It’s been a crazy start to 2011. In fact, the last few months have been an absolute whirlwind. Here are some noteworthy the projects we’ve been working on, with services ranging from consulting to custom email design & build using MailChimp to full websites built on either WordPress or Buddypress. Have a project you want to discuss? By all means – get in touch!

A social network (built on Buddypress) designed specifically for expatriated Anglophones living in Paris. With illustrations and creative direction provided by Brighton-based FentonForeman, the project saw CarbonGraffiti design & optimise the interface & user experience and develop the site on the Buddypress platform. The result: a full-scale social network where expats can meet, interact and share tips on Parisian hotspots and life in Paris with one another. The site, built in HTML5 and using @font-face and other CSS3 goodies, uses media queries and responsive design to cater to a mobile audience. The site will go live in Q2, 2011. A multichannel solution for a professional speakers management company in Australia – CarbonGraffiti created and launched a rebranded, MailChimp newsletter and accompanying WordPress-powered blog, to help the company grow their existing email marketing database and communicate with their readership more effectively. The project originally started as an RSS-driven campaign, but after determining the need for additional functionality, the campaign became a fully editable, branded newsletter to match the new blog style. The blog was built in HTML5 and will be used as the primary news and article section for the client’s existing website. Ongoing digital marketing consultation and campaign management for a startup specializing in the training and education of clinical research nurses. Services range from custom MailChimp template coding (based on a design by the illustrious Jon Hicks who also did the site design) to PPC and email marketing setup, management and consultation. Designed, developed and launched a website for a new startup offering premium accommodation to international students through purpose-built hotel-quality centres throughout the UK. The site, built in HTML5 and powered by WordPress, uses media queries and responsive design to cater to a growing mobile audience. As a result of this successful phase, CarbonGraffiti has been invited to tender for the larger second phase of the company’s impressive growth trajectory. Continued 1-day email marketing workshops in central Brighton, covering the basics of email marketing, from history, jargon and best practices to a hands-on demo and case studies. The courses are offered at Silicon Beach Training in Brighton’s North Laines. Designed and developed a custom MailChimp email template for an LA-based actress, to be used as part of her promotional kit and new personal brand. Based on the success of the template, CarbonGraffiti has been commissioned to redesign and develop the full website and brand identity. Ongoing digital marketing support for a well-known Montreal-based ESP. Gave a presentation at English UK’s annual marketing conference at the Westminster Conference Centre in London, focusing on ‘The future of digital marketing’ as related to the English Language Training industry and the many challenges and opportunities it faces today. A few basic trade industry sites we’ve designed and/or coded in the past have now gone live, see them here. The Garatec site was built on Shopify, coded by CarbonGraffiti for a local web agency.

That’s it? That’s just the tip of the iceberg – we’ve worked with some great clients not included in the above list, and are always on the look out for more. If you want to be one of them, get in touch today.

On September 22 I’m giving a 1-day workshop in Brighton for email marketing. This workshop will cover the basics as outlined below, with a second, related day to be offered at a date TBC, which will cover email design and development in-depth. The workshops are offered at the popular Silicon Beach Training in Brighton. Short notice for this one, but there should be more in the near future, including the email design and development version.

Outline is as follows: On completion of this email marketing training course, delegates will be able to:

Deliver an effective email marketing campaign from planning through to delivery Grow an opt-in list that maintains interest and drives revenue Understand why design, build and content can make or break your ROI Have the confidence to try advanced methods to grow a cost-effective, high impact email marketing strategy

Email Marketing Course Content What is email marketing?

History & Perceptions Statistics, usage, facts The HTML vs Text email debate Why dialogue is so important

Before the inbox – SPAM and permission-based marketing

Factors affecting deliverability What is SPAM – how to avoid it Legislation to be aware of, including CANSPAM Best practices for avoiding junk filters

Starting the dialogue – building and maintaining an opt-in list

Opt-in marketing 101 Subscription tactics for your site Segmentation & targeting Integrating CRMs

In the inbox – crafting your campaign for ROI

Planning your campaign – goals and objectives, acquisition vs. retention Know your audience Getting the frequency right Subject lines & From fields Making it personal using dynamic content and wildcards Writing copy for ROI Email’s next generation – mobile devices, rich media, the iPad

Designing your email – HTML design basics & tips

Design Development Test, test, test Best practices Importance of the text version Tracking your campaign The metrics that matter From inbox to website – tracking onsite behaviour and why you should End-to-end reporting with CRMs

Real-world examples and best practices

Great examples of permission-based marketing Great examples of multichannel email campaigns Great examples of bulletproof email design

Advanced email marketing methods

Multi-touch campaigns A/B testing Use of landing pages for super-targeting Social media and email The future of email Beyond the newsletter – thank you, transactional and follow-ups

Email Marketing tools to use

Tools to use for designing, testing and delivering your campaigns

Email Marketing Resources worth reading

Resources to bookmark and frequent for email marketing best practices, tips, tricks and news

CarbonGraffiti is proud to be among a growing group of service providers listed on the all-new MailChimp Experts Directory. Now over 4 weeks old, the Directory is filling up fast, and looks to be the go-to place for thousands of MailChimp customers requiring services ranging from custom email design to API and ecommerce integration.

You can find CarbonGraffiti on the MailChimp Experts Directory filed under Email Design, Consultation, Training and Campaign Management. Also worth mentioning Using some good old-fashioned htaccess trickery mixed with this site’s new grid layout, I created a new landing page targeting users arriving specifically from the Experts directory. By tailoring a page specific to their expectations and needs, users get a better experience without being burdened with having to manually find what they’re looking for. For some added flavour I cooked in a CrazyEgg tracking script, which will help tell me where visitors are clicking and more importantly where they’re not, as well as a Google Website Optimiser experiment to see whether a green or red CTA button gets the most interest.
See the MailChimp-only page here.

It’s been a busy 5 months since going full-time freelance, and there’s a lot of news coming soon, including a new website, new client announcements and much more. In the meantime however, I thought I’d announce a new side project that has finally seen the light of day. Introducing The Email Design Gallery at http://emaildesigngallery.com. I created this gallery as a showcase for all of the fantastic email designs out there, specifically as a way to help get the medium of email design more widely-recognized across the web community.

…besides simple design aesthetics, the EDG strives to underline the importance, creativity and hard work required for good email design by underlining the importance of standards-compliant code. With many web-based and desktop-based email clients to account for – all dramatically ranging in their rendering capabilities – email designers & coders are continually challenged to design for an often inhospitable medium. With designs ranging from retail giants to boutique agencies – and everything in between – email design is slowly shedding the unfortunate title of web design’s ugly sibling and becoming a thriving design community onto itself – complete with its own set of guidelines, standards, pitfalls and best practices. Go have a visit and browse the current entries (all hand-selected of course). If you feel you’ve got a kick-ass email design that ought to be there, feel free to tag the creative on Twitter with the hashtag ‘#theedg’ (or contact directly via http://twitter.com/theedg), or simply opt for the traditional way using the site’s submission form. Hope to see you soon!

When designing and coding email designs, more often than not you’re forced into using your browser to render the HTML code you’re working on, and have to wait until you’re ready to test across multiple inboxes to find the per-client issues (looking at you, Hotmail, Gmail and Outlook 2007). Working towards that point is probably the most important in the development phase, as the better you create your base file, the less likely it is you’ll have to tweak and hack to accommodate those pesky email clients.

A great way to help in the pre-inbox development of email campaigns is Firefox’s web developer toolbar add-on. Normally reserved for developing, debugging and QA’ing websites only, the toolbar can double as a quick but effective QA tester for some of the most important (and easy to fix) email issues.

Here’s a list of some great commands in the WD toolbar that I’ve found make my development process easier, which of course keep me happier in the long run (and prevent me from pulling my hair out – I reserve that for IE6 on the web side of things). CSS CSS > Disable all styles Almost an inevitability, there are some email clients out there (ie Lotus notes) that seem to live simply to mangle your beautiful email designs, namely through poor support for the CSS. Whether or not you use inline styles (you should), this command is great to view the ‘worst case scenario’ of your entire message being viewed without CSS. Not pretty, but you should always strive to maintain a well-structured campaign with and without CSS support. Images Images > Display alt attributes Self-explanatory; great for ensuring you have the right alt tags on the right images and gives you easy-to-scan highlights to ensure everything’s in order. Images > Find broken images Again self-explanatory, but always worth a check (especially as Firefox doesn’t show the ugly red ‘x’ as IE does – sometimes a good thing! Images > Hide images Great for a quick and simple check of how the campaign’s message is affected if images are turned ‘off’. By referring to this early, you can ensure your campaign’s style, layout and message aren’t too badly affected by images off by default. Images > Replace images with Alt attributes Probably the most important – this is the closest you’ll get, outside of inbox-testing, to see how your email will look with images turned off. This is when the Alt tags are displayed to the recipient. Information Information > Display table depth The use of multiple, deep-nested tables in your email designs can severely affect email rendering across all email clients – some clients don’t handle nested tables as well as others, meaning your carefully-crafted email and message might appear as a jumbled mess. This command helps you determine how deep (in levels) your nested tables go. Information > Display title attributes Similar to alt tags, title tags are a great way to ensure your message is readable even if images are turned off by default in your recipient’s inbox. Information > View document size Crucial in the design and development of email campaigns, the heavier a campaign is, the more likely it is to get flagged by a spam filter as malicious. Ensuring your campaign’s weight – both with and without images – is something you should check early and often. Don’t have the Web Developer toolbar add-on for Firefox yet? Download it here.