Articles/Tips Archives
Campaign Monitor Drupal module
Posted by Mathew Patterson on May 5, 2008
A completely open source content management platform, Drupal is a popular choice for large scale, flexible websites. A key feature of Drupal is the ability to add on modules, plug in code that extends the core functionality to do any number of different things. Sydney based Campaign Monitor user Stephanie...
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2 comments so far
Quick Tip: Choosing Google Analytics tags
Posted by Mathew Patterson on May 1, 2008
Now that you can automatically add Google Analytics tags to your emails, we wanted to remind you how you can easily edit the tags used for each campaign. Once you have setup Google Analytics integration (see the help topic) you will have an extra option when importing your HTML for...
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0 comments so far
Video in your emails?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on April 24, 2008
The growth of services like YouTube and Vimeo, and the availability of cheap video cameras and editing software has created an explosion in the use of online video. Your clients will start asking you soon if they can put their video into your emails, if they have not already. So...
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6 comments so far
Why are all my apostrophes missing?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on April 21, 2008
Have you ever seen an HTML page or email where everything looks fine, except instead of apostrophes there are odd question marks, or square blocks? You might also see other characters replaced similarly. Most commonly, this occurs when importing HTML that has been created by Microsoft Word. For generating HTML,...
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3 comments so far
Where should your unsubscribe link go?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on April 4, 2008
Having reviewed many, many thousands of email campaigns sent through Campaign Monitor and MailBuild, we've noticed that a lot of designers like to try and hide the unsubscribe link away, to make it like a little game of 'find the link' for their subscribers. We've always encouraged people to do...
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5 comments so far
Campaign Monitor Twitter updates
Posted by Mathew Patterson on March 25, 2008
Just like last year, the biggest story out of SXSW Interactive seems to be Twitter. Some of the Freshview team are Twitter users already, but now we're also trialling a Campaign Monitor Twitter stream. The Twitter newsletter is actually sent using Campaign Monitor - so we are closing the...
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2 comments so far
The Principles of Beautiful HTML email
Posted by Mathew Patterson on February 4, 2008
If you're an experienced Campaign Monitor user and a regular reader of this blog, then you probably have a pretty solid idea of what makes a 'good' HTML email. If you need a refresher, or you are looking for a good introductory article, then read on. Over on SitePoint, which...
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4 comments so far
The Varying Landscape of Gmail: Versions Galore
Posted by Mark Wyner on December 12, 2007
The Gmail landscape is changing. But that’s hardly news because we’ve been using a beta version for years now. What is news is that there are four different versions of Gmail to consider when designing/developing an HTML email. If the four versions varied in simply GUI design or experience design...
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7 comments so far
Ensuring your emails look great and get delivered
Posted by David Greiner on December 3, 2007
While a lot of my energy is focused the Email Standards Project and looking to the future of email design, it's obviously still important to know the best way to approach it for the here and now. If you're looking for something close to consistency, this means using tables for...
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0 comments so far
Optimizing your subscription process in 7 steps
Posted by David Greiner on November 23, 2007
Now that our support for HTML confirmation emails is live, I thought it might be a nice time to revisit some recommendations on the best approach to capturing subscribers via a form on your web site. Here are a few guidelines you should consider to ensure a good experience for...
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0 comments so far
Step in the right direction for .Mac
Posted by Mark Wyner on November 16, 2007
For those of you closely monitoring support for standards-based markup in popular email clients, you’ll be happy to know that we have recently encountered a nice improvement for the .Mac webmail client. And while we’d love to take credit for having instilled fear in the hearts of Apple, we simply...
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0 comments so far
Do image maps work in HTML email?
Posted by Mark Wyner on November 14, 2007
Given current conditions in which images are very often blocked in email messages, image maps seem to be an odd technique to pursue. Because when your source image is blocked, your links are no longer functional. That’s a fundamental accessibility issue. However, the Campaign Monitor team receives frequent inquires about...
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16 comments so far
Do forms work in HTML emails?
Posted by Mark Wyner on November 7, 2007
Over the years we've received loads of inquiries about the use of forms in emails, such as newsletter subscribe forms, event registration and surveys. So we decided to run some tests to get to the bottom of just how well forms are supported in all the major email environments. Is...
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10 comments so far
Why don't I get my own test messages?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on October 24, 2007
Why is it that sometimes you send a test message from Campaign Monitor to yourself or other team members in your company, and it doesn't arrive? Well, most of the time the email does arrive, but is filtered into a junk folder, or just takes a few minutes. Sometimes though,...
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0 comments so far
Inline CSS for Mac users
Posted by Mathew Patterson on October 16, 2007
Following on from our recent post on automatically generated inline CSS for email templates, another customer has come forward with a cool OSX widget to achieve the same goal. It's called TamTam, and it's very simple to use. You simply paste in your html with CSS rules in the...
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2 comments so far
Automatically generate inline styles
Posted by Mathew Patterson on October 3, 2007
Creating HTML emails that render well across multiple email clients is complicated by programs like Gmail that strip out CSS styles from the head, and only support inline styles (like <p style='font-weight:bold;'>A bold paragraph<p>). Our base templates don't use inline styles because that makes them too inconvenient to easily modify...
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10 comments so far
Thank you for your help with our call for email standards
Posted by Mark Wyner on September 20, 2007
We announced our intent to create email standards and asked for your help with establishing a baseline for support. The response has been outstanding. We've heard from the web-design community—your help has been invaluable and we're ready to take action. In the coming weeks we will be developing a website...
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0 comments so far
How to personalize your permission reminders
Posted by David Greiner on September 13, 2007
When you make a business call, you don't just launch right into the conversation without introducing yourself, right? Instead you say something like "Hi, I'm Mathew, we met at the Widget Summit and you asked me to give you a call". You should do just the same with your email...
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0 comments so far
Help us form a baseline for standards support
Posted by David Greiner on September 11, 2007
The response from my call to arms a few days back has been phenomenal. We saw some great comments, loads of inbound links from other designers and some very encouraging "how can I help" emails from many others. As I mentioned in the original post, an important part of moving...
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41 comments so far
Why we need standards support in HTML email
Posted by David Greiner on September 5, 2007
This is a post I've been meaning to write for a long time now. I've been delaying it purely because I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted to write with Zeldman-like virtue on why email, just like the web, needs to pay attention to web standards. Sadly, in the...
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65 comments so far
Small design tweaks can get big results
Posted by Mathew Patterson on August 10, 2007
Have you ever had a client who insists on having everything in images, so it 'looks exactly right'? It can be hard to convince them of the impact of image blocking and filters on image heavy emails. Next time it happens, you'll have some more ammunition on your side...
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2 comments so far
Capturing unsubscribes in your own system
Posted by Mathew Patterson on August 9, 2007
We've posted about this quite a while back but it remains one of the most common questions we get. How can I get the address of people who just unsubscribed, so I can keep my database up to date? Since we first answered, we've added a full API which has...
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4 comments so far
The "Mark as Irrelevant" button
Posted by David Greiner on July 31, 2007
I'm going to let you guys in on a little secret. There's a difference between how an email sender sees their inbox and how an email recipient sees theirs. It's only a subtle difference. If you blink you'll miss it. But, it has far reaching implications on how all of...
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22 comments so far
Plain text templates to save you time
Posted by Mathew Patterson on July 30, 2007
You spend a lot of time crafting your HTML newsletter, tweaking the layout from a previous edition or adding new sections. Then you get to the text entry field, and have to layout the same content again under much greater constraints. To give you some ideas about how plain...
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0 comments so far
Why permission is never enough
Posted by Mathew Patterson on July 20, 2007
Something we cover on this blog and in our help over and over again is the importance of having explicit permission before you email someone. However, just having that explicit permission is not enough. Recently the FTC Spam Summit 2007 was held in Washington, subtitled "The Next Generation of Threats...
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3 comments so far
Tables in HTML Emails: Nesting, Padding and Widths, Oh My
Posted by Mark Wyner on July 19, 2007
I would like to preface this article by stating that I use standards-based markup to build my HTML emails and my websites. But for those of you who are familiar with other articles posted here at Campaign Monitor about HTML emails will know that standards-based markup results in formatting not...
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21 comments so far
Support for Animated GIFs in HTML Emails
Posted by Mark Wyner on July 9, 2007
I’m not one for Flash, but many web designers obviously use it. Some for interactivity and others for animation. In the web environment the latter is a replacement for animation formats of days old: animated GIFs. But Flash isn’t supported in the email environment, so for web designers accustomed to...
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7 comments so far
Fast access to email marketing information
Posted by Mathew Patterson on July 6, 2007
If you have ever tried searching for information about email marketing, you will know that you can be lost in a sea of out of date, inaccurate or just plain dodgy information. That's why Mark Brownlow, the brains behind Email Marketing Reports, has put together OnlineMarketing.info, a custom search engine...
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2 comments so far
30 free great looking HTML email templates
Posted by David Greiner on July 2, 2007
Ensuring your emails look awesome across every major email client out there can be a lot of work. To make your job that little bit easier, we've just put together 30 free email templates that look fantastic and have been tested in all the major email environments. Not even Outlook...
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12 comments so far
Always include the width and height attributes in your image tags
Posted by David Greiner on June 27, 2007
As image blocking in email continues to become the norm, one absolute must is to make sure you include the width and height attributes in your image tags. When most email clients (especially desktop based ones like Outlook) disable images, they show an empty image placeholder in its place. Because...
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3 comments so far
Updated CSS Support in Email Report
Posted by David Greiner on June 20, 2007
After we posted an update to the CSS Support article last week, a few of you mentioned that the new PDF layout made it hard to make out the results when printed in black and white. Not only this, but it was also a challenge for anyone who was color-blind....
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6 comments so far
Zeldman says 'HTML mail still sucks'
Posted by Mathew Patterson on June 12, 2007
We're big Zeldman fans here at Campaign Monitor. His web standards work has been an important influence in our thinking as web designers and web application builders. So we were disappointed to read his recent post, E-mail is not a platform for design. The core of Jeffrey's argument is this:...
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14 comments so far
Email newsletters are key resources for small and medium businesses
Posted by Mathew Patterson on June 8, 2007
If you or your clients are targeting small to medium businesses, a recent survey entitled "Optimizing Email Newsletters for Small/Medium Businesses" has some useful information for you. According to the study of over 300 executives, email newsletters rank highly as sources of information, beating out websites and blogs, and matching...
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0 comments so far
Selling the business case for email to your clients
Posted by David Greiner on June 6, 2007
A while back we wrote about 5 ideas you can use when pitching your email marketing services to your clients. These covered ideas like showing them how easy it is to measure the results and how targeted it can be. All very useful stuff, but probably not enough focus on...
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0 comments so far
Windows Live Mail drops a little more CSS support
Posted by David Greiner on June 4, 2007
As part of a check up on our updated guide to CSS support we released around 6 weeks ago, I've just done a quick re-test in some of the major web-based email clients to make sure the results are still spot on. Well, my first test in and I spotted...
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7 comments so far
Default image blocking continues to gather momentum
Posted by David Greiner on May 28, 2007
AOL recently updated their web-based software for all AOL.com and AIM.com email accounts. We've had a quick look around and even done some preliminary CSS testing. The good news is that CSS support is top notch, as in as good as Yahoo!, which was great to see. The not-so-good news...
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3 comments so far
Testing the plain text version of your email
Posted by Mathew Patterson on May 18, 2007
When you create a campaign with Campaign Monitor, you can select to send it in plain text, just html or multipart text+html formats. Now testing an email that is just text is pretty straightforward, and testing the html portion is also easy, but how do you see the plain text...
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8 comments so far
It's time to start targeting
Posted by David Greiner on May 9, 2007
Mark Brownlow just put together a great motivational piece to encourage email marketers to start sending more targeted emails to their subscribers. I loved this quote in particular, which is something I've heard variations of countless times before... One might get the impression that segmentation and targeting is just for...
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1 comments so far
Microsoft to launch another email client, designers collectively hold their breath
Posted by David Greiner on May 8, 2007
Last Sunday, Microsoft made an announcement about the official launch of Windows Live Hotmail, the new version of Hotmail that will be rolled out to all of their users over the coming days. This wasn't big news, we've all known about the beta for a long time and covered it...
4 comments so far
Some changes ahead on the webmail front
Posted by David Greiner on May 3, 2007
Over the past few weeks there's been a number of interesting announcements from the likes of Yahoo and Hotmail/Live Mail you guys might want to take note of. The "Unsubscribe" button in Windows Live Mail The first of these was news from Microsoft that they'll be integrating an Unsubscribe button...
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0 comments so far
A Guide to CSS Support in Email: 2007 Edition
Posted by David Greiner on April 19, 2007
It's been just over 12 months since I posted our original Guide to CSS Support in Email and quite a bit has changed since. Sadly, the most significant of these changes was in the wrong direction, with Microsoft's recent decision to use the Word rendering engine instead of Internet Explorer...
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140 comments so far
The 7 deadly sins of email marketing
Posted by David Greiner on March 28, 2007
I just caught a great article over at Digital Web called The Seven Deadly Sins of Email Marketing Management by Véro S. Pepperrell. She does a great job of highlighting some of the big no-no's in email marketing today. Fortunately we take care of sins 3 and 4 for you...
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2 comments so far
Can't I just use Outlook?
Posted by Mathew Patterson on March 20, 2007
Have you heard that question from your clients before? We have, and we thought it would be helpful to have a list of some good reasons to use when you answer. Our newest resource covers the benefits of outsourcing your email delivery, detailing the ways Campaign Monitor can help save...
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1 comments so far
Improve your email subject lines
Posted by Mathew Patterson on March 16, 2007
Your email subject line is the first thing your subscriber sees in their inbox, and that can be the moment they decide to open it, ignore it or delete it. There is a risk that as designers we can spend all our time battling with rendering problems in Outlook or...
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0 comments so far
Explaining 'permission' to your clients
Posted by Mathew Patterson on March 14, 2007
Helping your clients to understand who they can and can't send their emails to can be a tricky job. Clients don't always understand how things like the CAN-SPAM laws apply to them. If they provide you with a subscriber list that is out of date or not permission based,...
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1 comments so far
Free resources to help you kick more ass
Posted by David Greiner on March 6, 2007
For the last few months we've been gathering feedback off customers asking them about the types of resources they'd like us to put together to make their lives a little easier. We got tons of great suggestions and we've spent the last couple of weeks collating them and putting together...
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9 comments so far
5 ideas you can use when pitching email marketing to your clients
Posted by Mathew Patterson on March 1, 2007
Once you've added email marketing as part of your business services, you can start encouraging your current and potential clients to make use of it. Here are our top 5 ways to encourage your clients to get started with, or refocus on email marketing 1. Show them that it works!...
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4 comments so far
Campaign Monitor in your ears
Posted by Mathew Patterson on February 28, 2007
There are a few web design podcasts around these days, but one of the oldest and most popular is Boagworld. In this weeks episode, Tagtastic, we've contributed a segment on the basics of planning and running an email marketing campaign. If you're a veteran Campaign Monitor user, there won't be...
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0 comments so far
The secrets behind a 70% open rate
Posted by David Greiner on February 27, 2007
I just came across a great post by Campaign Monitor customer Craig Killick from The Escape on the recent tactics they employed to get an impressive 70% open rate and the sale of 60% of their inventory for the product being marketed. Craig goes on to explain the 4 main...
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7 comments so far
How to charge your clients for email marketing
Posted by David Greiner on February 26, 2007
Like most services a web designer can offer their clients, there are many different ways to approach charging your clients for email marketing. At Campaign Monitor, we're in a unique position in that we speak with designers charging their clients for email marketing all day every day. Over the years...
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10 comments so far
Permission starts at home(page)
Posted by Mathew Patterson on February 21, 2007
We talk a lot about permission here at Campaign Monitor. All of us as designers focus on making sure our emails have clear unsubscribe links and the required company details. Today we are going back to the start of the process, and looking at the point of subscription. Your sign...
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6 comments so far
Some hard numbers on preview panes and image blocking in consumer emails
Posted by David Greiner on February 20, 2007
As a nice follow up to Mark's research into the current state of image blocking in email last week, I just came across an interesting study from MarketingSherpa via Tamara's blog. They surveyed 1,323 consumers over 18 to find out their email viewing preferences in regards to image blocking and...
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2 comments so far
Image Blocking in Email Clients: Current Conditions and Best Practices
Posted by Mark Wyner on February 16, 2007
Many people, either by email client defaults or personal preference, are blocking images in the HTML-formatted messages they are accepting. And then there are a small number of people who block HTML entirely. As David Greiner points out, according to a study by Epsilon Interactive 30% of your recipients don’t...
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41 comments so far
Creating and using segments
Posted by Mathew Patterson on February 7, 2007
Something you may not have used in your Campaign Monitor account is segments. A segment is a subset of one of your existing subscriber lists. For example, instead of emailing to everyone on your 'Alpaca owners' list, you might just want to send an email to the Huacaya Alpaca owners....
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8 comments so far
How ALT Text Renders in Popular Email Clients
Posted by Mark Wyner on February 6, 2007
So off I went to test how ALT text displays in common email clients, only to find that many of them don’t display any ALT text whatsoever. Unbelievable. And to top it off a couple clients replace the author-defined ALT text with their own idea of ALT text should be...
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13 comments so far
Minor But Notable Obstacle in Yahoo Mail Beta
Posted by Mark Wyner on February 2, 2007
I was running some tests for another article when I encountered something in Yahoo Mail Beta which caused me some agony. When I uncovered the source of the problem, however, it became clear I could avoid it altogether. Allow me to share… Yahoo Mail Beta omits all CSS declarations residing...
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8 comments so far
How Windows Live Mail and Yahoo Mail Beta Shake Out with CSS
Posted by Mark Wyner on January 25, 2007
Moving past my angst at recent events, I have tested CSS support in two new webmail clients: Yahoo Mail Beta (YMB) and Windows Live Mail (WLM). The results are a nice blend of excellence and incompetence. Surprised? Didn’t think so. Before I dive in, however, I’d like to preface this...
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29 comments so far
The truth behind the Outlook 2007 change and what you can do about it
Posted by David Greiner on January 22, 2007
When I posted about Microsoft's decision to use Word instead of Internet Explorer to render HTML emails in Outlook 2007, I certainly didn't expect the storm of controversy and (sometimes) constructive discussion that eventuated. The post has already breached 300 comments and made the front page of Digg, Del.icio.us and...
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90 comments so far
All about email open rates
Posted by Mathew Patterson on
Our customers often ask us what 'open rate' means, and whether the open rate they are getting is any good or not. We've put together the following guide to open rates, which you will now also find in the help section of your account. What is an open rate? Open...
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19 comments so far
Microsoft takes email design back 5 years
Posted by David Greiner on January 12, 2007
As I type this post I still can't believe it. I'm literally stunned. If you haven't already heard, I'm talking about the recent news that Outlook 2007, released next month, will stop using Internet Explorer to render HTML emails and instead use the crippled Microsoft Word rendering engine. Now c'mon,...
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501 comments so far
SiteVista launches a cool email testing service
Posted by Mathew Patterson on January 9, 2007
If you read Mark Wyner's recent email testing opus you may have despaired at how time consuming and complex it all seemed. Even though you know it is sensible and necessary, it seems like a lot of work. Fortunately for all of us without Mark's commitment to excellence, SiteVista have...
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14 comments so far
New legal requirement for UK based customers
Posted by David Greiner on January 5, 2007
A quick one for all our UK based customers. A recent Companies Act amendments now requires additional content to be included in every email you send. As of the 1st January this year, each email sent by a company must now include: Your registered address (not just a valid company...
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0 comments so far
How to test HTML emails
Posted by Mark Wyner on December 21, 2006
Whether I’m developing a website or an HTML email, I spend a good deal of time testing. I run my files through a large suite of browsers and email clients, and my process is thorough. There are some things I test for globally and others which are specific to the...
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24 comments so far
Getting opt-in permission offline
Posted by Mathew Patterson on December 20, 2006
Professional trade show presenter Heidi Miller based a recent episode of her "Diary of a Shameless Self Promoter" podcast around the concept of email newsletters and spam. Heidi, who collects a lot of business cards through her work, had mentioned previously that she was considering taking email addresses from those...
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8 comments so far
Image blocking, alt tags and why CSS rules
Posted by David Greiner on December 19, 2006
I read an article on Clickz today by Jeanne Jennings on the current state of image blocking in email. Jeanne tested 30 random B2B and B2C emails in her inbox on their approach to image blocking. While the results were mixed, I was very surprised to see her suggest that...
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2 comments so far
Gmail testing just got a whole lot more important
Posted by David Greiner on December 14, 2006
Let's face it, a big chunk of us designers love and use Gmail. While it certainly doesn't have the market share of the big guys like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, it's definitely a favorite amongst the design and early adopter communities. If you're reading this blog, you're probably also well...
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4 comments so far
Inside the New .Mac Webmail Client
Posted by Mark Wyner on December 6, 2006
Apple has introduced a new webmail client for their .Mac customers. It’s a truly phenomenal webmail client, functioning nearly parallel to that of their desktop client, Mail. For a brief moment I became disoriented, because while in my browser I was experiencing what I do every day in Mail. Whoa....
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11 comments so far
30% of your recipients don't even know your images are missing
Posted by David Greiner on November 22, 2006
I just checked out the results of an interesting study by Epsilon Interactive on the impact image blocking is having on email users today. We've written about the best approaches to working with image blocking before, but I though these stats would interest some of you: 69% of email users...
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2 comments so far
Optimizing for Gmail's snippets and Outlook's AutoPreview
Posted by David Greiner on October 25, 2006
Inspired by Jeanne Jennings great write-up on designing emails for Gmail's snippets and Outlook's auto-preview, I decided to run a few tests of my own. First things first, a Gmail snippet is that small chunk of light grey text immediately following your email subject in the Gmail inbox. It usually...
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21 comments so far
Tips on effective segmenting
Posted by David Greiner on October 19, 2006
As many of you know, Campaign Monitor makes it easy to create segments of subscribers within a larger subscriber list. This makes it much easier to target specific types of subscribers based on their demographics, preferences, etc. While creating a segment is easy, choosing the right segments and executing on...
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0 comments so far
A few handy plain text formatting tips
Posted by David Greiner on October 3, 2006
We recently made a few subtle tweaks to Campaign monitor when you select the format you'd like to send your email in. We still present the same options - HTML only, HTML and text or plain text only - but we've tweaked the copy to encourage those sending HTML only...
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1 comments so far
Look for the positives in your unhappy subscribers
Posted by David Greiner on September 21, 2006
As you know, Campaign Monitor is directly integrated into the feedback loop for a number of large ISP's like AOL, Hotmail, MSN, Juno, Netzero and a few others. This means that when any of your subscribers at these ISP's mark your campaign as junk, we automatically remove them from your...
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0 comments so far
5 tips to grow your list the right way
Posted by David Greiner on September 7, 2006
In recent weeks we've posted links to some great tips on how to write effective welcome emails and making the most of your unsubscribes and the feedback so far is to keep tips like this coming. There are plenty of great email marketing resources out there (we tell you a...
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3 comments so far
One of the most underrated essentials in email design
Posted by David Greiner on September 4, 2006
These days there's a growing list of essential content you should include in every email you send. You know the drill. Unsubscribe mechanism, postal address, link to web version, the list goes on. The permission reminder message Of all the essential content though, there's one I consistently see missing in...
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8 comments so far
Making the most of your unsubscribes
Posted by David Greiner on August 18, 2006
Yesterday we highlighted some great tips for welcoming new subscribers to your list, so today we thought we'd look at the flipside. Stefan Pollard just put together some great suggestions for getting the most out of anyone leaving your subscriber list. As you know, Campaign Monitor requires a single-click unsubscribe...
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1 comments so far
9 steps to better welcome emails for new subscribers
Posted by David Greiner on August 17, 2006
Mark Brownlow recently put together 9 common sense suggestions on ways we can