The spot the difference email that gets people looking at the product

Make the differences the ones that matter

Altered pixels, picked at random? Entertains for a moment, teaches nothing. The version worth building uses differences that mean something: the old pack against the new one, the genuine article against a common fake, or the two sizes people keep confusing at the shelf.

By the time your reader has found them all, they've looked at your product for longer than any campaign in the calendar would have managed. And they've learned the thing you wanted them to notice.

Where the format earns its production time

1. A packaging change, so customers recognise the new one on a shelf or a delivery
2. A counterfeit comparison, in categories where fakes circulate, which is genuinely valuable to the reader
3. Two variants people mix up, which turns a support problem into a game
4. An old model against a new one, where the improvements are physical instead of described

In every one of those the reader finishes the email knowing something they'll use in a shop or at a doorstep. That's a rare outcome for a campaign built around a game.

The counterfeit version is the strongest of the four and the one customers thank brands for. It protects them. It protects you. And nobody reads it as marketing.

Two photographs, one link, one reveal

Keep the mechanics simple. Two images stacked in the email, a line saying how many differences there are, and a link to a page with the answers on it. No scoring, no timer, nothing that has to work inside an email client.

Stack the images, don't sit them side by side. On a phone, two columns makes both of them too small to study, and studying them is the only thing this format has going for it.

Say in words what the picture is asking

If the point is a packaging change or a counterfeit warning, the written version is the important one anyway. It's the part somebody goes looking for later.

The reveal is the campaign that sells

Send the answers two or three days later, and put the substance in that one. What changed and why, how to tell a genuine one, which variant suits which job. The game earned the attention. The reveal spends it. Sending both in one email wastes one of them.

Where the differences were between two of your own products, the reveal is a comparison email with a warmed up audience, and that usually beats sending the same content cold. That pairing is the practical reason to run it at all.

Ask whether anything has actually changed recently

Look for a packaging update, a formulation change, a new supplier mark or a redesign in the past year. If one exists and nobody ever announced it, this is the most enjoyable way to announce it, and it gets remembered better than a notification would.

Nothing changed and no fakes circulating? Then the format has no material and you should skip it. The accounts we run in homeware reach for it when a range is refreshed, and not otherwise.