Managing Outlook Messages

Lucid Design, a New Zealand-based graphic design and web development studio, have just released their Shopify web application for Campaign Monitor. With their Shopify + Campaign Monitor app, buyers can opt-in to receive email communications from your Shopify online store at the checkout stage and be added to an existing Campaign Monitor subscriber list. You can then design and send your customers email newsletters, offers and other marketing material, all from within Campaign Monitor’s powerful interface. Shopify integration with Campaign Monitor can be achieved within a matter of minutes - all you need to provide is your Campaign Monitor API key. You no longer have to worry about manually uploading files to your web server, simply install their app via the Shopify App Store, complete the short setup process and start collecting customer email addresses. The Shopify + Campaign Monitor app is currently free of charge, so give it a shot and share your thoughts on this nifty integration.

One of your clients has just come to you with a really snazzy new subscriber list – a few-hundred email addresses – and is itching to have his regular monthly newsletter sent to these contacts. “Where did you get these email addresses?” you ask. “Oh, they’re from business cards I picked up at a trade fair”. What could possibly go wrong? Declaring permission Permission can be a minefield for both new and experienced email marketers alike. The problem is only compounded when clients bring along their own subscriber lists. Unless your client has explicit permission to send them email, a number of unfortunate situations can arise. This is why at Campaign Monitor we have a strict anti-spam policy to ensure your list is legitimate. In short, there are some lists we will not accept, including: Lists where your client does not have explicit, provable permission to contact the recipients in relation to the topic of the email being sent Lists that have been bought, loaned, rented or in any way acquired from a third party - these include tradeshow and chamber of commerce type lists, where people have signed up to an organisation or group, not the individual sender Lists which have not been contacted via email in the last 2 years - subscribers may have forgotten providing their details 2 weeks ago, let alone 2 years down the track, and; Lists scraped or copy and pasted from the web. We also have an approval process prior to sending your first large campaign. Have a look at our help topic to see how this works. What happens if my client doesn’t have permission? We can’t ensure that all contacts that are imported into subscriber lists have stated their consent to be emailed. In the case of your clients providing lists, make sure you read this handy reference to help you better check your clients have obtained permission. If it all sounds a little tricky, here are some good reasons why you should ensure your clients’ subscriber lists know what they’re in for: Your client doesn’t want to be a spammer - Did you ever ask for all those ‘v1agra’ emails? Unsolicited email in any form is very poorly regarded and will jet junked… Or worse. It’s a legal requirement - In the United States, the CAN-SPAM Act sets the rules for commercial email and serves to protect the rights of recipients. Similar rules exist across the world. Breaking these laws can be not only costly, but can damage your reputation… And business. Your client’s campaign deliverability will suffer - These days, recipients are more frequently treating the ‘Report Spam’ button as the way to unsubscribe from an undesirable mailing list. If an excessive number of spam reports are received as a result of an unsolicited email being sent, then the domain, or IP from which the message originated can be blocked by email service providers and ISPs. Everyone’s campaign deliverability will suffer - The problem gets infinitely worse when you consider how much email gets processed by our mail servers. All it takes is one rogue client to get our mail servers temporarily blocked, to the detriment of everyone who has sent a campaign around that time. So, who pays the price when a campaign is sent to a subscriber list, without seeking the recipients’ permission first? The answer is - Everyone. Starting on the right foot with new subscribers Now you’ve verified that your clients’ new list is legitimate, you may not want to go gung-ho into emailing them at any time of day or night. Here are some smart ways to engage your new subscribers: Consider an introductory email - Introducing the client and explaining how they received their contact details is always a safe way to start the relationship. After all, your new subscribers may have forgotten passing their details at the trade fair. This is also a great time to request that new subscribers update their preferences or other custom fields you may have. As always, subscribers should be given the opportunity to unsubscribe immediately. Permission also covers frequency of email - If your client has asked new subscribers to sign up for a monthly newsletter, this does not give your client permission to email them updates on a weekly basis. Be honest and suggest they sign up to your other relevant mailing lists. Take particular care with competition lists - A disproportionate number of spam complaints are the result of lists being sourced from competitions. Read this article on how to treat these lists. Emailing your subscribers for the first time is like a real-life introduction - first impressions count, so take the right steps to ensure a harmonious and lasting relationship. Finally… As you can see, gaining permission is not rocket-science if you understand the process from the get-go. Plus, it only makes sense – with a combination of best practice and an understanding of our approvals process, your client will be sending to their happy, responsive list in no time. Ignoring permission simply leads to a dead-end. Are your clients permission-savvy? We would love to hear of your experiences, good and bad alike. Add them below as a comment, or send us your questions!

Mind On Design Lab, as design partners to educational and social serving organizations, they have developed a new fundraising tool along with a great newsletter to announce their work and company progress.  Given their portfolio of attractive, clean, and professional design, its no doubt their newsletter would reflect this as well. This simple, yet clean layout shows how organized and detailed the Minds On Design Lab crew can be - introduction, developments and projects all rolled in to one email with distinct header text, footer and simple graphics. Well done!

What do you get when you throw 15 designers, coders and web-types into an open room, with workspaces, couches, fast Internet access and a good supply of coffee? Jelly. The notion of casual coworking in a Jelly, or plainly, spending the odd weekday with a like-minded group of people, has gained a lot of momentum amongst designers and web developers. Under the auspices of the Sydney-based design and development house, Agency Rainford, I decided to experience the Jelly phenomenon for myself. Why Jelly? Regardless of whether the idea of spending the day amongst your fellow designers sounds like inspiration-heaven or an infinite string of distractions, Jellies have gained appeal for number of reasons: It’s a refreshing day out-of-the-office with like-minded individuals It’s a day in the office for freelancers, home-based designers and people who don’t work in a regular office environment It’s a great opportunity to mix and network, while actually getting some ‘real work’ done The coffee is consistently fabulous For most designers, attending a Jelly is simply a unique way to get into a different headspace, share ideas and do it all amongst great company. But… Do you actually get work done? The amount of work that occurs at a Jelly is as much dependent on your personal working style, as that of your coworkers. One of Agency Rainford’s Jelly regulars reflected on how little work occurred at their first Jelly, citing that the pure excitement of launching one of Sydney’s first code-and-design Jellies, combined with sharing the space with a diverse, energized crowd, had a predictably negative effect on productivity. However, once a routine had been established, complete with recurring participants and standardized coffee breaks, the Jelly environment turned from novelty to one of constructive cooperation. In attempting to commit to my regular day-to-day at the Jelly, I quickly discovered that I was only able to maintain concentration by leveling the surrounding conversations to ambient noise, no matter how interesting they were. Yes, there were silent stretches of 10-15 minutes, but the majority of the time the room was filled with fascinating chatter - often, directed at you. For designers used to operating in busy agencies, this may be no shock, but for the rest of us there were simply two options - either tune out and work, or sport a serious pair of headphones. Another consideration soon arose. I was away from my desktop machine – and didn’t have access to my drives or the intranet. Although there was no critical need to access either resource, it did highlight that a degree of readiness is necessary, especially if you don’t regularly work away from the office. After a hectic morning of people walking in and out with laptops, various introductions and a collective curiosity as to what everyone else was working on, things did settle into a steady hum. The conversation continued to ebb in and out for the rest of the day, but with more purpose and less YouTube breaks. It is possible to get a solid day’s work done at a Jelly, but for most participants, that’s not entirely the point – just as important are the social and collaborative benefits, from brainstorming a new idea, learning how you can do something better, or simply meeting other designers. So, how do I get started? Interested in giving casual coworking a try? Jellies have spread to over 100 cities worldwide. Check the list of locations to find one near you. I asked Tim Lucas, the organizer of Agency Rainford’s Jelly for his advice to those planning on starting their own Jelly. His response was to keep it simple, regular and genuine. If you limit the scope of your Jelly to a manageable number of participants and simple workspaces, maintain a regular Jelly schedule, mindful of meetings and other work commitments you have on, and foster a genuine sense of community, then your Jelly will soon populate and often, maintain itself. Read more on how to host your own Jelly. Casual coworking may not be for everyone, but if you’re a designer who enjoys being able to work remotely and is open to spending a day collaboratively working, then there’s a good chance that you will be hooked. Personally, I found that not only was it a great way to meet a diverse and engaged group, but learn more about my craft and still get a satisfying amount of work done, too. After all, what’s not to love about Jelly? Many thanks to our friends at Agency Rainford in Sydney, Australia. Follow them on Twitter. Do you host, or are you planning on organizing or attending a Jelly? We support a number of events for designers and developers via our Giving Back program and are keen to get behind your Jelly or event, too.

Not sure if your subscribers prefer to receive campaigns about soccer or snooker? Would they hang around if they received updates on country music, over calypso? There are immense benefits to knowing your subscribers’ interests, desired email frequency or even location, two of them being better targeting of your subscribers and less unsubscribes. Plus, in order to reduce email churn, you will want users to be able to update their active email address. Thankfully, you can achieve this and more, simply by using Campaign Monitor’s preference center feature. Quick jump: The preference center in a nutshell Setting up the preference center Customizing the preference center Adding a link to the preference center to your email Editing your subscribe form So.. How do I get my subscribers to edit their preferences? The preference center in a nutshell Even if you’ve had an existing subscriber list for a while now, collecting preference information and giving subscribers the option of changing their preferences instead of simply unsubscribing is easy, with a little know-how as to how segments work. In an earlier blog post, we discussed how useful segments can be – if you haven’t tried segmenting your lists yet, do give this post a read. Setting preferences is akin to allowing your subscribers to subscribe and unsubscribe to sub-lists - a subscriber to a widget store newsletter may be interested in Arduinos, but not Faraday cages, and therefore may only want to receive newsletters solely about Arduinos. Having a preference center allows the subscriber to state this: Another benefit to setting up a preference center is a reduction in email churn, being the number of emails in your list that become inactive as people discard their email addresses. On average, 15-25% of all valid email addresses are discarded each year as people move to a different ISP or change jobs – with a preference center, subscribers can change their subscribed email address without completely unsubscribing from your list. Setting up the preference center In this example, we will set up a preference center with the three interest categories above, being ‘Arduinos’, ‘Faraday Cages’ and ‘Gewgaws’. In your account, click on ‘Manage Subscribers’, then your subscriber list, then click ‘Custom Fields’. Under ‘Edit field’, create a new field with Data Type, “Multiple Options (can select many)’ and enter your desired preferences. Ensure “This field should be visible to recipients when they edit their settings in the preference center” is checked: Subscribers will now be able to subscribe to these preferences, and you will be able to segment your subscriber list accordingly: Customizing the preference center To change the colors, header graphic, message and language of the preference center, click on ‘Client Settings’, then ‘Preference Center’. You can also preview the preference center: Adding a link to the preference center in your email Linking to your preference center is as easy as adding the following tags to your email content. When we send your campaign, we’ll convert this into a personalized link for each of your subscribers. HTML emails - <preferences>this will be a link</preferences> Plain text emails - [preferences] Note that the preference center is only available to subscribers once the campaign is sent – in order to test the preference center link, you will need to send the campaign to subscriber list that includes you as a subscriber. Editing your subscribe form When creating a subscribe form, you can also add custom fields so that subscribers can state their preferences when they sign up for your email. In ‘Manage Subscribers’, click on your subscriber list, then, ‘Create a subscribe form’. Check the custom field you wish to add, generate the code and you’re off: So.. How do I get my subscribers to edit their preferences? Using our above example, say you wanted to start sending the special-interest newsletters (‘Arduinos’, ‘Gewgaws’...) to your subscribers. Here are some tactics you could try: For existing subscribers - Consider sending an introductory email, suggesting that your subscribers update their preferences in order to receive more relevant updates on their favorite products. Also remind them that they can change preferences or their subscribed email address at any time. All future emails should contain a link to the preference center. For new subscribers - In the confirmation, or welcome message, make sure the subscriber is made aware that they can change their preferences, or unsubscribe at any time.  It doubly helps if you have already edited your subscribe form to reflect the preferences on offer. Finally… Preference centers are a very powerful addition to any email campaign as they not only encourage subscriber retention, but allow you to profile your subscriber list by interest, gender, or whatever field you please. If you’ve created a great preference center, or have seen one you like, do tell us about it below. Whether it’s a cool customization or a neat way to segment your lists, we’re always keen to know about the creative ways that designers have used preference centres for everyone’s benefit.

Authentic Jobs, the popular web design job board from Cameron Moll, has been redesigned and upgraded, and as part of the announcement he has sent out this newsletter. You can see that this campaign has been thoroughly thought out. It starts off with a short introduction which explains the main points of the email and gives a clear call to action, and then in the following sections it goes into detail about the new features. We also like the screenshots which support the content, but aren’t necessary to understand it, which means that this campaign will display perfectly with images disabled. This is another fine example of the great design Cameron is so well known for.

If you’ve been receiving invoices, email delivery confirmations or password reset emails in the last few days, you may have noticed that we’ve made some changes to the look of these system-generated messages. They’ve been given a delectably modern cut-and-color, with clean lines, nice icons and more information: In our previous blog post, you may have noticed the new invoice design; these now include customizable address fields, which can also include VAT number and any other relevant information: The invoices to both you and your clients have been updated to be consistent with the look and feel of the application, which undoubtedly is a great improvement. Please send us any comments or feedback regarding this redesign - we’re always looking to improve!

Haystack, the new service for sourcing web designers, has launched on the scene thanks to the ever-innovative folks at 37signals. In step with their release, they’ve delivered a newsletter that accentuates why 37signals is such a loved brand - not only does it make a clear case as to why you should be using their products, but keeps the message fun and undeniably, tickles your curiosity to know more. We really like the simple design with a prominent call to action and clear structure. The dark background on the footer is a nice way to mark it as a separate section, and we also like the (now customary) large product icons. Overall, 37signals’ newsletters, like their web applications, look modern and fresh, yet perpetually consistent from one release to the next.

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