Email review
Adidas vs. Puma

Raise your hand – who is sporty here? We are going to review emails from two of the most famous sportswear brands on the market: Adidas and Puma.

First impression

In this review, we'll be focusing closely on first impressions, as we've taken the welcome emails of these two brands and pitted them against each other in our friendly competition.

Adidas

  • At first glance, the email design appears rather restrained in terms of content, size, and color palette.
  • Personalization immediately catches the eye – the recipient is referred to by name, and a special promo code is written in a large and rather unusual font for emails.
  • Each special offer message appears in a large font, which makes these messages stand out in the body of this welcome email.
  • A neat detail was added to the email in the form of small product cards promoted as member choice, empowering this welcome email with great social proof.

Puma

  • The email greets the recipient with a large banner that presents the various products and also serves as a platform for a welcome discount coupon.
  • In general, the email appears rather colorful thanks to the illustrations and the use of a wide range of colors.
  • The email has a separate section that describes in great detail how a gift coupon works, which, in our opinion, is an effective and user-friendly approach.
  • Appealing and informative icons decorate the section dealing with the benefits of purchasing from Puma.

Usability

Adidas
Puma

1. Email web version

2. Clickable images

3. “Follow us on socials” section

4. Clickable buttons for accessing website pages

Why are these points important?

1. Having a web version of an email is crucial, as it provides recipients with the option to view the email as a webpage if there are any display issues or if images fail to load.

2. Incorporating clickable images into your emails enhances user engagement, enabling recipients to interact not just with buttons, but also with images to explore your offerings.

3. Social media platforms are effective in increasing brand visibility and popularity. Including social media follow buttons in your emails can boost your follower count across these platforms.

4. Clickable buttons make the email more functional and useful for the recipient. In addition, you can place more information to which your email will link, enabling you to achieve the necessary goals (encouraging purchases on the site, familiarizing the recipient with special offers, directing them to the webinar page, and much more).

Design

Design is not only about beautiful colors and graphics; it is also a tool for conveying emotions, motivating action, and demonstrating the uniqueness of a brand. Let's look at some aspects of the email design of these two brands.

Brand consistency

Puma's email follows the path of dividing each email block by color, but the various shades of gray used are rather similar. This pattern continues in the further Puma emails you will see in your inbox; so the company introduces its style colors and designs from the very first email. By contrast, Adidas has created a fairly clean email, where all the information appears against a white background and only the welcome promo code appears in a blue stripe. This color scheme remains much the same in further emails from Adidas, with small details being changed here and there. Puma uses one font in different sizes, whereas Adidas uses the entire email campaign to experiment with both font styles and their presentation (italics, bold, etc.).

Optimization for dark mode

Both brands care about the personal preferences and the eye health of their recipients. Puma and Adidas have done a great job adapting their emails to the dark theme, and the end result is pleasing to the eye. Particularly effective is the clever icon adaptation in Puma’s email. In the standard version of the email, all icons have black borders and a gray fill, while everything appears slightly different in the dark mode: black borders and a white fill against a completely gray background.

Optimization for mobile devices

Puma and Adidas have devoted special attention to adapting their emails for mobile devices, and both emails feel great on the screens of mobiles. The only minor imperfections are the length of the emails. On mobile devices, they take longer to scroll. In Puma's email, this is due to the need to contain a fairly large description of how the promo code works; in the case of Adidas, the length of the email is affected by the vertical arrangement of all the buttons directing the recipient to the website for shopping.

Email accessibility

Adidas
Puma

Left-aligned copy

Center-aligned text is not recommended for dyslexic readers

Sans serif font

Both Adidas and Puma’s Arial fonts belong to the sans-serif family.

Text readability

Italic or underlined text is not suitable for dyslexic readers. Instead, consider using bold text to highlight important parts of your copy.

Color contrast

Tested with Accessible colors.
Fails both AA and AAA compliance with color contrast equal 4.23
Fails both AA and AAA compliance with color contrast equal 3.38

Line spacing 150%

Single color backgrounds

The “lang” attribute

Alt texts for images

The “role="presentation"“ attribute

Legal requirements

Different countries have different email compliance laws, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the USA or the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe. Adhering to these regulations is crucial in order to avoid any legal consequences and maintain a good reputation. Let's explore how today’s guests are managing to remain compliant with these requirements.

Adidas
Puma

Physical postal address

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