Word to the Wise » image blocking http://blog.wordtothewise.com Email, Delivery, Spam and more Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:24:18 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 Walking the Walk http://blog.wordtothewise.com/2009/05/walking-the-walk/ http://blog.wordtothewise.com/2009/05/walking-the-walk/#comments Thu, 07 May 2009 00:04:33 +0000 laura http://blog.wordtothewise.com/?p=426 Last week I mentioned a Smith-Harmon report about how to handle email when going out of business. I mentioned at the end of the post that I was pleasantly surprised at how well done their email program was. Let’s walk through the process.

1) The download process. Clicking on the “download report” page popped up a signup window. They ask for first name, last name, company and and email address, but only require an email address. There is a link to their privacy policy and two unchecked boxes. The first is “I would like to subscribe to Smith-Harmon’s monthly newsletter, which is full of email marketing tips, news and research.” The second is “Please have a representative contact me to discuss how Smith-Harmon can help my company with its email program.”

How does their process incorporate best practices?

  • They don’t require full personalization information during signup
  • They provide a choice for users to subscribe to their newsletter (unchecked box)
  • They provide information about frequency of email (monthly newsletter)
  • They provide information about the content (email marketing tips, news and research)
  • They provide an opportunity to opt-out of sales contact
  • They link to their privacy policy
  • The page is well branded, but not cluttered.

2) The welcome message. Less than 5 minutes after providing information on the download form, there was a welcome message in my mailbox. The welcome message hit all the high points.

Screen shot of email

  • Good use of header space
  • Clear welcome message on left and in main image
  • Provides useful content (10 ways to improve your creative)
  • Links to books
  • Good use of images, not too cluttered.

Even better, for people like me who keep image rendering off, the email worked with images off:

  • Important information is in plain text
  • Alt tags in use
  • Format still looks good when images are off

Clearly, Smith-Harmon have spent a lot of time on their email marketing program. Kudos to them for a well designed, well implemented email program. With such care given to the parts that many marketers overlook, I can only imagine how useful the content is going to be.

]]> http://blog.wordtothewise.com/2009/05/walking-the-walk/feed/ 0 Images in email http://blog.wordtothewise.com/2009/03/images-in-email-2/ http://blog.wordtothewise.com/2009/03/images-in-email-2/#comments Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:18:37 +0000 laura http://blog.wordtothewise.com/?p=371 It can be very hard to create engaging graphics and layout that work in all email programs. Each has it’s own quirks and weirdness in interpreting the underlying HTML code. Today, while investigating an issue for a client, I learned that some versions of Lotus Notes don’t display images in PNG format. Magilla Marketing addresses the same issue today.

Is there a direct-marketing channel that is crueler to graphic designers than e-mail? It’s the only medium that forces marketers to create messages with the understanding that their design will be mangled beyond recognition when it hits most recipients’ inboxes.

The article itself has a number of practical solutions and helpful hints for people designing emails that must work both with and without images.

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