So, without further ado….

Here is a quick tour of our new GroupMail Email Newsletter Software website

1. The new, Front Page of our GroupMail Website!

2. Review GroupMail Features and Technical Specifications on the Features page.

3. Check pricing on our different GroupMail Editions and place an order on our Pricing page.

4. Find support articles on our Support page. Search article by category or by keywords.

5. We love to hear from you. Contact us on our Contact Page.

If you have any links to GroupMail articles, pages, or products; you might double check them. We tried hard to minimize disruption with the redesign, but sometimes, link structures and paths can change as a result of these things.

Thanks to everyone who helped to move this project forward — and for everyone who stops by to check out the result of our hard work!

BEST BODY FONT SIZE FOR NEWSLETTER, EMAIL AND WEBSITE CONTENT

What is the body font size of your newsletter,
email marketing and website content?

If it is too small, you might be making some of your readers work hard to see your message (literally and figuratively).

Why?

“At age 40, only half the light gets through to the retina
as it did at age 20. For 60-year-olds, it’s just 20%.”

[unfortunately, I can attest that this actually makes a difference.)

Usability expert Oliver Reichenstein says,

"[16 pixels] is not big. It’s the text size browsers display by default. It’s the text size browsers were intended to display… It looks big at first, but once you use it you quickly realize why all browser makers chose this as the default text size.”

D Bnonn Tennant breaks it all down and backs up Mr. Reichenstein’s claim in his article, 16 Pixels: For Body Copy. Anything Less is a Costly Mistake.

Not all email clients were created equal.

In fact, each one renders HTML email slightly differently.

Find out why, and how you can test your HTML email to see what it looks like in a Gmail inbox and in each of the other major Desktop, web and mobile email clients. You know, the email clients that the people on your mailing list use.

Interested? Each of our HTML template designs are tested before there are installed with GroupMail.

El GroupMail Free Edition incluye 12 plantillas HTML gratis. Nuestra edición Personal tiene 38 plantillas HTML gratis y el GroupMail Business Edition viene instalada con 70 plantillas HTML gratis.

Usted también puede crear sus propias plantillas HTML y importarlos en GroupMail.

Las plantillas HTML gratis en GroupMail fueron diseñadas profesionalmente y probadas contra todos los clientes de correo electrónico principales (i.e. Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, etc.).

Usando nuestras plantillas HTML gratis es el modo más fácil para dar a sus mensajes la ayuda necesario para competir con compañías más grandes con sus propios equipos de diseño.

Visite nuestro website (en español) para más información sobre las plantillas HTML gratis de GroupMail.

El GroupMail puede ser instalado en español, inglés, francés y alemán.

Lately, I have been writing v o l u m e s –  fresh website content, blog posts, profile descriptions for my new Google Plus and About.me accounts and material for the GroupMail article system we are building. Heck, even my comments on other blogs and social media sites have been voluminous lately.

This morning, I realized that I was writing too much. Literally.

When you are as verbose as I am, it does not come naturally to err on the side of brevity. There is just so much to say about yourself, your business and the wellspring of value that you offer; and the space to present it all seems so infinite when you are writing it.

The problem is, the space and attention span of your audience is not infinite

Today, more than ever before, it is important to understand the art, and necessity, of being brief.

Here are some reasons why:

  Recent studies suggest that website and email audiences form their first impression about your message in as quickly as 50 milliseconds.

  Advertisers pay MILLIONS of $$ for 15 and 30-second ads for the Super Bowl each year. Space and time are valuable resources.

  People want content in smaller bits. We sign up to get our news, information and social updates via Twitter, SMS texts and mobile email.

  The physical space on our portable devices is not designed for voluminous content. Many screens can only display a few lines at a time.

“Can you convey your message in 30 seconds? How about 50 milliseconds?”

When there are so many things that you want to say – so many things that you can say to convince your audience that your message is valuable; it is not easy to whittle it all down to a single page, a screen, a preview pane, sentence, a few key words. But you must, if you want to get the attention of your audience.

Your ability to present value in small, digestible pieces is instrumental today.

Consider your email messages and web content to be bridges rather than vessels.

I’ll sit down now.

The article discusses the relatively new need for marketers to collect data additional to email addresses and names.

“…In addition to email address capture efforts, we’re about to see the need to capture social handles and mobile numbers as well. This will challenge us to gather resources and attention necessary to capture these critical assets…” read more

This is exactly one of the reasons that we created our Contact Information Form Builder. It makes it so easy to design forms using a variety of drag-and-drop form fields, and the ability to easily modify each field. You can create stylish contact information forms in minutes with a variety of field types.

Another reason we developed GroupMail Forms is because we realize that today, more than ever before, your contacts are scattered all over the place. With that in mind, we thought it would be useful for you to be able to collect new contact information or update existing contact information wherever you or your contacts might be found; on email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Google +, MySpace, etc.

We think that the flexibility that our GroupMail Forms contact information builder offers, both in designing stylish forms or in sharing your contact information forms anywhere on the Internet is simply awesome.

We hope you do too!

After writing this post, I thought it would be a good idea to provide an example. So, here is an example of a contact information update form that I designed just now for this article. I’m not kidding, it took me about 10 minutes to do this. And, I have been called many things in life, but “designer” was never one of them.

Go on, fill it out — GroupMail forms allows you to embed active forms on your websites, blogs and any other online spaces which allow for java and HTML.

As you can see, I chose the Javascript embed option to put the update form right into my blog post. In Twitter, I would just include a link to the contact information update form.

When you fill in the example form above, you will automatically receive a confirmation (double opt-in) email. This is done automatically for you in GroupMail Forms and you can modify the confirmation email and form action messages as desired.

GroupMail customers can login to create contact information forms now!

As always, if you have any questions or need some help along the way, don’t hesitate to contact our technical support team.

Interested? Get more information about our award-winning email marketing software, GroupMail and our extremely popular email tracking service, GroupMetrics.

“What is your favorite color?

Obviously, if you ask this question to a group of people, you will get a variety (or spectrum!) of answers. Colors affect people in different ways, and much research has been published to investigate what emotional response different colors provoke.

An effective communicator knows that the first rule of an effective presentation is to KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE and structure your content for them when preparing. Vocabulary, tone, length of material, and style are all adapted, as necessary, for each particular and unique audience.

But how important is color when designing communication for email or website audiences? Isn’t content all that matters?

Does it really matter what color I use in my email newsletters or for the landing pages on my new website?

According to Psychology About.com, psychologists estimate that the response to color can account for up to 60% of the acceptance or rejection of a product or service. This suggests that modern communicators who use dynamic design elements and formatting for their email newsletters and landing pages should consider what colors are most appropriate (and effective) for their particular audience. When considering color in the context of psychology and how it might influence your audience, you should take into account the cultural, gender, and age difference of your audience.

Cultural Differences

Because we are often communicating with a global audience when we send email or design a website, it is important to understand cultural differences and the significance and interpretations that certain colors have in different parts of the world.

As an example; when I was living in Italy, a co-worker’s mother took ill and was sent to hospital. As a good US Air Force representative, I immediately started requesting donations from the office so that we could send her mother flowers and a get well card. Shortly into my fund-raising efforts, an Italian colleague approached me (thankfully, before I delivered the bouquet!). He said:

“Mr. Tom, In Italy, we never give an even number of flowers; and please do not buy Chrysanthemums as they are only given at funerals.”

Imagine if I had sent the poor lady a dozen Chrysanthemums!

The cultural significance of color is also important to consider when communicating via email or on a website. Here are some examples of how colors have different significance between just two cultures.

Okay, so GroupMail is currently used in over 160 countries around the world. I wonder how many customers I inadvertently insulted with the color scheme of my last newsletter? Doh!

Here is more information about color symbolism by culture.

There is also a quick color guide that you can refer to for a quick reference for what feelings different colors might illicit (in western culture.)

Gender Differences

Studies suggest that men and women respond to color differently. In The Meaning of Color for Gender, Natalia Khouw writes,

“Another study examined the appropriateness of colors used on the walls of a simulated domestic interior furnished in one of three styles; Georgian, Art Nouveau and Modern. Whitfield (1984) reported that internal consistency among women is higher than for men. When the study was broadened to include marital status, married women achieve significantly more internal consistency in each condition of the three styles than did the men.

More recently, Radeloff (1990) has found that women were more likely than men to have a favorite color. In expressing the preferences for light versus dark colors, there was [sic] no significant differences between men and women; however, in expressing the preference for bright and soft colors, there was a difference, with women preferring soft colors and men preferring bright ones.”

I recommend that you read Ms. Khouw’s full paper, The Meaning of Color for Gender

Age Differences

Even within cultural and gender groups, response to color can shift within age groups. Younger children will tend to prefer more active, engaging colors than adults. Dull, greyish or black and white shades appear too business-like and formal. If you take the time to look at childrens TV shows, magazines, and Internet sites, you can get a good idea of what colors attract children.

Jennifer Kyrnin, from webdesign.about.com says that “Young children tend to prefer brighter, more solid colors, while adults tend to prefer more subdued colors. If you’re writing to an audience of children and you’re using muted pastels and shades of grey, their parents might like it, but the kids will be long gone before the page finishes loading.” She also discusses differences in color significance within economic classes and over time through trends.

As modern communicators, color certainly enhances those messages that appeared somewhat dull in the black and white era not too many years ago. Color can bring an email or website to life. However, if you don’t consider the various cultural, gender and age interpretations, color can also create a reaction to your message that may be counterproductive and undesired.

So the next time you design an HTML template, send an email newsletter or design a landing page on your website, give some thought to the colors you use, and don’t be afraid to experiment, using the research available here as a guide. ]]> http://blog.group-mail.com/2011/08/14/the-psychology-and-meaning-of-color-in-email-and-websites/feed/ 5 http://blog.group-mail.com/2011/08/06/groupmail-email-template-design-inspiration-from-gregoryinc/ http://blog.group-mail.com/2011/08/06/groupmail-email-template-design-inspiration-from-gregoryinc/#comments Sat, 06 Aug 2011 03:20:29 +0000 Tom O'Leary http://blog.group-mail.com/?p=1462 I love seeing the awesome HTML email templates that our customers create. They keep getting better and better. I found this one  floating around on Twitter, posted by @GregoryInc.

…and if you need any vinyl, it seems like you can pick up some good deals from the good folks at Gregory Inc. while you are inquiring about their HTML design. Today only folks! But, I’m sure if you said you were a fellow GroupMail customer, they’d cut you some slack!

I discovered today that Gregory Inc. has been in business for over 55 years! They must be doing something right.

Click here to find out which GroupMail Edition is best for you.

Whenever I help a customer to get started with GroupMail, I usually ask them to add my email address to a test group so they can test deliverability and email formatting in my inbox. I love seeing the hot mail designs that our customers come up with.

Here is the latest hot mail I received from a new customer, GenerationXMiami.com

I seriously need to organize a trip down to Miami and catch some of that carnival spirit!

Remember to download our recently added St. Patrick’s Day email templates, compliments of our own Ryan Doe!

…oh, almost forgot the toast!

May your email be opened with glee
May your text be read with delight
May your forms be completed
And your surveys well treated
So your sales keep you busy all night