It’s been a while, folks. Some of you are maybe wondering why I stopped freelancing! Back in November of 2010, I got a new job at Schifino Lee Advertising + Branding, as the Interactive Art Director. It has consumed all of my time, and I have worked on projects with clients such as AT&T, The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, WellCare Medicare Plans, and Pegasus TransTech. It’s been quite a journey so far and I love it!
So enough of the day job, I wanted to let you all know about my new blog (which is *gasp!* not on WordPress), Beautiful Spam. It features various e-blasts, mostly rendered in gmail or microsoft entourage. Sometimes the blasts are not so beautiful, others I just poke fun at, or notice small subtle “errors” on the layout.
Definitely check it out though, it’s interesting to see. I didn’t start doing e-mail programming until my time here at Schifino Lee. I’ve learned so much about email marketing and what to do and not to do. There is definitely a lack of standards when it comes to programming and I hope one day that changes. E-mail clients have yet to implement some of the basic CSS properties. Props to Apple Mail though, I think just about everything and then some is supported. Gmail has to be one of the worst for sure- which is surprising coming from Google. Then again it’s not surprising since programmers like text-based e-mails (or so I’m assuming). For the rest of us, we like visuals, but note that we probably don’t like to be tracked. I don’t want companies knowing I opened their e-mail or what I clicked on. While sometimes it’s nice data to have, I’d rather know that traffic increased to my websites after X email went out on Y date. IMO I don’t think e-mails should have a shit load of links.
If you’re interested in doing email campaigns, I definitely recommend to check out Campaign Monitor’s CSS support table. Also check out the Email Design Guidelines and mozey your way over to the E-mail Standards Project. All good stuff.
Personally, I use Mail Chimp to send out things. At work we use Constant Contact. Leave that up to you guys to choose how you want to manage your lists!
Take care, and send your beautiful spam to afox@alisonfoxall.com to be featured on the blog!
Congrats on the job position.