Analyzing Apple's email marketing with Tim Yeadon

What does great brand consistency look like in email?

For Apple, it’s about balancing world-class design with functional clarity — and sometimes, wrestling with its own scale. In this episode of Feedback Friday, Matt Helbig joins Tim Yeadon from Clyde Golden to break down Apple’s approach to email design, accessibility, and storytelling. From sleek product launches to seasonal campaigns and event invitations, they explore how a global brand maintains its polished identity while managing dozens of product lines and teams.

If you’re working in design, brand marketing, or email strategy, this episode is a deep dive into what it takes to make even the biggest brand in the world feel personal and cohesive in the inbox.

TL;DR

• Brand cohesion: Keeping consistency across multiple product teams.
• Design balance: Mixing live text, imagery, and accessible layouts.
• Legal vs. creativity: Managing compliance without killing design flow.
• Scroll strategy: Making long emails engaging without overwhelming.
• CTA psychology: Why clarity beats cleverness every time.
• Dark mode design: Visual contrast and mood in high-end campaigns.

🎥 Watch the full breakdown or read the transcript for insights to strengthen your next brand email.

Matt Helbig: What's up, email geeks? Welcome back to another episode of Feedback Friday, the show that examines emails and discusses why they are truly effective. Today, I am joined by Tim from Clyde Golden. How would you introduce yourself, Tim?

Tim Gaiden: Hey Matt, thanks for having me. I am Tim Yen with Clyde Golden. We're an email marketing agency in Seattle. We've been in it for about five years now. I feel like we're just getting started. It's still a lot of fun; every day is very interesting.

Matt Helbig: We both chose Apple today, which is a well-established brand to discuss. I'm a little bit nervous, but what are your initial thoughts on what Apple does well and what they could maybe improve on? 

Tim Gaiden: Well, I think we all know that Apple has a beautiful brand, and its products are extremely useful and seamless in their design. For us, what's fascinating is a slight gap analysis between what the product is like and how they interpret the brand in their email. The landing pages are lovely, and the campaigns are interesting, but once we get into email, I find it's a little bit all over the map.

Matt Helbig: They have so many products. They have their product launch emails, Apple Fitness, iTunes, and Apple TV. There are many different brands under the Apple brand, and I'm curious. I think specific emails might get a little bit more attention than others. As a big brand like Apple, how many people might be on their marketing team, and how can they all maintain consistency across all the different products they offer?

Tim Gaiden: In the end, it's all just Apple to me, whether it's iTunes or some other sub-brand within it. I think it's essential to remember that when marketing a company like this, it's important. You had sent a handful of examples before we chose Apple, and one of them was Nike, which deals with a similar scenario. I thought they handled it really well, as there was always a consistency of that swoosh at the top. While I understood it was Nike, they were introducing a variety of different products and activities as they went along. I believe that Apple and Nike share a certain parallel. It’s interesting to see when they have a campaign for a special event versus rolling out another set of iPhones or something similar that they want to talk about. It's not easy to do, and it takes some discipline.

(See the full email)

Matt Helbig: Alright, we picked out three examples to look at. These are actually the top three most popular and most collected ones on the site. This nice animation here in the Mother's Day email — a very subtle animation, but it only plays when it loads, which I almost wish would repeat, maybe every 10 seconds instead. I mean, this is a nice way to capture someone’s eye, but when you’re adding too much in a GIF and people wait like 10 seconds to actually get the message, that’s when maybe email marketers go a little bit overboard with GIFs.

Tim Gaiden: To add on to that, you have about three seconds from that subject line into the headline, and if the subject line got me in and the headline doesn’t load, most likely you’re going to bounce onto the next email. You know what’s cool about this layout? First off, that CTA is lovely. Because it’s transparent, they can use a variety of colors behind it and achieve nice contrast, but they’re bottom-aligning the type in the module from the bottom up. As I scan, the eye consistently focuses on the same spot in the module, making it extremely easy to scan.

The type is nice and small, and the images are quite large. I can actually see the fabric of the band, which is lovely in something like this. You know, this is a Mother’s Day email, and I think we’ve all done things like this. What this is is a collection of wonderful things for mom. You’re not going to have a CTA right at the top. You’re going to try to get people to bundle, to come into the site, and take a look around. You’re just trying to solve a problem for Mother’s Day — what should I get my mom? I would like to point out one thing here, as noted in the subhead. You see this all over the place: “Get two-hour delivery on select Mother’s Day gifts for $9¹ or pick up at the Apple Store.” Those superscripts, those asterisks — there are some paragraphs in these that have an asterisk and a number everywhere you go. There are claims that they’re trying to protect, and I feel like there’s a brand team, a campaign team, and a product team, but the true lead for Apple is the legal team. Everything you do probably has to go through legal, and they’re just plastering asterisks all over this thing.

To be honest, it’s not very scannable. It’s a little irritating and off-putting. We’ve sent numerous emails to banks and financial institutions, and there are significantly fewer disclaimers pointing to claims or deals. I find that really interesting — that a common message throughout Apple emails is legal. The legal at the bottom, the small boilerplate, not a big deal, but I wish there were a way to have fewer superscript numbers and asterisks cluttering the messaging.

Matt Helbig: I really like their use of color, breaking up these different sections into the different products. Okay, this is their watch. These are accessories. This is another type of device, along with additional accessories. I think that’s smart — breaking these up while still using live text. I know these buttons are images; it would be nice to see them try a bulletproof button if they could. Scrolling down, I noticed they have a catchall CTA, which I usually like to see, but it’s done with plain text and features a subtle hover effect underlining it.

Tim Gaiden: It’s sort of a rescue CTA — yeah, you could have placed something like that right up top for people who just wanted to go straight in.

Matt Helbig: Yeah, underneath that, here, click and go shop. Some people just get this and they’re like, “Right, sure, let’s go take a look at Apple, see what they have.” And then after this, they transition away from those products to more secondary ones. I was impressed that this is still using live text. Usually, I would expect a banner like this to be locked up in an image. They have this fun little headline here and then show you individual reasons why you might want to interact with their site. This is an interesting way to break out, perhaps using a navigation bar — these quick links at the bottom. I was surprised these were actually links; I thought they were just icons supporting the messaging. But it does seem more like a bottom navigation section.

Tim Gaiden: You need some sort of emotional anchor at the bottom of an email that suggests, “We’re done.” I thought this did a nice job of that. I’d also say this body copy — the live copy like “Get free, no-contact delivery” — is centered. It’s a centered-justified type, and this is about the longest amount of center-justified type you can safely use and still expect people to read. You can almost absorb that “Trade in an old device and save” without actually having to read it. If you have 30 words or more, with 80 characters or more, you’ll need left-justified body copy so the eye can bounce back and forth quickly. That’s something to be careful of — to use centered type only in short bursts, unless you don’t want people to read it.

Matt Helbig: I think this works. No more than three lines is usually what I consider the threshold. Even this section is somewhat advanced — with a three-column layout, you’re presenting a lot of information, but it’s still scannable and easy to read. I’m curious if dropping it down to two or giving it a little more room to breathe would help. But I think they use white space effectively enough to make this work.

Tim Gaiden: It’s just my job to quickly get you to the site. It’s not my job to really teach you anything in an email like this. I almost feel like this email’s a little long. There are a few pieces about three-quarters of the way in that don’t feel like the rest of it.

(See the full email)

Matt Helbig: We have a specific product launch email. 

Tim Gaiden: Of all the emails you sent, this one annoyed me the most. The centered type at the top, the list of features — I’m still not sure I’ve actually read all four lines. I almost need to close an eye to read these things.

Matt Helbig: But there were a few things in this email that I did like. It was interesting to see them use those rounded corners that soften the imagery a little and make these feel like individualized cards.

Tim Gaiden: There’s a nice resonance with the shape of the device itself.

Matt Helbig: I think it’s hard for a lot of people who say, “I want my emails to be like Apple.” You may not have the same level of stunning product photography or the ability to create color palettes like this. So I give them credit for doing their own thing, always trying to surprise and delight in the inbox. I know it’s a product launch email and everyone wants their piece of the pie, but there’s a lot of content within this one that might be a little too much for me. 

Tim Gaiden: This is a long-scroll email. Someone opens up an email, and you have about three seconds to get their attention. You’ve only got a few more seconds if they’re actually interested to decide to click through.

People will scroll. People on their phones scroll on Reddit all day long. If they’re interested in an email and the content, they will scroll to the bottom of it. When I say they’re too long, or the files are too heavy and get clipped — that’s a fear. But I don’t have a ton of fear about creating a long, tall, skyscraper email that people can wander through and be interested in. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Thumbs are pretty strong at this point, and we can just scroll forever. If you can get them to the bottom, that’s great. That said, most people won’t read the bottom of promotional marketing emails. Wow, look at this. 

Matt Helbig: Yeah, I know, it’s like the CVS receipt — it just keeps going. I kind of want, like in a Marvel movie, a module at the bottom with a joke or something explaining what’s going to happen in the next product launch. If I got all the way down here, I deserve something, you know?

Alright, we’ve got a fun one for the last email we’re going to look at — a bit of a webinar one too, since I assume this might have been a virtual conference this year. This one gets right into it. I really like the Memoji-style people up here. Definitely like the code and the reflection in the eyes — that’s a really cool touch. I really like this graphic. Some of their event invites are just one large image, but I do think they use live text here, which is cool to see. I like that it takes over the entire email, and I appreciate the dark theme. What are your thoughts on this one?

Tim Gaiden: I like the art too. I think those are cool. We have the centered body type again, and then “Scroll down for more.” We’re in an email — there’s nothing else I can do. How about a CTA to register? That would be nice right there. Just go ahead, because there’s one at the bottom that says “Learn more.” You have all of this not-quite-scannable, centered, low-contrast body copy that’s pretty small. I have a copywriting background and have written numerous CTAs; “Learn more” is the lowest common denominator among them. It doesn’t really ask me to do anything. It’s just like, “I know I need a CTA there, so learn more.” The only thing worse than “Learn more” would be “Click here,” because that’s the only thing you can do with the button — click here — and then it’s a mystery what happens afterwards.

Realistically, “Register now” might be a little stronger. If you took this content and placed it in the Mother’s Day email, I bet it would perform better with short, easy-to-scan blocks in a flow that makes sense, featuring a nice big headline at the top and CTAs designed to encourage people to take action. It would be fascinating to test the exact same content that way.

Matt Helbig: Well, I think that covers most of the Apple emails. Definitely visit Really Good Emails and review some of the other examples. They utilize email extensively, and it’s interesting to see the various layouts and content they use to connect with their subscribers. Alright, Tim, is there anything you'd like to plug? Where can we find you online?

Tim Gaiden: We’re at clydegolden.com, all day, every day, making great emails.

Matt Helbig: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Tim. It was a pleasure to speak with you today. Have a fantastic week.