Melon Corporate Blog
Email Design VS. Email Content
Dain Saxon (Digital Producer) - Apr 28, 2008
Laaaaadies and Gentlemen!
In the Red corner we have ever-so-pretty, pixel perfect, queen of presentation and impact… “IMAGE!”
And in the Blue corner we have the informative, the educational, the dynamic king of infinite use… “CONTENT!”
Design versus Content.
Which one would you back in a showdown? Read on to find out which is the most important aspect of e-marketing…
spellr.us Goes Global with Techcrunch
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Apr 23, 2008
The very famous blog techchrunch ran a story on us last night, very exciting, needless to say our registrations for spellr.us have gone crazy!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/22/new-service-will-monitor-your-site-for-typos/
Techcrunch are THE blog in Silicon Valley.
Here is hoping to good things with spellr.us.
http://spellr.us
Success with Targeted Email Marketing Campaigns - Tony Melvin Interview - Knowledgecentre.com.au
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Apr 21, 2008
Interview with Tony Melvin from The Knowledge Centre
Tony discusses the success of his targeted email campaigns - including a campaign with an open rate of 90% open rates!
The Death of Email Marketing
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Apr 21, 2008
The Death of Email Marketing…
...is a long way off.
The cynic in you may say “of course you have to say that, you are an email marketing company!”
Well yes, email marketing is our specialty and it is what many of our clients pay us to assist them with.
But most of our clients have been with us for years and even though we are a team of great people - I know that altruism only goes so far.
If our clients don’t enjoy positive results from their campaigns they would move quickly budget elsewhere.
Why all this talk of death and email marketing?
The results of a survey that was released last week got me thinking as to how email marketing is here to stay BUT at the same time requires more intent than ever achieve ongoing positive results.
The survey received responses from 2512 American adults age 18 and over who check and/or send email at least once a week.
Email Goes wrong - Case Study and Prevention
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Apr 17, 2008
Every so often there it is - an article in a mainstream newspaper describing how someone has created havoc by using CC instead of BCC.
Email is a powerful tool - and like all powerful tools - it can be used for good or evil - furthermore when things go wrong they can go spectacularly wrong.
[Cartoon image is from the Financial Review 17 April 2008]
The Financial Review Wednesday 16 April 2008 has a story about Kevin Rudd’s 2020 Summit and how the secretariat sent an email cc’ing recipients instead of bcc’ing them.
[ As an aside we are very impressed that Tamerlaine Beasley the principal of one of our clients Beasley Intercultural has been selected to participate in the Summit.
Tamerlaine will be involved with the ‘Australia’s Future in the World’ stream. Tamerlaine will canvass opinions regarding Australia and its future in the region and the world.
We interviewed Tamerlaine for one of our previous newsletters.]
Semi-Permanent 2008 - Inspiration for this Web and Email Designer
Fiona King (Graphic Designer) - Apr 10, 2008
I spend my time at Melon Media generating creative concepts and implementing the chosen designs for email newsletters and websites.
However I need to keep the inspiration flowing and design events allow me to step away from some of the day to day deadlines and indulge in pure creative thought.
One event I always look forward to is Semi-Permanent.
Having just spent 2 days hanging out at Darling Harbour in Sydney attending Semi-Permanent Sydney 2008 I thought I would make some comments on my experience.
One quick and easy way to improve your email marketing campaigns
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Apr 07, 2008
I have noticed that many of our self managed customers often leave out one element of their html email creatives that can easily improve their click through rates.
All research and previous campaign experience indicates that both web and email users just LOVE clicking on things.
They try to click on text, images, headers, footers, they just seem to have a thing for clicking!
Search Engine Optimisation Myths #1 – “Don’t use Javascript”
Adam Benson (Chief Web Systems Architect) - Apr 04, 2008
This entry is the first of what will be an ongoing series I will write aimed at clearing up a lot of the confusion and “voodoo” behind Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
There is a lot of misinformation behind SEO techniques with some people thinking that SEO specialists have exclusive access to insider knowledge.
A lot of illogical or unfeasible “myths” for search engine optimisation have sprung up and have become false common knowledge.
The main issue with these myths are that you can land up paying for services based on misinformation and deny the use of useful technologies on your websites.
Don’t squish! Resize! Images and Html Emails
Fiona King (Graphic Designer) - Apr 03, 2008
How many times have you seen an image in an html email that just looks wrong… too many times! It may look streeeeeetched ... or sqshed!
This is because people have attempted to resize an image in an html program without actually resizing the image itself (gif, jpg, or png).
Html editors are partly to blame as they allow users to do this.
So instead of the actual image size changing, what is happening is the html is representing the image of one size, as another size. Kind of like trying to squeeze a kid that has grown into his old clothes.
If the "aspect ratio" (proportion between width and height) of the new resized image at least stays the same as the original image then the image will look ok but appear either crunched or stretched.
However when people resize images in an html program often the aspect ratio changes from the original image and the image looks quite different to the original image.
Below is an example of an image squished into an aspect ratio that doesn’t match the original image.
So if you need to resize an image into a defined space that has an aspect ratio different from your original image you’ll usually need to crop the image to fit.
If you don’t have an editing program such as Photoshop a solution to resizing and cropping your images can be found within your Microsoft suite of applications.
Have a look for Microsoft Office Picture Manager within your applications.
A step by step tutorial for resizing images can found here.
Make sure after finishing your changes you save using a new file name to avoid copying over your original file. Mac users can resize and crop using iPhoto which comes packaged with the Mac.
Museum Calls for email archive submissions
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Apr 02, 2008
Yesterday Microsoft and The Powerhouse Museum announced that they are accepting emails into an email archive of sorts.
I am unsure if this initiative has gimmick value only or could be a wise move to take an ongoing snapshot of our modern world.
Email tends to exist somewhere between conversations (think telephone) and more formal communications (think letters).
Blog Categories
Archived Entries
August, 2008July, 2008
June, 2008
May, 2008
April, 2008
March, 2008
February, 2008
January, 2008
November, 2007
October, 2007
September, 2007