Earlier this month, Net Atlantic employees teamed up with the Salem High School Marine Corps Junior ROTC (MCJROTC) once again to take part in their Toys for Tots Program. We had such a great turnout last year that we wanted to get involved once more, embracing the opportunity to give back to the community and spread holiday cheer through the spirit of giving. And thanks to the generosity of Net Atlantic employees, our Volunteer Committee was able to amass over fifty toys to be given to local children of all ages! When the Salem High School Marine Corps Junior ROTC came to pick up the toys, we made it a bit of an occasion with photos, small speeches, laughter and merriment. In the end, they walked away hefting two large boxes filled to the brim with many, many playthings.
Author: Miller Ramos
Thoughts on HTML Email Design, Segmentation and Best Practices
In a recent HTML overview presentation I led, an interesting question came up. While I was knee-deep in indicating the various challenges faced in HTML email design because of the many platforms that email can be read on, someone had essentially asked if we needed to bother ourselves with those difficulties anymore. Given that we have the email marketing tools to segment our mailing lists based on a number of criteria, could it be theoretically possible to eschew the many platform dependent limitations that HTML email often has? Couldn’t we just set up targets based on email client and send mailings that were tailored for that?
At first blush, I would have to say that this is a great idea. Why? Because designing for email is pretty annoying. As a web designer, you have to keep up with changes in browser technology, design conventions and updates to the very code we use to make our web creations. That’s just standard practice. However, despite the fact that we may be producing assets in 2013, when it comes to email, unfortunately, you find yourself having to code things as if it were 1997.
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Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid: A Look at Our Contest Entries
Our Best Email Design of 2012 contest saw so many more entries than we had anticipated. Our panel of email expert judges had to square away some serious time and focused attention to properly evaluate them and give them all a fair shake. Submissions we received provided a very insightful look into how you all out there were doing in regard to email marketing best practices. Read our last blog post, Best Practices in Action: A Look at Our Contest Entries, about the great things we saw you email-sending folks out there do.
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Best Practices in Action: A Look at Our Contest Entries
Our Best Email Design of 2012 contest saw so many more entries than we had anticipated. Our panel of email expert judges had to square away some serious time and focused attention to properly evaluate them and give them all a fair shake. By February 1st, some really impressive submissions made it to our contest inbox and, in looking things over, it has become apparent that the entire pool of submissions we received provided a very insightful look into how you all out there were doing in regard to email marketing best practices. Because, let’s face it—it’s one thing to be aware of what constitutes recommended and proven methods with regard to email. It’s another thing entirely to see them in action.
Here are a couple great things we saw you email-sending folks out there do:
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Google+ Changes Your World
As usual, the Internet is hopping with activity as everyone’s talking about Google’s latest offering. The last couple of times it’s been talk of Google Buzz, the Big G’s answer to Twitter and their foray into the world of status updates and microblogging, and Google Wave, the Internet search giant’s attempt at redefining the electronic communication paradigm and their approach to collaborative editing. This time, though? The talk is about Google+.
If you look around the web, you’ll see that the vast majority of the talk regarding Google’s new hotness addresses concerns and questions as they would relate to the business world. How can marketing agencies leverage the userbase of Google+ in order to effectively reach their target audience? How will Google+ affect those companies who have invested so much in their Facebook presence? How will Google+ affect a company’s overall SEO strategy, if at all?
While those are all good questions, those questions pretty much only mean a whole lot to you if you’re a business. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not a business. I’m a person. In fact, I’m an end-user. But more to the point, I’m a designer. If anything, this means that I look at things the way other people would (or should). So how about an evaluation of this new app from a person’s perspective?
HTML Email: The Perils of Copy ‘n Paste (Part II)
In my last blog post, I played the part of the copy and paste doomsayer, warning all of the dangers inherent in the act of, well, copying and pasting. In particular, I discussed how, with that simple editing function, invisible metadata that has a rightful place in the source document can find its way into the HTML describing your email communications, (where it has no right to be in whatsoever) producing junk code.
Not to be a hater but here’s another reason to be mindful when indiscriminately copying and pasting into your code: junk characters.
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HTML Email: The Perils of Copy ‘n Paste (Part I)
While the title may sound like some sort of Hardy Boys mystery (albeit a genre-confused tale involving electronic mail and word processing), it’s really only the preface for a more mundane happening involving two other lesser-known but widely-used siblings: Control-C and Control-V.
These days, copying and pasting text from one document to another is a pretty standard practice. Come on, admit it – you do it. I do it. Anyone who knows how to type does it. There’s no shame here. It’s one of the greatest editing shortcuts that technology has afforded us since the advent of sliced bread*. And given that content is written in and comes at us in a variety of formats, it’s no wonder that we copy ‘n paste with abandon. But take heed, gentle reader, for I’m about to tell you that there lies some modicum of danger in this very act.
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Email Newsletters: Start With A Plan
When folks set out to do an email newsletter, they sometimes get so excited about sending the thing out as quickly as possible before it’s even made that they often trip on their own feet in the process of trying to do so. This usually involves some semblance of a design, the acquiring of pretty, pretty pictures and the slapping together of some equally pretty, pretty text. Sadly, this often leads to shoddy implementation and the disorganized execution of something that may quite possibly leave a long-lasting and negative impression on its recipients. That said, at the onset of such a project, be sure to take a deep breath and spend a not insignificant amount of time coming up with a plan. You can hover over that Send button with that twitchy mouse finger of yours all you want but you shouldn’t click just yet.
Why? Because what you send out to your readership should be great. Right?
Email Marketing Blog 