I’ve been working on some newsletters over the last few months and in general they have gone fairly smoothly. We’re using mailchimp to send and its a great tool but at times it really does my head in.
I’ve come up against a few cases where things have disappeared and other issues within their UI … its also at times a bit of a nightmare navigating through things in there or maybe its just me. It also at times feels incredibly slow navigating through it. Will this stop me using it ? Hell no .. their pricing model is very good not to mention the reporting on your campaigns I find out of this world. I just however felt the need to voice my ARGH with the system.
Yesterday I’ve been coming up against a few cross “browser” / Email Client issues which were doing my head in.
First up is the gmail image spacing issue. You may notice sometimes on emails that your images have extra spacing around them this won’t matter unless of course your design is calling heavily upon a graphical design.
Solution: Put display:block; in the style for all the images you’re using. This will remove the extra padding / margin / space that seems to creep in .. and then style away as normal
Second issue was in the use of background URL images a number of “browsers” / Email Clients will display your lovely background in all its glory. However gmail and the likes won’t. Solution .. well I went ahead and used the background image anyways BUT .. I also added in bgcolor=”#333333″ or whatever relevant colour in there. The style background colour wasn’t being picked up upon in the various clients. Annoying or what. Some are going to display things great others not so great and its all about as much consistency as possible across the various clients.
Thirdly MailChimp also seems to pull the text for the plain text emails out and what it generates is a steaming pile of … “interesting content” I’d strongly recommend going and formatting this nicely in a text editor or something. If it looks good as plain text hopefully it’ll look good for those end users with html off for their emails. I unfortunately made this mistake in the first few newsletters and the plain text came out a bit funny to say the least
Ah well you live and learn and they hopefully will get better and better you can see the past newsletters here
One of the most common questions I see over on the likes boards.ie or iwf.ie is, which domain extension should I get?
I’m always quite surprised by the question I have to admit. Usually people want to know if they should market their business as the .ie (Irish Country Code Top Level Domain – cctld) or the .com and which they should buy. Me being me I think to myself idiots the .com costs about six quid and the .ie costs about 20 quid. You’re talking 26 quid to have both and I mean if both are available I’ll always be saying to take them. So why are people so hesitant on grabbing both? Its something I never understand.
I personally would be telling any of my clients to go ahead and register .ie / .com / .co.uk / .eu / .me and also now the .co (though my verdict is out on it just at the moment but they are selling fast with a lot of good names available its the cctld for columbia but its being marketed as an international tld so hopefully like .tv and .me it’ll join the ranks of international domains read over about .co over on blacknight’s blog - Sick of .com? Meet .co! ). Hell I’d probably even say get the .net / .org / .biz
Why will I do that well rather simply its to protect your brand. Protect my brand but why do I need to do that? Well you’re thinking small at the moment and you’re thinking the Irish market? so the obvious choice is the .ie there in the past has been a certain level of well the .ie was difficult to get and if they are an irish company they have to have their legal details displayed on the website so it must be good and not just a random .com I’ve come across who may be a kid sitting in a basement somewhere. This is changing however .. Irish businesses go belly up .. and I personally hold less esteem for the dot ie anymore.
In the past I’ve put things very simply for a few clients who were humming and hawing wondering if they should buy the two or more domains. The simple question was so you get the .ie and what happens if people go to the .com and discover a porn site with a picture of a gigantic clock on it … ( yes I put it like that to them and let them work out the meaning ). Now if its a childrens clothes store or something like that and people put in xyz.com instead of xyz.ie .. people may be less likely to go back or searching for your store again wouldn’t they ?
Human nature is also weird people can have strange ideas in their heads … the amount of people I know that type urls into google and search for them that way is staggering. Do we ever really remember if a site is .ie / .com or .other ? I know I don’t I kinda expect going to one will take me to the correct site.
So I’ve got to ask why wouldn’t you register a couple of more domain extensions ? I’ve created a number of print adverts before you know the type of thing it goes into a local paper gets sent out and bang there goes 1000 euro with pretty much no way of tracking the return and believe me the return on some of them was rather poor … not that I’d put it down to my advert graphics mind you more so to the target audience they were trying to hit but by using traditional media for the purpose. So that was 1000 euro gone like that and people are complaining that they don’t know if they want to spend that extra fiver on the .com ? get real people.
Anyways just a small rant and a place I’m going to direct people to again … the population of Ireland is 4.5 million (.ie – 20€) … of the UK is 62 million (.co.uk 5€) … of europe is 830 million (.eu – 7€ ) … of the world is 6,700 million (.com 6€) .. if you’re going to be targeting your business at any of these well … you do the maths ?
Last post was all about powerful advertising … this one is about funny advertising.
Its the kinda thing I’d pretty much like to pass onto all my friends. When an ad makes you laugh and want to pass it on its gone viral (though obviously thats just my opinion and I don’t yet know its reach)
THE SPOILER .. don’t read before watching
Its semi taking two classic stereotypes and dumping them into the one ad. For me its pretty much the reaction I’ve had from women regarding large closet space. Its also the kinda reaction I’ve had before when I told people I had a beer fridge (one of those mini coolers)
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