New Profile Design
Easier to work with, Easier to Read
@westernu’s new twitter profile (Credit: @mathewh)
Just received a “What’s Brewing” this month type email from Tim Hortons. In the end, it was a pretty weak email because with images turned off, almost nothing came through. If we ignore this and turn the images on, it’s a great single column email template
Learn MoreI’m reading an article by Andrew Careaga called “Why researchers should blog” and thought I would note some of the best points for you.
Andrew’s blog starts with the case of Peter Janiszewski, a health sciences researcher, who released one of his publications as a five part blog series and went from unknown to being read by 12,000 people and covered by MSNBC.
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Just got this email from Bootlegger – it caught my eye for two reasons. First, it uses a Custom FBML tab that displays differently depending on whether or not the visitor is a fan. Second, I really like the way that the display images uses white spacing.
Above: The Bootlegger Fan Page if you aren’t a fan …
Take a look at the display picture. It is very simple, but the spacing between the photo of the models, and the brand creative below the photo, makes it seem like Bootlegger has managed to earn themselves two display images instead of one. Because Facebook has a white background – all you’ve got to do is throw in some white spacing and fake it.
Below: The Bootlegger Fan Page if you are a fan …
Here’s what’s going on: Facebook is checking to see whether each visitor is a Facebook Fan of Bootlegger. If they are a fan, then they are shown specific content. If they are not a fan, they are shown completely different content.
I think this is really effective! What could be more clear than the giant LIKE with a big blue arrow. It is also very easy to do …
A few more screenshots:
Above: The contest landing page for Bootlegger’s become a fan and win a $500 shopping spree contest.
Below: The email campaign sent out to Bootlegger’s customer database, promoting the shopping spree contest.
I’ve written about emails received as a Chapters Indigo customer before, but this one just struck me as funny: advice on how to get out of debt – starting with a book purchase (and several other books that would be relevant as well).
On the email-marketing side of things, they’ve done great with the nice little “Viewing this on a mobile phone?” that loads a plain text version in your browser – I might have not gone quite so plain and kept some links (aka calls to action/next steps) in there – or a phone number to shop by phone would have been a nice touch (blackberries and iphones highlight phone numbers for one-click calling/contact adding).
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