June 29th, 2006

HTML design for email: throw out everything you were taught

We recently spent some time redesigning our email newsletter, Conscious Clicks, to match the look and feel of our current website. One of the hardest things about designing email is that you aren’t just worried about how it will display in all of the major browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari) like normal web page design, but you also have to think about all of the services and software that people use to view their email. Of course, there is more to it than that.

Over the last couple of years, web design standards have been gaining more and more acceptance, and web designers have been taught to abandon HTML tables and embrace CSS and XHTML (check out the W3C and W3Schools for more on web standards). Well, when it comes to designing for email, throw out everything you were taught. While your email using CSS styles may display correctly in Outlook, chances are that GMail has completely stripped all of those styles from your email leaving it a big mess. The best way to design for email is to go back to using simple, well formatted HTML tables, and make sure to TEST, TEST, TEST. Of course, where to test really depends on who your audience is, but here is a good list to consider:

Email software: Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Entourage, and Lotus Notes
Web-based email: Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, AOL/AIM Mail, SquirrelMail
*You may even want to test your email on cell phones and other portable devices.

So what’s a web designer to do? Well, one of the easier ways to get around this problem is to use a template from your email marketing service of choice (e.g. Constant Contact, which we use for our newsletter, but with our own custom design). For all of the other designers looking to create your own custom newsletter, I encourage you to take a look at this very thorough and up-to-date article on How to Code HTML Email Newsletters. This article comes complete with a number of links to even more great resources.

Want to check out our newly redesigned email newsletter? Sign up for Conscious Clicks at the form in the top-left of this page.

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June 28th, 2006

New Member of the SRB Team

It’s a pleasure to announce that Nancy MacKneson has recently joined our SRB Marketing team as director of business development.

Nancy brings over twelve years of sales and marketing experience across diverse industries and clients to her new role at SRB. Her experience has included sales and marketing roles with LexisNexis Canada for several years, as well as a number of other entrepreneurial companies. Nancy received her MA in Political Science from McMaster University and her BA from Trent University.

In her free time, Nancy enjoys gardening with native plants, spending time with family, going for long walks with her dogs and curling, a popular sport in her native Canada.

In the upcoming months I am sure that many of you will be hearing from Nancy. In the meantime, if she can be of any assistance, please do not hesitate to contact her directly at (416) 237-0109 or by email at nancy(@)srbmarketing.com.

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June 19th, 2006

Search engines battle for features

Google recently announced it is now allowing dayparting in their AdWords system. This will allow Google advertisers to target their ads by day of week and the time of day. Curiously, this announcement comes just one month after the official US launch of Microsoft’s competing search advertising program, MSN adCenter. The MSN adCenter system was the first of the top tier search advertising systems (which also includes Google and Yahoo) to offer dayparting as well as targeting by demographics.

Of course, Yahoo is not too far behind. Days after the release of MSN adCenter, Yahoo announced a full system revamp that would take place in Fall ‘06. While all of the details on the new system are not yet clear, it does appear that Yahoo is looking to quickly catch up to its rivals.

So what does this mean for search advertisers? Well, we are hoping the competition will be a good thing. As is already apparent, we are likely going to see a growing feature list being offered, giving advertisers more flexibility and the knowledge needed to spend their marketing dollars wisely. With this, more advertisers will probably spread their media dollars over all three top tier systems, and this will hopefully put click prices at more realistic levels. Personally, I am just glad to see that these companies finally listening to feedback from advertisers and making changes to meet our needs.

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June 18th, 2006

Online’s share of U.S. ad spend to reach 12%

TNS Media Intelligence revised downward the rate of growth for most media in the U.S. advertising market, but is also forecasting that online’s share of the total marketplace this year will grow to 12%, up from 10% in 2005. Online spending is predicted to total $20 billion by the end of the year, out of a total $161 billion in spending on measured media for 2006. MediaPost Communications, from Internet Advertising Bureau’s Smart Brief e-newsletter (free registration)

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