Bluelime Media Vancouver Web Development » Newsletter Development

Creating Html newsletter can be a real pain in the…

Christine — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:35:11 +0000

The folks from the email standards project have released their 2008 gmail appeal. If you’re a gmail users you might have noticed that html newsletters just plain suck on gmail. Creating these newsletter is a real challenge. This video demonstrates how I feel when dealing with gmail…..

Email Standards Project – Gmail Grimaces from Mathew Patterson on Vimeo.

Creating Newsletters Just Got Easier

Christine — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 02:16:40 +0000

Thanks to the folks at FreshView who brought us Campaign Monitor and MailBuild, you can now download ready to use email newsletter templates which have been tested on all major email clients, including Outlook 2007. These are a great starting point for your next newsletter.

Here is where you can find out more about the Campaign Monitor templates and the MailBuild templates.

A Complete How-To Guide to Email Marketing for Freelancers

Christine — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:00:59 +0000

The folks at Freelance Switch have just published a great post which covers the basics of email marketing. They discuss the Why, What and When of email marketing as well as review different email tools, look at different types of mailouts and explain the meaning of the various stats. It’s a great how-to guide for anyone wishing to use email marketing to build their business.

Don’t use too many images in your newsletters

Christine — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:52:17 +0000

It might be tempting to hire an amazing graphic design company to create your next news announcement or invitation. Fonts and colours would be just right, you could source out some nice stock photos or do a photo shoot. The end result would surely garantee that your marketing deparment be tickled pink. But, before you send out this fancy newsletter you may want to consider the fact that the risks of sending a single-image email extend well beyond visual design:

Large file sizes trigger spam filters and increase bandwidth usage for mobile/dial-up recipients.
When images are disabled, the content is lost in its entirety.
Those with visual impairments are unable to access any content.
Recipients with small screen devices (mobile) either receive no content (stripped images) or an image reduced to a size in which the content becomes unreadable.

The folks at Campaign Monitor have recently dissected such a newsletter and offer their diagnosis.

What Does the Reader Care About?

Christine — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 02:55:20 +0000

Jeanniey Mullen over at ClickZ Experts wrote an excellent article about email marketing. Before you embark on your next email campaign you may want to go through the following checklist:

Know what the reader expects. Your readers gave you their e-mail addresses because they were expecting something. A receipt, a whitepaper, a newsletter, or something similar. Does the next message you’ll send give them content they expect to see?
Understand most readers forget quickly. In many cases, readers signed up for your e-mail list because they wanted access to something or as an impulse opt-in. If you wait too long before contacting them, they’ll forget why you were so important. Keep this in mind when timing your next e-mail.
Where does the e-mail take the reader in the site? Knowing how deep in the site the e-mail links your readers is critical. Copy tone and content should match the destination page pretty closely. That way, the transition makes sense.
Define success metrics first. Reader interest isn’t determined by the number of e-mail messages delivered. It’s derived from the click-to-open rate. Set a target before you send so you can benchmark yourself on success (25 percent is average).
Look at the e-mail landscape. Just because it’s not a marketing e-mail doesn’t mean the reader doesn’t receive other e-mail from your company. Being cognizant of this is key to determining send frequency. It’s not about what your company’s policy is, it’s about the reader’s experience.
Check out what your competitors are sending. It may not be your company’s e-mail that turns off the reader. It could be the volume of e-mail in the category itself. If the reader subscribes to financial advice e-mail from seven companies and you all send on the same day, the recipient won’t read any of them. This isn’t your fault, unless you knew about the bottlenecked delivery. But it’s your responsibility to find out what makes sense from a broader perspective.

For other advice on email marketing, check out ClickZ’s great resource.