Managing Outlook Messages

Consistent branding is important and this email for Dowry by BJ2DESIGN has that in spades. With lots of vintage flair and and coloring, it's a design that's instantly recognizable, and recognizably cute. Although you would be missing a lot if you viewed this email with images off, there's enough text in this design to still make it meaningful under these conditions. That said, I'd probably recommend a more clear call-to-action, as it isn't entirely obvious what should be clicked to view Dowry's eye-catching pieces. Overall, this design would be hard to miss in the inbox!

Got a party, webinar, or a VIP-only sale coming up? We often get asked about the best way to share calendar events via email, so subscribers can book them in and create alerts in desktop and web calendars like iCal, Outlook or Google Calendar. But with the variety of apps out there comes confusion as to what's the best way to go about sharing an event - do you link to a file? A .vcs? How about Google Calendar? The thing is, unless you're using an event management app like Guestlist or Eventbrite to handle everything, sharing a calendar event with your subscribers via email can be a slightly tricky task. Back in my agency days, we'd share calendar events on a regular basis - both via email and on our in-house event registration pages. We found that there is no one 'silver bullet' method that played nicely with all the calendar apps - some people preferred adding events to their desktop apps, others web. So we settled on providing subscribers with two methods: either download and add the event as an .ics, or add it to your Google Calendar. In most cases, our invitees were happy. Sharing an .ics file is not always as easy as you think First up, it's easy to mix up vCalendar's .vcs with iCalendar's .ics files. The skinny is that the iCalendar file format has largely superseded vCalendar and is supported across pretty much all the major calendar apps. So this is what we recommend you use. It's also pretty easy to export events from calendar apps like iCal (pictured) and Outlook. With that out of the way, the issue lies with hosting your .ics file on a server. Only servers that support the WebDAV protocol play nicely with the sharing of calendar files - if in doubt, ask your tech team. If your server doesn't support WebDAV, all you will see is the raw text innards of the .ics file when you try to load it. Even when hosted on a server without WebDAV support, you can use the URL in your campaign and prompt your subscribers to 'Download linked file...' or 'Save As...' to grab the .ics from their email client, but this seems a little messy. After reading about these file format and server config peculiarities, you're probably getting an idea as to why Google Calendar is so popular. Google Calendar for the win... But not for everyone What's much easier is using Google's 'Event Publisher Guide' to create standalone events that can be added to a Google Calendar in the browser. The code provided by Google can be copied and pasted straight into an HTML email, as it doesn't require JavaScript. If you have a Google Calendar account, try clicking the 'Add to Google Calendar' button to see the glorious end result. The downside, of course, is that not everyone has a Google Calendar account. That's why also serving an .ics is a bit of a necessary evil. It's also why web-based scheduling and event apps are a dime a dozen. The bottom line when it comes to sharing and adding individual calendar events via email is that you need to provide at least two options - in our case, both an .ics hosted on server that supports WebDAV and a Google Calendar event. I'd love to hear how you get your subscribers to add your events to their calendars, so feel free to suggest alternative approaches in the comments below.

Thanking your beta testers is important! They are the people that helped you get your application to a point where it's ready to be unleashed to the world. How better to reward them then by sending a little treat via a simple, yet fantastic looking email. This campaign for the Dropmark collaboration app by oak is split into five different sections, two of which are the obligatory header and footer areas, just as you would expect. The first main content area is short, sweet and very succinct, thanking testers and giving the opportunity to upgrade. Then we have a little section showing what's new, including screen shots. Nice touch as the tester may not have seen these updates. Finally, there is a section which provides information about what Dropmark is, which is handy for those recipients that may have been forwarded the email... Or if you're absent minded, like me.

The other day, Laura at Word to the Wise got me thinking with her post, 'Email is different'. To loosely recap, the post answered a question which likely echoed the sentiments of many towards issues like anti-spam legislation and permission, being: 'Why do so many feel that email should be somehow held to a higher standard than other direct marketing channels?' In comparing TV and radio segments to email, Laura made some clear distinctions - the former two have been marketing channels from the beginning. They're broadcast mediums. They've been created by marketers, are wholly paid for by owned by marketers and therefore marketers are entitled to pester each and all who choose to tune in with marketing messages. Email is different because it's not solely a marketing channel. The cost of spam isn't borne simply by the sender, but by hosts, ISPs, recipients and everyone in-between. Nonetheless, it must seem strange to those with limited email experience that it's not okay to purchase an email list, while the practice of buying and selling personal information remains widespread amongst telemarketers and direct mailers. Why should email be put on a pedestal? After all, consumers don't pay phone line rental in order to receive unsolicited calls at dinnertime... But they still happen, without consequence to the call center, or their clients. I'm sure a lot of designers, perhaps you included, have had conversations along these lines. Personally, I think senders of unsolicited email should be held accountable because they cost ISPs and ESPs a supreme amount of development time - all those super-intelligent engineers working on spam detection and filtering tools could really be off making the world a better place in other ways. Senders can create worldwide, widespread inconvenience, with very little time and effort. They should also be held accountable because it's technically possible to do so. However, this is a can of worms I wanted to share with you. When your clients ask why they can't purchase lists and send unsolicited email, what do you say? We're looking forward to your opinions in the comments below.

We're really pleased to introduce... This neat little notification email from WorkFu! When it comes to letting your users know that you have made changes to your application, it can be easy to over do things a little. Here however, is a great example in getting the details out in a simple and efficient way. Even though it hasn't been optimised for mobile devices, it still reads really well on my iPhone. The customised Twitter button, inviting current users to share with friends is a fine touch. It's great to see Mike Kus and team keeping their users so keenly up to date during the beta of their up-and-coming job site, especially as communications like this are so often just an after-thought amidst all the development and design busyness that leads up to a launch. Really simple, but really effective!

Use of mobile email clients is set to surpass desktop and webmail client usage by July, according to the results of a recent study by our friends at Return Path. After examining data from over 90 email clients, amounting for more than 130 million data points over a 6 month period, Return Path found that while webmail clients overall are on a slow decline, mobile views increased by 82.4% over the same period (March '11 – March '12). Mobile devices currently claim 16% of overall email client market share, with 85% of mobile email opens occurring on an Apple iOS device. This is comparable to our earlier findings. Return Path also found that there is an uptick in mobile email readership during the weekend, which can be attributed to email recipients switching from the desktop to a smartphone outside of office hours. Conversely, it's at its lowest on a Wednesday, when presumably folks are at their most busy tackling their Outlook, or OSX Mail inboxes. The implications for email senders like you and I are fairly clear. As Tom at Return Path states in his summary: "... those that aren’t tracking which device their subscribers are reading their emails on, or optimizing their emails or websites for mobile devices stand to lose out.  A poor user experience could mean no response, no action, or plainly put, no ROI." If you aren't already optimizing your emails for mobile, now is the time. To set you on the right path, we've got a practical primer on email design, not to mention a neat template builder which can whip together mobile-ready campaigns in a matter of minutes. Out of curiosity, will Return Path's findings change the way you send campaigns? Let us know in the comments below.

Do you remember the day you discovered all those TED videos that were suddenly available to the common joe? It was like a whole new world opened up. This smart and visually stunning email by TBD captures the Ted brand so well with it’s modern art styling, dramatic colors, and that deceptively simple yet enticing graphic that is reminiscent of those static “moving” illusions. A nice narrow layout ensures mobile friendliness and a clever use of layout space means that a lot of the important info gets above the proverbial fold. All around, an email that will grab attention when it arrives.

Customer feedback shapes much of what Campaign Monitor is today, not to mention what it will become in the future. So we thought we'd reach out and see what one thing Campaign Monitor customers like you would like to see improved about our service. In return, we've got a modest mountain of ultra-exclusive Campaign Monitor t-shirts to give away, one per customer. Apologies in advance if we run out of your size - you'll see what's available after submitting your feedback. If we've run out of shirts and closed the giveaway, don't worry - we'll have new swag and more giveaways in the coming months, so watch this space. Fill out my online form. var m7x2x3;(function(d, t) { var s = d.createElement(t), options = { 'userName':'campaignmonitor', 'formHash':'m7x2x3', 'autoResize':true, 'height':'378', 'async':true, 'header':'show', 'ssl':true}; s.src = ('https:' == d.location.protocol ? 'https://' : 'http://') + 'wufoo.com/scripts/embed/form.js'; s.onload = s.onreadystatechange = function() { var rs = this.readyState; if (rs) if (rs != 'complete') if (rs != 'loaded') return; try { m7x2x3 = new WufooForm();m7x2x3.initialize(options);m7x2x3.display(); } catch (e) {}}; var scr = d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0], par = scr.parentNode; par.insertBefore(s, scr); })(document, 'script'); Thank you so much for helping us improve - we'll be in touch if we make good on your suggestion. Now get some of that t-shirt action!

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An email newsletter is a brilliant way to stay connected to your customers or community members. Many people who visit your website may like it. Some may even love it, but if no one reminds them to keep visiting, those people may forget all about it. By inviting them to subscribe to a periodic newsletter, you can [...] - 2 days ago

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