BeRelevant!

links for 2009-07-02

2009-07-02T23:00:32+02:00

Are You Optimizing your Email for Search?

If you’ve got good email marketing content you’re going to post on a public part of your site—content for which you’d like to get found via organic search—here are some things to keep in mind.

(tags: copywriting seo)
5 automated campaigns designed to deliver revenue

a well crafted automated email program will be helping you hit your targets while you sleep. Here are five automated email programs that will help you deliver revenue...

(tags: triggered_emails)
The Email Delivery Guru - B2B Deliverability: Different?

Al Iverson shares some insights on the differences between B2C and B2B deliverability.

(tags: deliverability b2b)
HTML Email Analyzer

HTML Email Analyzer checks the HTML email for possible rendering and SPAM issues.

(tags: tools)
Q2 2009 Spam Trends

Q2'09 average spam levels are 53% higher than in Q1'09 and 6% higher than in Q2'08.

(tags: spam)

links for 2009-07-01

2009-07-01T23:00:25+02:00

How Many Ways Can You Mess Up An Email Program?

David Baker talks about five ways you can mess up your email program -- so you can learn from others' mistakes. Great article!

(tags: strategy mistakes)
Delivery Reports: What They Mean, How to Read Them - ClickZ

(tags: deliverability)
Update on FixOutlook.org campaign

(tags: industry outlook_2010 outlook_2007)
Must subscribe: The Toilet Paper (Almost) Daily Email

They include something absent from a lot of emails I receive these days: personality. Check the email sent out today and see for yourself…

(tags: cases)

links for 2009-06-26

2009-06-26T23:00:23+02:00

The vendor client relationship

this has nothing to do with email marketing, but I really enjoyed watching this video so I though I'd share it with you :-)

(tags: various video)
Product image 360 in Email

a great how-to post on creating 360-degree animated Gifs

(tags: design)
How to Construct a Great B-to-B Email Newsletter

Many companies use email newsletters to stay in touch with their employees and business partners. Since sending a newsletter is relatively easy, many senders don’t put as much thought into their publications as they should.

(tags: b2b)
How email will stay in the marketing game

The bigger issue keeping email marketing from truly soaring through the stratosphere is that many marketers are under the illusion that their current email programs are great, even when they may be deplorable. Keep in mind that even the worst email programs (those with no real goal, strategy, or clickable calls to actions and terrible rendering) still drive results. What most marketers don't realize is how much more they could be getting out of their email programs. If they allocated even half the attention and budget to email as it deserves, then results would improve exponentially.

(tags: strategy)
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Grows Significantly The Platform

Some of this growth comes from large domains such as Gmail and Yahoo!. But much of this comes from many small domains that are also signing their messages.

(tags: dkim deliverability)
HTML email inline styler

this little app converts CSS rules into inline style attributes

(tags: tools)

links for 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T23:00:34+02:00

Welcome Aboard: Chris Wheeler

Congratulations on the new job, Chris!

(tags: industry)
MarketingSherpa's Email Marketing Summit 2010 Speaking Proposals

Hundreds of top email marketers will gather in Miami on January 20-22, 2010 for MarketingSherpa's 5th Annual Email Summit & Expo. If you'd like to be a featured speaker, now is your chance. MarketingSherpa is looking for B2B and B2C email marketers to share Case Studies and best practices from their own recent real-life tests and tactics.

(tags: events)
Outlook’s broken—Let’s fix it

Microsoft have confirmed they plan on using the Word rendering engine to display HTML emails in Outlook 2010. Join the protest on Twitter.

(tags: outlook_2007 outlook_2010 rendering design)

Microsoft Responds to FixOutlook.org

2009-06-24T22:45:33+02:00

Here's Microsoft's response to the FixOutlook.org initiative. Not sure I like the tone:

The Power of Word in Outlook

This morning we became aware of a Twitter campaign run from the website http://fixoutlook.org. This campaign is intended to provide Microsoft with feedback about our decision to continue to use Microsoft Word for composing and displaying e-mail in the upcoming release of Microsoft Outlook 2010. The Email Standards Project, which developed the website that promotes the current Twitter campaign, is backed by the maker of “email marketing campaign” software.

First, while we don’t yet have a broadly-available beta version of Microsoft Office 2010, we can confirm that Outlook 2010 does use Word 2010 for composing and displaying e-mail, just as it did in Office 2007. We’ve made the decision to continue to use Word for creating e-mail messages because we believe it’s the best e-mail authoring experience around, with rich tools that our Word customers have enjoyed for over 25 years. Our customers enjoy using a familiar and powerful tool for creating e-mail, just as they do for creating documents. Word enables Outlook customers to write professional-looking and visually stunning e-mail messages. You can read more about this in our whitepaper, outlining the benefits and the reason behind using Word as Outlook’s e-mail editor.

...
Word has always done a great job of displaying the HTML which is commonly found in e-mails around the world. We have always made information available about what HTML we support in Outlook; for example, you can find our latest information for our Office 2007 products here. For e-mail viewing, Word also provides security benefits that are not available in a browser: Word cannot run web script or other active content that may threaten the security and safety of our customers.

We are focused on creating a great e-mail experience for the end user, and we support any standard that makes this better. To that end, Microsoft welcomes the development of broadly-adopted e-mail standards. We understand that e-mail is about interoperability among various e-mail programs, and we believe that Outlook provides a good mix of a rich user experience and solid interoperability with a wide variety of other e-mail programs. There is no widely-recognized consensus in the industry about what subset of HTML is appropriate for use in e-mail for interoperability. The “Email Standards Project” does not represent a sanctioned standard or an industry consensus in this area. Should such a consensus arise, we will of course work with other e-mail vendors to provide rich support in our products. We are constantly working to improve our products and the experience that they give to our customers.

As usual, we appreciate the feedback from our customers, via Twitter or on our Outlook team blog.

-- William Kennedy
Corporate Vice President, Office Communications and Forms Team
Microsoft Corporation

Enough is Enough: Outlook 2010 To Use Word To Render Emails

2009-06-24T09:18:19+02:00

I just received an email from the Email Standards Project saying that Outlook 2010 will also be using Word to render emails. I've copied the email below:

Microsoft have just confirmed they plan on using the crippled Word rendering engine to display HTML emails in Outlook 2010.

This means for the next 5 years your email designs will need tables for layout, have no support for CSS like float and position and no background images. Not to mention the long list of bugs and quirks that break the simplest of layouts.

Outlook 2010 is still in beta and Microsoft have confirmed they want to hear your feedback on this decision. It's time for the email marketing and design community to rally together and encourage Microsoft to embrace web standards before it's too late.

What's the best way to do that? Twitter of course.

Visit fixoutlook.org to see how you can help and what the community is saying right now.

links for 2009-06-22

2009-06-22T23:00:33+02:00

Early retirement for SORBS?

The list master at SORBS announced that, due to contractual problems with the network provider, it may be closing soon.

(tags: deliverability SORBS)
Mobile email: the marketing challenges

This post outlines the current status of mobile email use and the associated challenges.

(tags: mobile)
Email List Growth: Stay Away from the Dark Side

Morgan Stewart recently came across this great example of how NOT to do co-registration.

(tags: co-registration list_growth)