This might sound strange for an email company, but for certain activities we hate email. One such activity is the collecting of feedback from various sources, on what needs to be tweaked in an email campaign.

Endless chains of emails are sent between those giving feedback and the person making the changes. This person needs to make sure they do not miss any changes, while trying to decipher ambiguous change requests.

To address this problem, Emailcenter have introduced a tool to streamline the feedback process and improve communication. The video below demonstrates this, but here is a summary of the key features:

• Provide feedback by drawing on top of the email – remove ambiguity with visual annotations, so everyone is clear what the feedback means.
• Each comment is easily identifiable to the region and commenter, helpfully stored in one location, to make it easy to review all comments.
• Comments are archived for auditing purposes.

To understand how the Collaboration tool can make your email team more efficient, call the Support team on 01327 355871.

The new Hotmail is quickly being rolled out across the Hotmail user base.

However not without a significant issue for email marketers.

One of the first things we have noticed is the alignment of your email and some background colours are missing when using a user reads your email in Firefox, Chrome, Safari or any other browser which is not IE.

This is nearly 70% of Internet users according to w3schools.com

Here is an old versus new Hotmail example on an email: Read More

toptable.com have added an extra dimension to their already fantastic emails. Not only do customers receive emails tailored to their location and usage frequency, but now they can even smell before they book!

This may seem a strange innovation to make but when you consider that “Flavor is recognized primarily by our sense of smell,” (Paul A. Kedeshian*) things starts to become more clear.

This feature is obviously just a tongue in cheek gimmick for most recipients as their computer screens cannot actually produce smells, but due to the launch of the iPad and the next version of the iPhone with their scent omitting capabilities, scratch and sniff emails may become more common place.

Stay tuned for further developments!

* (Paul A. Kedeshian MD, assistant clinical professor in the division of head and neck surgery at UCLA)

The newest member of the Emailcenter team (Simon) talks about the main issues to consider when trying to get your marketing emails to render correctly in Outlook 2007.

Over the past few weeks retailers have starting to send out the first of their Christmas related marketing emails. Although I am sure to have a new favourite by the time I am stuffed full on mince pies and watching the “Vicar of Dibley” on Christmas day, I have decided to share a couple that have already caught my eye.

One good

I doubt this email is personalised, unless the baubles change depending on the films you have recently rented! The fact that LOVEFILM have put the effort into customising the decorations makes me feel it is worth paying attention to this email.

The message is clear and to the point. The “Visit Shop” call to action and the time limit tells the customer what they need to do and when to do it.

It could be better though. The entire email is made up of images, when it would have been easy to turn the wording into real text, making the message clear even if images were disabled.

Read More