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Every weekday morning, I do something that probably sounds tedious to most people: I scroll through hundreds of emails looking for the best ones to feature on Email Love.

Despite being one of the largest repositories of email designs in the world (we receive over 30,000 new emails from 5,000+ brands every month), I still personally curate what appears on our homepage. It’s a manual process, and honestly, it’s one of my favorite parts of running Email Love.

Today I want to pull back the curtain and show you exactly how I decide which emails make the cut, and more importantly, what I’m looking for when I review them.

The Unfiltered Feed (Where 99.99% of Emails Don’t Make It)

Every day, I start with our unfiltered feed. This is basically every single email that hits our system, with no filters applied. It’s a lot. And the vast majority of these emails will never see the homepage.

Here’s what I typically skip right away:

Generic sale emails. Unless there’s something special about the sale itself (like Pit Viper’s 60-second Black Friday sale), I’m not featuring your standard “30% off everything” email. You can still find these by searching for specific brands on Email Love, but they’re not making the homepage.

Boring product updates. If it’s just a weekly roundup with nothing interesting happening design-wise or content-wise, I’m scrolling past it.

Anything that feels like it was mailed in. You know the ones I’m talking about. Template-heavy, zero personality, just going through the motions.

What Actually Catches My Eye

So what am I looking for? Here’s my mental checklist:

Unique Design

Is the design interesting or eye-catching in some way? I’m looking for emails that make me stop scrolling. Maybe it’s an unexpected color palette, a bold layout choice, or just really thoughtful attention to detail.

Take this SuperDry email I featured recently. Initially, I picked it because I liked the overall design. Then I realized it’s actually interactive! You can click on these gift box images with tags, and a pop-up appears showing what’s inside. That’s the kind of stuff that gets me excited.

Content That Goes Beyond “Buy This”

I want to feature emails that do more than just push products or discounts. Is the content actually valuable, educational, or entertaining?

This Buoy email caught my attention because it has great social proof woven throughout and genuinely educational content about their product. It’s not just “here’s our stuff, buy it now.” There’s a story being told.

Specific Design Elements

I’m always on the lookout for:

• Dark mode optimization
• Mobile-first design
• Interactive elements
• Interesting photography or design patterns
• Creative use of social proof
• Well-executed animation

This ClickUp email is a perfect example. It has this gradient background at the top with the logo in a white rounded box that looks incredible in dark mode. The HTML text is clean, the colors fade beautifully into the background. It’s just really well executed.

Personalization Done Right

Personalization is table stakes now, but when it’s done well, it still impresses me. This Brunt Workwear email stopped me in my tracks because it said “Thanks for stopping by” and showed me the exact boot I looked at on their website. Plus, it has great animation, a clean design, and more personalized products below.

Emails That Fit Important Categories

I’m always looking for great examples of:

• Welcome series emails
• Birthday emails
• Back in stock notifications
• Cart and browse abandonment
• Well-designed transactional emails
• Seasonal/event-based campaigns (Halloween, Fourth of July, etc.)

Speaking of transactional emails, we actually make purchases through Email Love specifically so we can feature these. They’re surprisingly hard to find in the wild, and I want to highlight brands that invest in making their transactional emails beautiful.

I recently bought an iPhone case from Caudabe, and their order confirmation was so nicely designed that I had to feature it. Same with Tushy. Their transactional emails look just as good as their promotional ones, with all the personalized order details merged in seamlessly.

The Daily Routine

I aim to add 3-4 new emails to the homepage every single day. These automatically get shared to our Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook feeds too.

This consistency matters. Email Love started as a highly curated inspiration site, and that’s still at our core. Even though we now have scale (30,000+ emails monthly), the curation is what sets us apart from other inspiration sites.

Community Submissions

We also feature emails submitted by our community. If you’ve designed an email that’s not already on Email Love and you want us to consider featuring it, send it to [email protected].

Recently, the team at BBC sent us their new interactive email for Doctor Who. It has live poll elements and is just a really impressive example of what’s possible with interactive email. We manually added it because it deserved to be featured.

Create Your Own Collections

Here’s something a lot of people don’t know: you can curate your own collections on Email Love. When you sign up for a free account, you can save emails and create as many collections as you want.

Looking for welcome email inspiration? You can handpick your favorites from our entire library and save them to your own collection. It’s like building your own personal swipe file.

Why This Matters

I could probably automate some of this. We have the data. We could train an AI algorithm to pick emails based on engagement metrics or design trends.

But I don’t want to.

The human curation is what makes Email Love special. It’s my taste, my experience from 15+ years in this industry, and my eye for what actually works (not just what looks pretty).

When you see an email on the Email Love homepage, it’s because I personally thought it was worth your time. That’s a commitment I’m going to keep making in 2026 and beyond.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have about 200 more emails to review today.

Want to see what made the cut this week? Check out the Email Love homepage or follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Much love,
Andy

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @emaillove