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Last week, we launched the mobile-optimized version of Campaign Monitor. The response has been astoundingly positive, however it became evident that a few things could be improved. So instead of resting on our laurels, we've taken your constructive feedback on board and rapidly rolled out a neat update to our mobile application.

A lot of the comments we received suggested improvements to the login screen. So, we've stepped out with a slightly sexier design, yet kept it congruent to the rest of the web application. We've moved the login button, resulting in a more intuitive interface. Plus, you can now remain logged in to the app, which is great news if you're regularly spying on campaign stats.

These may be all incremental improvements, but it does go to show that our team have been taking your comments and feedback to heart. Many thanks to all of you for giving it a whirl and sending in your thoughts on the app - it's a work in progress, so please let us know what else you would love to see in future updates.

The "Too many emails?" post in 37signals' excellent 'Signal vs. Noise' blog got us thinking about email frequency. Why don't we see more newsletters that give us the option of specifying how regularly we receive email, instead of simply providing an unsubscribe link? After all, our main reason for unsubscribing from an email often doesn't come down to the relevance of content, but simply receiving too much relevant content.

The good news for senders is that it's not too difficult to setup a preference center so your subscribers can state their desired email frequency and change their subscription details. For example, a subscriber may only want to receive email on a weekly basis. If they're a Gmail user, they may also choose to append their email address to have email from you tagged in specific ways by the email client (eg. widgetfan+widgetlist@abcdesign.com). Here's a snappy article on using a preference center to retain subscribers.

So, if you're currently sending a weekly newsletter, consider aggregating your best content into a fortnightly, or monthly newsletter, as well. This might sound a little tedious, but in terms of list retention, it sure beats losing your subscribers when all they want is less-frequent messages from you. Mark Brownlow from Email Marketing Reports has an excellent blog post on email frequency - it's a must-read if you're seeking to optimize the return on your email campaigns.

In a 2009 report, 73% of survey respondents cited "sending too frequently" as the main reason for opting out of an email mailing list. Even if your subscribers want hear from you only once a month, it's better than never, so perhaps it's time to give them more control over the email that they receive.

What are your thoughts on email frequency? Do you find that your monthly newsletter is more successful than regular updates, or vice versa? Let us know in the comments below.

OK, I'll admit it. I got up early Thursday morning Sydney time to watch Steve Jobs keynote on the mysterious new tablet concept from Apple. While I'm quietly excited about the change this device will bring, there was really only one part of the show that I got out of bed early for. How was thing going to handle email? It lasted about 90 seconds in total, but that was enough.

Since then I've had a few ideas stewing in my head that I wanted to share with you guys. What sort of impact this will have on how you approach email design, does this open any new doors or techniques to try? This morning I started throwing some of these together, and then stumbled across this great post from Paul Farnell of Litmus fame that generally summed up what I had to say. Go check it out and then read on for a few additional points I wanted to expand on.

HTML5 video an even stronger option

Back in October we discovered support for HTML5 video across all Apple products (Apple Mail, Entourage, MobileMe and the iPhone/iPod Touch). This meant you could include video in your email that would work reliably across every one of these email clients, with the benefit of falling back to alternate content for every other email client. This could be an image, a link, anything you like.

There is no reason to assume Apple will not use Webkit to render HTML emails on the iPad (just like all the email clients mentioned above). This means we can look forward to even wider support for the HTML5 video technique in the future. In further support of this, MPEG LA announced yesterday that its h.264 patent (which the HTML5 video technique uses) will remain fee-less for free internet video through to 2016.

Fewer distractions

Compared to every other web and desktop email client on the market, the iPad email client is noticeably free of the distraction. There isn't a crowded chrome loaded with options, a sidebar of mailboxes and folders or a column of advertising. It's the cleanest email experience out there for a large screen device. This, combined with Paul's observations about the typical environment the iPad is built for should combine to give you a more engaged subscriber.

A good thing for standards support

We were all surprised when the iPhone grew to more than 5% of the email client market within a year or so of its release. If the iPad experiences a similar sort of growth, it's a great thing for standards based email design (even with Outlook 2010 looming). As always, this is going to come down to your subscriber base.

Provided the iPad sends a unique user-agent to us when they render images, we can tell you guys exactly how many of your subscribers are using the device in your email client reports. Look out for the news from us the moment we can get our hands on one.

Don't lose sight of the lowest common denominator

While the gorgeous, full-screen display and giant preview pane might tempt us to push our designs a little further, it's important to remember that most of our subscribers are still using older email clients, likely at lower resolutions.

To me this is the most exciting thing to happen on the email client front for a long time. Do you guys feel the same or have a different perspective to share?