: understanding our readers’ use of email and designing for readability and engagement at all breakpoints.
The email design trends that defined 2025 and will stay strong in 2026
I always eagerly await answers to questions about email marketing trends. Trends are rapidly changing the email industry before our eyes, altering the appearance of emails.
Here are key insights from our participants:
- interactive elements: From animations and countdown timers to clickable carousels and gamified layouts, keep audiences engaged;
- a move toward casual authenticity and a genuine human touch in both copy and visuals, countering the overuse of AI-generated content;
- dynamic personalization, powered by behavioral data, helping brands send content that feels truly relevant.
Here are the main trends that practicing email marketers and designers, for whom email production is a daily task, identified.
In my work, I closely adhere to each client’s corporate identity, which means I can’t always apply every design trend I personally enjoy. That said, I’m particularly fond of subtle animations in headers and the clean, modern look of rounded corners.
The three most powerful trends in email marketing are:
- Countdown timers: Instant urgency, visually clear.
- Dual CTAs: Let recipients choose without confusion (only if it makes sense for the campaign and the strategy).
- Benefit-focused blocks: Highlight 3 key points for smarter decisions.
We believe these trends endure because they’re not just “visual tricks,” they’re grounded in psychology, clarity, and value communication, which never go out of style.
- Human writing. Authentic text that feels like a person wrote it, not AI.
- Using our own employees instead of stock models makes everything more relatable; people connect with faces they actually know.
- Casual, customized tone. No corporate stiffness; a bit of accent, a bit of warmth, a voice that feels like it belongs to your culture.
- Dynamic personalization: We have increased our use of data and tokens to drive personalized email content and images.
- Image-based slices: While compatibility has come a long way, we have gone back to using more graphic image-based slices for branded elements like main headlines and complex offers/callouts where the typography can’t be controlled enough in code.
- Interactive content/design: Even when AMP isn’t possible, we try to add simple yes/no or thumbs up/down content to include click engagement and personalization data.
- Emails that feel tailor-made, using dynamic content and behavior-based triggers to create truly one-to-one communication.
- Clickable elements, carousels, and gamified designs that engage recipients inside the inbox, turning emails into mini landing pages.
- Clean layouts, strong contrast, and dark-mode optimization that ensure a seamless experience for everyone, everywhere.
KINESSO Greece agency.
- Simple animations for visual excitement.
- AI tools, I have mixed feelings on them, but they’re certainly helpful in speeding up the design process.
- Charitable/do-good brand messaging.
Bonus for email marketers: What to check in an email’s design before sending it
The most exciting moment in email marketing is hitting the send button after investing time, effort, ideas, and teamwork into the email. You can’t endlessly check it and delay sending it out, so we asked about the three most important things to look at.
And our respondents were very consistent in their answers. Rendering or mobile responsiveness took first place in the list of mentioned factors: emails must look great and function well on all devices. This was a must-check for all survey participants. And it’s hard to disagree.
By the way, in Stripo, you not only see the mobile version immediately but can also edit it separately, ensuring that both versions are always appealing. Additionally, you can use an integrated email testing tool, Email on Acid, for quick and seamless email previews for over 90 combinations of popular email clients and devices, directly within the editor.
Participants identified other important points worth checking:
- links and tracking: Everything works exactly as intended (Claudio Mascarella, Hope Golden, KINESSO Greece, Annelies Leitner);
- dynamic content: Personalization, custom fields, timers (Claudio Mascarella);
- typography degradation/fallback: We need to ensure design fidelity when fonts don’t render or change size (Doug Steinberg);
- image usage: Checking when images don’t load or dark mode changes (Doug Steinberg);
- the information in the ad is accurate. I’m both the copywriter and the designer, so this is my responsibility too (Hope Golden);
- the subject line and content to get the best results (KINESSO Greece);
- ask questions: Does it sound like me talking to people? Is the point clear enough? (Tamara Marar);
- make sure that the email complies with all legal requirements (Annelies Leitner).
Wrapping up
We would like to thank everyone who took the time to share their insights, as well as all 35 participants who made Stripo Choice Awards 2025 a celebration of creativity. Your ideas and designs show just how powerful and diverse the world of email marketing can be.
Now it’s your turn: explore the entries, get inspired, and cast your vote for your favorites!
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