TEAR-OFF REFERRAL CARD

January 2, 2016 by

 

Tear Off Referral CardWe worked with a new printer, PrintingForLess.com, to make this referral card. (2025 updates – we still love this printer!)

Referral cards are difficult.  They need to be small enough that someone would carry it around.  Nice enough that people will pass them onto their friends.  They need to track the giver and the receiver so that the rewards can be passed on and so you can track your ROI.

Our client has been handing these out all holiday season.  We’re looking forward to finding out if they do bring in new clients – it’s a great offer for the giver and receiver, so they should.

E-MAILS WORKING FOR OUR CLIENTS

December 28, 2015 by

E-mail Campaign Design

(2025 review – funny how so much has changed since this 2015 post and how much remains the same.)

There are many ways to approach e-mail campaign development and production. We’ve narrowed it down to three options to cover all our clients’ budgets and all the devices out there.

We also include enhancements to our e-mail campaign services that our competitors skip. We usually do all the graphics and copywriting. For each campaign, we also produce a web page version which our clients use as landing pages for online ads or social media posts. A week after launch, we provide a free report on the campaign’s success.

And finally, because we don’t like to just do a one-off campaign with a short lifespan of value, we add the web page version to our client’s site on a news archive page so all that work put into making the e-mail campaign continues to pay off as a boost to site search engine optimization and additional information for site visitors to enjoy.

Reporting shows that around 55% of all our clients’ e-mail campaigns are being viewed on smartphones. This is a higher percentage for retail businesses and a lower percentage for B2B and service businesses. Because of this, the non-responsive e-mail campaign designs we were doing just a few years ago were dropped – a business’ e-mail must be readable and actionable on a smartphone.

Here’s what is working for our clients right now:

Mobile-friendly campaigns render cleanly, but not responsively, on all devices from smartphone (landscape and portrait) to desktop computer. These are the lowest priced options since they do not need complex responsive code or an e-mail campaign platform’s design interface.

They work well on all devices and on a smartphone do not require pinching or side-scrolling.

Here’s a mobile friendly e-mail campaign.

Mobile Friendly E-mail Campaign

Responsive e-mail campaigns render the same code/design on any device. For these, we use a template provided by an e-mail campaign service provider, but prevent them from looking “from a box” with custom graphics.

Different e-mail campaign providers vary in quality and services. We like Vertical Response the best for its same-time-zone customer support and list management features, which we find to be the most adaptable to split-list campaigns and the way our clients wish to manage lists. However we have been recently surprised and pleased with how Constant Contact has improved – no more phone-tree nightmares when calling for support and great reporting. Of the main providers, MailChimp is our least favorite as the list management is non-flexible and there’s no phone support.

Here’s a sample of one of our responsive e-mail campaigns, produced through Constant Contact.

Responsive E-mail Design

Custom, responsive e-mail campaigns require a lot of work. Two versions of each campaign are produced: a desktop version and a smartphone version. These are the best looking and performing types of e-mails as the design is specific to the device.

Our company campaigns are coded in this way.

Custom Responsive E-mail Design

We work closely with our clients to make sure we are providing the best fit for their needs, and their budgets.

Our e-mail campaign portfolio.

PHOTOSHOP FUN

December 10, 2015 by

Photoshop Engraveing

(2025 review – Rachel’s grateful for her two decades of Photoshopping before AI. There’s no need for HI [human intelligence] for a project like this anymore.)

Love it when I get to play in Photoshop and make something that works for a client.  These custom bracelets by Gleim the Jeweler are perfect for the event invitation “engraving.”  So pretty as header for an e-mail campaign and for a home page slide.

E-MAIL CAMPAIGN HEADER:

blog-gleim-e-mail-campaign-graphic2

WEB SITE HOME PAGE SLIDE:

blog-gleim-e-mail-campaign-graphic3

RESPONSIVE E-MAIL CAMPAIGN

November 10, 2015 by

Jewelery Responsive E-mail CampaignWe’ve just finished our first e-mail campaign for Gleim the Jeweler.

Our client has traced sales back to their store and their online store from this campaign, so hopefully we’ll be doing many more of these campaigns in the future.

A bonus with working with Gleim is the beautiful jewelry.

OWN YOUR NEWS – PDF VS. OUT-GOING LINK

October 31, 2015 by

PDF vs. Out-going Link

(2025 update! This info originally from 2015 is still relevant.)

Media mentions are great marketing! But if you simply link to the online version of the article, you are not getting the full benefit of the piece.

When you link to the article or post on the publishing website:

•  You are directing your visitor off of your site where you can lose them to the distractions of ads, other articles, post comments, or mentions of your competition.  (Look at all the distractions in the webpage capture of the article on the left side of our graphic above.)

•  The publisher may remove or change the link at any time.  Your article is lost and you have a dead link on your site.  (BTW, if you do go this route of simply linking to an article, put a reminder in your calendar for a few times a year to test all the links on your site so you can fix any that are broken.)

• Out-going links do not help search engine optimization (SEO) at all.

We recommend putting the content of the article to a PDF which is uploaded to your website’s server.  That way, you can control the content and remove ads, mentions of your competitors, and all distractions (see the clean article on the right side of the graphic above.)  You always have possession of the story.  And while PDFs may not be optimized for SEO the way a regular web page may be, they do help SEO.

Here’s an example We integrated press articles with items related to this event: postcard and poster (MPS designed and produced), photos, social media, blog posts, and the press release put out by our client, Hope Patricia Daly.

Send John a line for more information.

 

 

MENLO PARK PHOTOSHOOT AND AD

October 15, 2015 by

Photo Shoot and Magazine Ad

Have you been to MenloVille?  It’s a fantastic shop on Valpariso Avenue between Alameda de las Pulgas and El Camino in Menlo Park.  It’s great for gifts and for high-end re purposed items.  We recently did a photoshoot there and then created this full-page magazine ad.  See the ad in the November issue of Gentry (we did the SkinSpirit ad too!)

LAW FIRM WEBSITE LAUNCHED

September 23, 2015 by

Law Firm Website Launched

(2025 – We’re thrilled this site worked well for our client for ten years – we just updated it last year to fully-responsive code.)

We recently finished this simple website for Marsten & Mosher An Association of Attorneys.  Check it out at: mmfamilylaw.com.

They elected to do a simple site with a separate mobile version.  Their goals for this site where simple: allow clients to easily find their offices for meetings and provide a resource for those looking for the lawyers’ biographies.

They do so well from word-of-mouth marketing that they asked for only basic SEO work.

Thank you for the project, Mia and Michelle!

YOU’RE GOING TO NEED TO KNOW THIS TO UNDERSTAND NEW DOMAIN NAME STRUCTURES

August 29, 2015 by

(2025 Doing some housekeeping to remove any outdated info. This is mostly now just funny old info.)

Available domain extensions are no longer just .com, .net, .us, .org, etc. Some recently made available include: .movie, .coupons, .soccer, .catering, .fyi, .ski, .men, .miami — more each day. 

As an internet user, don’t be confused if you see a website address written with a full–word after the dot. That familiar three–letter extension or two–letter country code extension will prevail, but websites are no longer limited to just these. 

As a business owner, you have some choices to make. This is the time to review all available domains and extensions and be aware of what will soon become available so you can grab your perfect extension. 

For example, a catering client of ours purchased a .catering domain to use on print marketing. It will forward to their main website. 

Some reasons to consider specific extensions are to: 

• help with print marketing — easier to remember, more specific website addresses, 

• prevent your competition or other businesses from owning it (yes, they are doing it to you), 

• show you are current with the times, and 

• own your business’ perfect domain in case search engines change their algorithms in the future. 

If you wish to find out what domains extensions are soon becoming available, do a search engine search for “new domain watcher” and to find out what extensions are already available, do a search engine search for “domain availability”. There are many tools out there to help. 

Let John know if you’d like us to work on a domain plan for you. We’d review all your currently registered domains and give recommendations on what to keep and what to let lapse. We’d make sure that the correct redirection was put on your domains so you are not hurting your SEO. And we’d work on a plan for getting a new domain extension(s) which will best suit your business and goals.