Ros de Vries
Community manager, email mktg nerd, hipster.
Campaign Monitor Blog- @yarrcat on Twitter
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Posts
- Jan 22, 12
We've posted a few general tips on how to avoid looking like a phisher, but this one is quite specific to senders using a @gmail.com or Google Apps-managed "From: address"in their campaigns. Recently, emails with @gmail.com From: addresses which did not send from a Gmail mail server have been flagged with the following warning in the inbox:
"If you're sending Gmail messages from anywhere other than Gmail itself, they may look like phishing attempts."
-'Stop Looking Like a Phisher in Gmail', LifehackerSoon after a customer mentioned seeing one of these scary messages, Lifehacker posted an example, explanation and fixes in their post, 'Stop Looking Like a Phisher in Gmail'. While this information is relevant when sending from a regular email client, there's only really one way to avoid these warnings when sending from an email marketing service like Campaign Monitor. That is, use an address other than an @gmail.com address. Or any webmail address, for that matter.
Walk away from webmail addresses
This warning is only one example of how webmail clients are trying to protect their customers from spam and web threats. After all, phishers very commonly use fake From: addresses / spoof mail headers to masquerade as legitimate senders. Gmail has good reason to look dimly upon email that's labelled as coming from them, but isn't being sent from their own servers.
We encourage our customers to avoid using a webmail address as their From: email address. Undoubtedly they will trigger warnings like this and potentially, deliverability issues in the future. Instead, we highly recommend purchasing a domain name from a registrar like Namecheap and setting up a you@yournewdomain.com -style email address. It's still okay to have this domain forward inbound mail to a webmail address, or alternately, you can use Google Apps to send and manage email from this domain directly. Note that Google Apps domains have also been known to throw similar warnings - to avoid this, it's a good idea to setup email authentication, which we'll go through in the next bit.
Don't forget to set up email authentication
Finally, we'd like to remind one and all to authenticate their sending domain in their accounts, especially when using Google Apps to manage their email. In essence:
"All the large ISPs are using email authentication as an important layer in their spam fighting arsenal. By setting up this system as an authenticated sender, you can instantly bypass certain filters, giving your campaigns a better chance of arriving in the destination inbox... Many ISP's like Yahoo! and Hotmail will flag your email as authenticated, which helps to build trust between you and your subscribers and improves the chances of your emails being opened."
It only takes a few minutes for you, or your technical team to setup email authentication, but ensuring that your subscribers and ISP's know that your campaigns are definitely from you is well worth the effort.
Finally, If you have any questions about email authentication, get in touch with our team - we're here to make sure your campaigns not only look good, but make it into as many inboxes as possible, too.
- Jan 12, 12
I know what you're thinking - just as we're coming to grips with optimizing our email newsletters for mobile, suddenly we have tablets like the iPad and Kindle Fire to make things interesting again. So here's the good and the bad news. The good: if you've already created a responsive design for the iPhone, then adapting this for the iPad and similar devices is dead easy. The bad: it still requires extra testing, coding and sooner-or-later, it's going to be what all your clients are asking for.
Before we provide any solid answers on whether or not we should all be optimizing our email campaigns for tablet devices, lets look at their uptake and some basic techniques for adapting your design for small, yet not-so-small screens.
Why optimize for tablet devices?
The skinny is that tablet devices are getting popular. I'm sure you know of more than a few people who begged for Kindle Fires for Christmas, then got slipped a Motorola Xoom by Santa instead. Or snapped up an iPad 2 the moment they were launched. Our friends at Return Path collected the hard numbers in a recent report, citing:
"In our last study we reported a 15% increase in iPad use relative to iPhone use... What we find is that the use of iPads has exploded – with an increase of 73% in email views on iPad devices between April and September of 2011. Email views on the iPad jumped by 12% between March... and April, then continued the steady climb upward."
- 'Mobile, Webmail, Desktops: Where Are We Viewing Email Now?', Return Path, 2011In June 2011, we found that iPad usage accounted for almost 15% of opens tracked on mobile devices and 3% of email opens overall. Given Return Path's recent findings and our own observations, this is rapidly growing and potentially cannibalizing iPhone market share while it's at it. We'll be sure to provide usage stats for other tablet devices as they come to hand, so watch this space.
Adapting mobile code for slightly larger screens
As mentioned earlier, if you're already in the habit of optimizing your campaigns for mobile screens (or have exported a template from our template builder), then you've already done most of the legwork. What's remains is the addition of a slightly different
@mediaquery, targeting the display dimensions of tablet devices. Here's a typical@mediaquery for mobile devices, followed by the adapted equivalent for the Kindle Fire, iPad and Xoom:<style type="text/css">
/* iPhone, Android and other smartphones */
@media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) { table[class=container] { width: 320px; /* width of iPhone in portrait orientation */ } }
/* iPad, Kindle Fire and Xoom */
@media only screen and (min-device-width: 590px) and (max-device-width: 1280px){ table[class=container] { width: 768px; /* width of iPad in portrait orientation, can also try width: 100%; */ } }
</style>The good team at Email on Acid have a brilliant summary of all the different
@mediaquery combos you can use to target specific tablet devices (and orientations), however for the sake of brevity and maintenance, it's probably worth focusing on 2 generic ones like in the sample above.If the above is a bit of a mystery, I highly recommend reading our 'Mobile Email Design in Practice' post, as well as creating and exporting a template from our template builder to see how it all clicks under the hood.
So, should I rejig my email design for tablet devices?
Ultimately, this decision should be made by consulting the email client usage report in your Campaign Monitor account. For example, 4.9% of all opens for our recent December newsletter originated from an iPad. In March (when the iPad 2 launched), this figure was 2.7%. In 9 months, the iPad's share of opens has nearly doubled. That indicates to us that even if the iPad is a minor player in the email client scene at present, it's probably not going to remain that way for good. Either way, having the know-how when it comes to optimizing your email campaigns for tablet devices is going to become an increasingly sought-after skill in an email designer's stable, so it makes good sense to test out these techniques now, before your clients force you to.
Do you optimize your designs specifically for tablet devices? Do you have any great tips? Let us know in the comments below.
- Jan 08, 12
You know what I love about the beginning of a new year? Things like resolving to try something new, the sense of turning a new leaf and the desire to start something fresh. So I thought we'd round-up a couple of our favorite emails around the theme of 'new beginnings' - let it be the launch of a new site, product, or moving to a new space. Lets get started.
Cabedge: Putting personality into it
A few months ago, our great friends at Cabedge launched a radically new company site. So radical, that they decided to send this proactive campaign in anticipation of what their subscribers would say. They're a funny gang and know it - the 'Top 5 beefs' does as much in the way of sharing their identity and brand of humor as inducing people to visit their site. Ten points for personality, a lovely layout and nice use of type, I say.
Alertful for Business: Graceful in all conditions
Talking about uplifting, here's a great example of a launch email that sure may look detailed, but comes back down to earth gracefully when images are blocked. The use of 'backup' calls to action (note the red 'Click here to try the service for free') is a technique we don't see enough of - but undoubtedly does its part in pushing response rates sky-high. Great work by the Email Spring team!
Flexibits: Focused on one task
When it comes to email designs, we've always said, 'keep it simple'. The Flexibits campaign designed by Komodo Media is a perfect example of this in practice, with its easy-to-skim message and a single call to action ('Grab a Free Trial!'). There's absolutely no visual clutter, or confusion as to what the email recipient should do after receiving the message - which I'm sure was their goal to begin with.
Different Projects: Picture this
Now, I know what we say about images in email (ie. be careful, they often get blocked), but this campaign by Different Projects has added some really eye-catching ones to great effect. The text-boxes tacked on top of the illustrations give visual depth to the design. As they contain actual text, won't disappear when images are turned off.
All around, a great way to announce a move, while wowing clients with a little creative flair.
Virb: Getting the message across
Finally, I wanted to showcase a corporate-style campaign. One that carefully balances copy with visual elements to communicate detailed information. If only to prove that such a thing exists. Duly, I came across this email announcement by Virb, which has a serious side, but doesn't forget to have a little fun while it's at it.
In appearance, it's totally austere - all clean lines and shades of business-like blue. But the text is full of personality, easy-to-read and is complimented by images of their upcoming product. It's almost the opposite of what many of us imagine a corporate email to contain: stodgy layouts, stock photography and endless columns of teeny-tiny text.
Hopefully you've enjoyed our brief round-up. If there are any particular themes you would like to see us cover (eg. emails for hotels, charities etc), let us know - we'd be happy to shine the light on some great examples for you.
- Jan 03, 12
I thought we’d kick off what should be a particularly fruitful new year by introducing a useful integration - Digital Delivery App. For those planning to sell digital content like eBooks, a Louis CK-style video or software, or paid subscriptions, this is a full-featured and remarkably easy-to-use service at a modest price. With Campaign Monitor integration built-in, this app can automatically add email addresses of paying customers to a subscriber list, which is ideal if you’re planning to send post-purchase autoresponder emails, notifications and product-related campaigns.
What’s better, the Digital Delivery App team offer fairly comprehensive support, via both their site and email. We took a moment to set up an account, upload products and get both Campaign Monitor and PayPal integration happening. Now, if only we really had something fancy to sell...
Add a 'Buy Now' button to your site in 10 minutes
The loveliness of Digital Delivery App is that it asks for so little, yet gives so much in return. Upon creating an account (free for the first 30 days), you are run through initial setup process that sorts out the fundamentals of selling content online - namely, selecting a payment gateway and adding something to sell. The fastest way to get up and running is to have a PayPal, Google Checkout, AlertPay or Stripe account already linked to the email address you signed up with... And of course, to have that ‘something’ either ready to upload, or already hosted somewhere.
What we found particularly generous is that the app offers to host your sellable digital content. Once you upload your files to the app, simply take the ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Add to Cart’ button code it generates for each product and add it to an existing site. It even generates license keys to prevent software products from being looted.
Alternately, you can host everything yourself and only use Digital Delivery App to handle the transaction side of things.
Once you’ve gotten to this point in the setup process, you probably would have noticed how all-encompassing the app is. It unfurls like a flower as you click on top-level options, revealing the facility to offer discount codes, create referral codes, send post-purchase order emails, sell packages of products and view detailed reports. There’s even an API and web interface for webhooks. While Digital Delivery App shares much in common with the big-name shopping cart and e-commerce apps out there, it does so without feeling bloated, or requiring you to install anything on your end.
Automate your post-purchase email marketing
Digital Delivery App scratches two little itches that we’ve had for a while now, being the sending of transactional email and pushing email addresses from checkout to subscriber list. As mentioned earlier, the app handles the sending of customizable, plain-text order emails, with a link to the digital item the customer just purchased. As a template already exists in Digital Delivery App for this, the app will automatically start sending these personalized emails from the very first order.
Secondly, once you’ve set up Campaign Monitor integration, you can count on Digital Delivery App to add the email addresses of new customers to an existing subscriber list in your account. All you need is your account’s API key and a List ID.
As a result, you can start sending a series of autoresponders upon purchase - for instance, polling new customers for feedback - or simply add email addresses to a ‘Paying customers’ list to receive relevant updates (taking into account permission, of course). Digital Delivery App also offers subscription-based transactions, meaning that you can offer paid newsletter subscriptions, access to exclusive tutorials or similar paywalled content for a recurring fee.
No win, no fee
Just like those legal practices you see on late-night TV, Digital Delivery App doesn't charge unless you make a sale during the monthly billing cycle. So if you take a few months off selling things, you don't have to cancel your account. All accounts come with a 30 day free trial (during which you don't have to commit your credit card/PayPal details), after which your plan comes into effect. With monthly plans starting from $9 USD per month, it's not exactly a wallet-burner, either.
After spending a few entertaining moments setting up a faux store for Minecraft maps, it was fairly clear to us that this will be a useful integration to customers who would like to offer paid content without having to use a fully-blown eCommerce platform. If this sounds like you, swing on over to their site, take a tour and give it a try. After all, good content sells - just ask Louis CK.
- Dec 28, 11
As you (and probably your wallet) know, this is the season for giving, as well as reflecting. So while the tinsel gets taken down for yet another year at Campaign Monitor -sponsored Xmas events like WebBlast Sydney, lets look at some of the events we've supported via our Giving Back Program and hopefully, get you involved in the year ahead.
Our Giving Back Program has supported dozens of web design and development events for close to three years now, plus offered free accounts to select email senders. So if you're running an event in the new year that you think could benefit from pizza, beer, a tweet-out and free email credits on us, it's a great time to get in touch.
What kind of events do you support?
Since our first event in 2009, Campaign Monitor have powered our email newsletters and helped cover our running costs. We don't advertise, so it's only through word-of-mouth and email that we can spread the news. We wouldn't be able to run Ignite Sydney without their support.
- Stephen Lead, Ignite SydneyOur Giving Back Program is all about returning the favor to the web designers and developers who have stood by us since Campaign Monitor's humble beginnings back in 2004. Since the Program's launch, we've had the pleasure of getting behind events that resonate with us and our customers, including Semi-Permanent and both Refresh and Ignite internationally. We even power newsletters for SXSW... And attend!
That said, you don't have to run a high-profile conference to qualify - smaller design-focused gigs like BAMMD and user groups like EEUK very regularly get a hat-tip from us.
How can I get involved?
If your event could benefit from a free Campaign Monitor account, a modest bar tab (like our friends at the Portsmouth Freelancers Meet, pictured) or email credits as a door prize, let us know and we'll be sure to give it a look. We're especially keen to visit your website and get the lowdown on previous events, so be sure to pass on those details, too.
Finally, a huge thanks to everyone who has invited us to support their gathering, or attended an event that we sponsored this year. As the Giving Back Program continues to gain momentum, we're looking forward to enlivening more design nights, dishing out more pizza and giving more to people like you.
We're keen to explore other meaningful ways we can give back to the web community, so if you have a suggestion as to how we can make a positive impact on what you do, from providing more design resources, to getting the word out about your design meetup, pop us a line, or let us know in the comments below. All of us here are looking forward to making 2012 an awesome one for you and your clients!
- Dec 19, 11
With only a few days to go before Christmas, I suspect a few of you are scrambling to get your campaigns out before we all tune out for the holidays. So we've collected some of our favorite seasonal campaigns and ideas in a last-minute holiday email round-up, to get you fired up during this last sprint. After all, it's not too late to create and send your email greetings, especially when using our template builder!
But that's not all - we've also got an easy-to-use 'Season's Greetings' email template, free to use and tweak. Plus, if you send a holiday-themed campaign in December, you will also go into the running to win our annual holiday email competition, so hop in your sleigh and go!
Nine inspiring Christmas email designs by our customers
From animated GIFs to pixel art, here are some of our old and new favorite Christmas email designs, including a template builder creation by Tangelo, tees by Threadless and image-free pixel art by Style Campaign. Click to view these campaigns:
Thinking it may be too late to send your own design? Up next, we have an email template that you can load up in your account to share the love.
Send a sprinkle of snow with our holiday email template
Last week, we added a charming 'Seasons Greetings' design to our collection of 100+ free email templates. Featuring pure CSS animation and rock solid email client support, it's great for sharing a sprinkle of holiday cheer!
Even if you caught it back then, it's worth getting the refreshed version for the recent updates, including smoother snow in Chrome and snow in Firefox. With hardly a day to lose before Christmas, it's time to get started on your holiday campaign!
Finally, our holiday email competition for 2011
As is our tradition at this time of year, we've got a sack-load of goodies to give to our customers in our annual holiday email design competition. One lucky winner will receive a:
- Kindle Fire *
- FitBit Ultra, or ~ $100 to back the Kickstarter project of their choice
- 50,000 email credits
* For non-US customers, we can arrange an alternative prize
In addition, 3 runners up will receive a prize of 10,000 email credits each. That's a lot of free emails to kick off 2012!
How to
enterwinTo go into the running, simply send a holiday-themed campaign during December - if you have already, then you're in it to win it! Our team will be sifting through and shortlisting Christmas campaigns as part of their regular review process, then selecting our winners in early 2012. If you've got an outstanding campaign that you think should make the cut, you're welcome to send us a link, too!
Finally, we're not looking for Hallmark card tackiness, just technically and visually awesome HTML emails. If your email campaign displays nicely across the major email clients, has a few mobile optimizations and is an actual email design, not an awkwardly resized website, then there's a great chance that it will be shortlisted. Image-only emails may look nice at first glance, but aren't likely be chosen by the guys and gals here.
Now we've got you inspired, templated up and motivated, it's time for you to crank out those end-of-year campaigns - good luck and happy sending!
- Dec 15, 11
When optimizing HTML email for mobile, it's really easy to get overwhelmed by the CSS trickery and technical stuff and simply put it all in the too-hard basket. But the truth is that some of the most effective techniques are also fairly simple - such as adding a good preheader to your campaign.
A preheader (otherwise known as a 'Johnson Box', haw haw) is the the short summary text that follows the subject line when an email is viewed in the inbox. Many mobile, desktop and web email clients provide them to tip you off on what the email contains, before you open it. Here's an example in Gmail:
Generally this line of text (in this case, 'Wishing you a safe and merry holiday season!') is borrowed from the first text found in the email campaign. On mobile clients in particular, the preheader can mean the difference between someone opening your email and archiving it - so you generally want it to be something meaningful. Like a summary of your offer, not your campaign's webversion message or the remnants of social sharing links. Because believe it or not, they work. From our friend, Elliott Ross:
"In my experience we’ve implemented it (preheaders) on a number of campaigns and it’s raised open rates, click thrus and reduced spam complaints."
- "The Perfect Email Preheader/Johnson Box", Email Design ReviewA lot of designers make their preheaders very visible by adding a short summary to the very top of their designs, but personally, I like to hide my preheaders and forget about them altogether. Lets go through the nitty gritty of how to do this.
Adding a preheader to an email campaign
The first thing to ask is if you have to worry about a preheader at all. For instance, if your email already cuts to the chase and the first text that appears does a good job of summarizing what's to follow, then you may not have to add one. But for the rest of us, a little bit of text just after the
<body>tag in your HTML email code usually suffices:<body><span>Wishing you a safe and merry holiday season!</span>...If you're like many senders that add a nice visible summary, you can stop here and style it up all you like. But as I mentioned earlier, I prefer to hide mine:
<!-- Hiding the preheader -->
<style type="text/css">
span.preheader { display: none !important; }
</style>
</head>
<body><span class="preheader">Wishing you a safe and merry holiday season!</span>...The above still displays in Lotus Notes - if this is an issue, try adding
font-size:1px;to the.preheaderstyles, and/or using the same color for both the text and background.Automatically adding a meaningful preheader with our email editor
The major downsides to using the above preheader technique are:
- It's easy to forget to update the preheader text
- When using templates, customizing the preheader for each campaign is a lot of hassle
Cool customer Mark Shingleton came up with an ingenious way to ensure the preheader in his campaigns looks good each time - adding a table of contents to the top using our template tag language:
Not everyone can make the design decision to place a table of contents at the top of their campaigns, however if you or your clients are using the email editor to build campaigns, you can use the text that is automatically generated by a combination of
repeatertitle="true"on headings and<tableofcontents>in our template language to fill the<span>tags we were using earlier:<style type="text/css">
span.preheader { display: none !important; }
</style>
</head>
<body><span class="preheader"><tableofcontents><repeatertitle></repeatertitle> | </tableofcontents></span>...
<repeater>
<layout label="Article">
<singleline label="Header" repeatertitle="true">Your header here</singleline>...
</layout>
</repeater> ...What you'll end up with is a preheader consisting of headings from the articles in your email campaign (pictured).
The beauty of this is that it's totally set-and-forget - your clients can take a template and add articles in the email editor, while being totally oblivious to the whole preheader thing. But the downside is that you can only add one table of contents to your campaign (sorry!), so you either feature one in your design, or use it for the preheader.
Update: It turns out that we posted about an alternative method for adding preheaders - using the alt attribute in a 1x1px image - back in 2006. You can't use this method to autofill the preheader with template tags, but if you're manually adding one, check it out.
Now, I'd love to know how you use preheaders - are they important to you? Do you have a particular technique that you use in your email campaigns and templates? Let us know in the comments below.
- Dec 12, 11
This year, we felt like starting a new holiday tradition - creating an email template for our customers that's as robust as it is lovely. To kick things off, Matt Farag and myself joined forces to roll both the most recent and most enduring email design techniques into a mobile-optimized newsletter, ready for use in our email editor. Hopefully you'll find it to be as joyful to customize, as it is for your subscribers to receive.
Cheerful in (almost) any email client
To do justice to Matt's sublime design, it was necessary to ensure that it looked as consistent as possible across the most popular email clients. As many designers can appreciate, this involves countless rounds of tweaks, testing, more tweaks and well, table cells. Without rattling on too much about it, here's what our final product looks like in the devil's own email client, Outlook '07:
And here, my friends, is what it looks like in Apple Mail:
Wait, hold on a moment, is that... Snow?
Don't adjust your monitor - the header is smoothly animated with semi-randomized snow in WebKit email clients, thanks to a dusting of CSS animation. I used Estelle Weyl's 'Making it snow...' presentation as a starting point, then handed the template to Matt, who transformed it into something more subtle and stopped it from sprinkling all over the text. The animation was created using pure CSS and thanks to the use of keyframes, displays no visual artifacts in non-WebKit email clients. So when viewed on the iPhone, in Apple Mail, or when the webversion is opened in the Safari, Firefox or Google Chrome browsers, your subscribers will enjoy a little taste of the northern winter.
We'll cover CSS animation in email in an upcoming post, so watch this blog for more.
Finally, we get a lot of questions about whether @media queries work in Gmail on Android phones and the answer is sadly, no - like web Gmail, it has a Christmas list of limitations. The good news is this one-column design should still be easy to navigate in Gmail, but won't display the mobile-optimized bells and whistles.
As customizable as it is forgiving
The most common feedback we receive in regards to our other free templates is that there should be more options for editing header images and footer text. So we've made it possible to change the 'Hello and Seasons Greetings!' message, swap out the logo and well, pretty much edit any text, all from within the email editor. We've even added useful descriptions to the editable images so you know the maximum width that images can be, keeping in mind that the app will resize images that exceed these widths anyway.
Note that the one thing you can't do in the editor is change the default 'Wishing you a safe and merry holiday season!' preheader, however this can be updated in the code.
To really fill your stocking, we've also included the original PSD file so you can edit and re-export parts of the design as you see fit.
Learn timely email techniques for 2012
Despite reviewing and and debugging HTML email code on a daily basis, its been a while since I've been built and tested an email template from the ground up. This process ran across a few afternoons and provided a great opportunity to brush up on email theory and techniques like which CSS3 properties can be used reliably, getting background images to display in Outlook '07/'10 and using @media queries for mobile display. Hopefully it will prove to be a solid starting point for future campaigns - hey, you may even jump into the code and learn a new technique or hack along the way, too!
Here's the template, free for you to download and modify - it's by no means perfect and I'm sure you will pass on lots of ideas as to how it can be improved. Rest assured that it's white-label and we don't need a plug in any shape or form if you do use it - for you to celebrate the silly season with us is enough.
Download the holiday email template and PSD (zip file, 8.4Mb)
All of us here are looking forward to seeing your Christmas creations, so pop us a comment below if you have something you'd like to share. Have a happy holiday ahead!
- Dec 06, 11
Email send frequency may seem like a no-brainer if you've only got one regular newsletter. But what is it to your subscribers when you're sending a weekly newsletter, flash sales and regular product announcements in between?
I got thinking about this while reading VentureBeat's post on why Amazon have been unsubscribing inactive subscribers from AmazonLocal, their daily deals list. The reason:
"the Seattle-based retailer has relationships going back more than a decade with some consumers. Continuing to send unwanted emails would hurt that relationship."
Or as I read it: Amazon has determined that email fatigue may not just be affecting one list, but all their lists, if not their brand overall.
The article goes on reinforce a tricky fact - one of the top reasons for unsubscribing is that emails are being received too frequently from a particular sender. Amazon may have seen a lack of interest in their daily AmazonLocal emails as being an email fatigue warning sign and perhaps even a threat to their potentially more profitable (and relevant) email recommendations, launch announcements and updates.
Of course, this move goes both ways. When senders proactively remove inactive subscribers from their lists, it can create a lot of confusion for folks who may be happily receiving the emails, but rarely feel the need to respond. It may be because the email content doesn't contain a strong call to action, doesn't invite the recipient to click through, or perhaps it's just a matter of them waiting for the 'right offer' to come along. For these reasons, it's worth exploring alternate ways to combat email fatigue, aside from downsizing your lists.
What to prescribe before you unsubscribe
The first thing that comes to mind when faced with a scenario like this is running a re-engagement campaign. The message can be something really simple, like: "We see you haven't been getting into our daily deals, so use this link if you would like to stop receiving them". It's also a great opportunity to get feedback from your subscribers and perhaps even offer an incentive to for them to get active again. Fatigue is an issue that all senders have to approach strategically at some point in time, so it's also worth considering now what you can do about it. For example:
- Is it worth consolidating your various newsletters and announcements, say by sending consistently once a fortnight, instead of whenever something exciting happens?
- Are you giving your subscribers what they want, with relevant content and enticing offers?
- How strong is your call to action? How can you improve it?
- Are there alternative channels you can use to effectively communicate your message (eg. social media)?
... and the list continues. There are very good reasons to keep your lists and campaigns responsive, especially as email clients like Gmail are using prior engagement to determine how important an email is.
Overall, the most important action item is to do like Amazon and take stock of how your subscriber lists are affecting your relationship with your customers... And each other. What happens after doesn't have to be as drastic as wiping out all your inactive subscribers - small steps like changing your frequency can go a long way when outpacing email fatigue.
- Nov 29, 11
When throwing the spotlight on an awesome customer like Eugene Tan, it's hard to imagine that we're somehow brightening his already luminous position in Australia's photography and surf communities.
As a chronicler of all things Bondi Beach and beyond for Aquabumps, he's developed a following both locally and abroad - boosted by the Aquabumps gallery, site and in no small part, a near-daily email newsletter.
We shared a few moments with our favorite surf dude (sorry, Dave and Ben) to find out how he's used email to get his wickedly good photos into the wild, plus pass on some of the marketing lessons he's received along the way.
Hi Uge, many of our long-haul customers are creatives like yourself - what is it about email marketing that you and presumably others find so valuable?
"Everyone is on email. It just makes sense to use it as a delivery platform."
Using email is a great way to push out your photography. I like the fact that I push my photos, rather than put them up on website and pray for people to visit – I have the control. People love looking at images... Beach images even more so. Email is simply a great platform to pack a little 30 second beach escape into busy working inboxes, especially now that most email clients can display HTML emails.
Oh, via email you just have access to so many people – everyone is on email. It just makes sense to use it as a delivery platform.
Aquabumps' email newsletters are delivered pretty much every weekday, but your subscribers never seem to lose their interest in them. How do you keep your readers wanting more?
"Our open rates are very high as we are 95% content and go easy on the sell."
We send 5 newsletters per week – Monday to Friday. Our open rates are very high as we are 95% content and go easy on the sell. You need to build trust with your audience by just showing stuff they want to see or read about. Pick a niche too, preferably something you are very passionate about. Mine is the beach.
We noticed that two of your recent campaigns linked back to surf videos via an image of a video player - how did this affect response?
"Click-through rates were huge on the campaigns where I linked back to my videos"
Video is new to me, even after many years of talking about it. So many photographers are switching over to the 'dark side' since the inception of the DSLR HD video capabilities. Personally, I’ve found video to be a compelling way to engage my audience - I broadcast escapism and as you can imagine, video is a great way of taking my viewers to another place... Outside the office cubicle, anyway.
Click-through rates were huge on the campaigns where I linked back to my videos - the best they’ve been in a long time. Shame we can’t play video in the inbox, though (Note: In some instances you can play video in the inbox - view our latest results).
Finally, what is your advice to other folks who are considering, or have just started using email marketing to promote their work?
Use Campaign Monitor! Far out their tools are good, intuitive and basically just work – so you can spend more time creating content... They didn’t ask me to say that!
Many thanks to Uge for taking the time to answer our questions. To see his surf photography and sign up for the newsletter, visit the Aquabumps site.
- Nov 24, 11
Looking for a sweet way to personalize your email campaigns? Our friends at Motobias have very cleverly applied themselves to the task with Daisy, a dynamic image generator that pulls personalization data from your subscriber list and uses it to generate unique images for each of your subscribers. The results are really eye-catching campaigns and great opportunities for designers to get creative with their own custom images.
While it’s still early days for Daisy, designers are welcome to generate images for their live email campaigns, for free. As any custom field can be used when personalizing an image using Daisy, its applications go beyond the gimmicky. For example, you can use it to generate personalized tickets to an event using ‘Name’ and ‘Ticket number’ custom fields in your subscriber list. In a similar manner, you can also create truly bespoke reminders and email invitations. Before we launch into the details, here’s an overview:Powerful personalization for designers
If you’re a confident Photoshop user, then you’ll find that creating an image for use with Daisy is a snap. Simply create a PSD featuring an editable text layer and enter the name of your custom field (pictured).
You can convert this text layer into a smart object to apply effects like blur - Daisy will still be able to detect it as long as it remains editable.
With your masterpiece ready and at hand, it’s time to upload your PSD file to Daisy. Upon import, you will be issued an AppID (like an API key), which you will need to access your images. You’ll also get a chance to verify that your text layers have been detected.
At this point, it’s time to use your newly-minted AppID, plus Campaign Monitor API key and Client ID to create magic. Swing over to Daisy’s Campaign Monitor page and go through the prompts to create a new custom field in your Campaign Monitor account and a unique image for each subscriber in a list. The latter may take some time if you’ve got a large subscriber list, so Daisy helpfully sends you an email once this is complete.
Once your images are ready, you can go to your subscriber list and subscriber snapshot to see the new custom field you created earlier. For each subscriber, this custom field includes a URL which, as you’ve probably guessed, you’ll use to source your images.
Take note that this new custom field will be visible in your preference center by default - you can hide it in ‘Manage custom fields’ in your subscriber list.
From here, it’s all fairly straightforward. In the email above, we simply added
<img src=”[chocolate-pic]”>to our HTML email code and sent a personalized email test. You can also set a fallback image URL, pointing to a non-personalized image - recommended, if you plan on sharing your campaigns.Pretty as a Daisy?
To be honest, the Daisy interface may not be the prettiest in its ‘Experimental’ state, but it’s thorough, stable and full of possibility. Toying around with your own images brings a renewed wonderment towards email marketing - “How can I make my campaigns more exciting? Will my subscribers react to personalized campaigns?” - which I’m sure you’ll feel the moment you start sending wedding invitations for “
*|firstname|*♥ Justin Bieber” to your entire office. Either that, or you’ll be mobbed and killed quickly.Not wanting to stop there, Motobias have also rolled out a well-documented API for dynamically generating images for both email and the web.
Down the track, Daisy will probably get rolled into their Visage service. But in the interim, try it for free and if you have any feedback, get in touch with the Daisy team. They’re keen to hear how they can make it even awesomer for designers… And Justin Bieber fans.
- Nov 21, 11
A few weeks ago, one of our customers wrote in to ask what the maximum file size is for an HTML email. Keeping in mind how expensive data can be on mobile devices, the obvious response would be, "as small as possible". But for a moment, we took pause to wonder - is there really a set limit, after which email clients simply spit the dummy?
Thanks to Michelle Klann at Email on Acid, we've got an answer - 102kb. In a recent blog post on email size, she explains:
'If your email exceeds 102K, Gmail will display the first 102K and then it will clip off the remainder with a few different variations depending on the device.'
Listed are the consequences for exceeding this limit in Gmail, the worst case being:
"(after reaching 102k) the mobile version of Gmail for the iPad does not appear to offer any links for viewing the entire message, instead the email is simply cut off."
Thankfully, images do not count towards this total - just the initially-downloaded HTML content. Of course, an email would have to be pretty long (or code heavy) to clock in at 102kb - which is a usability challenge in itself.
The bottom line is that if your HTML file size is nearing 102kb, your email is too long. Think about how to better refine the email message and/or placing your content on a landing page for easy reading in the browser instead.
- Nov 16, 11
If you or your clients administer company Facebook pages, today’s a happy day. We’re pleased to finally reveal our new Facebook app for Campaign Monitor subscribe forms, in white-label and Campaign Monitor-branded flavors. Both make it possible to add a subscribe form for an existing Campaign Monitor list to a Facebook page. If you administer multiple pages, you can add one subscribe form per page.
The subscribe form apps support custom fields and can be managed using designer and client login credentials alike. While they’re fairly simple, we’ve made it possible to change the introductory text, subscribe confirmation message and tab name on your page’s sidebar.
Setting up either the Campaign Monitor or white-label app for your Facebook page takes less than 2 minutes. All you need is your Campaign Monitor account login details and a subscriber list. You can see it in action on our Campaign Monitor Facebook page.
Yes, there’s a white-label version, too!
As we figured that a lot of our designer friends would be keen to offer this subscribe form app to their clients, we’ve created a fully white-label version. It works just like its’ branded counterpart, but with no mention of Campaign Monitor. High five!
Issues with adding the app in IE8: Due to a weirdo browser issue, some customers haven’t been able to add the app to their Facebook pages when using the Internet Explorer 8 browser. Please try using another browser for now and hopefully we’ll have this sorted soon. Once either app is added, it’s totally fine to use in IE8.
Making changes to the app
As mentioned earlier, it’s possible to change the introductory text and subscribe confirmation message. In addition, you can change the client/list the form is linked to in an account. To do so after you’ve initially setup the app, go to your Facebook page, then click the ‘Edit page’ button. On the next page, click ‘Apps’ in the sidebar, then under ‘Campaign Monitor Subscribe Form’ (or ‘Subscribe Form’), click ‘Go to application’. You can then go through the setup process again.
To change the default ‘Subscribe to Newsletter’ tab name on your page’s sidebar, go through the steps above, but instead of clicking ‘Go to application’, click ‘Edit settings’. In the ‘Custom tab name’ field, add a new name.
To remove the app, go to your Facebook page, then click the ‘Edit page’ button. On the next page, click ‘Apps’ in the sidebar, then click the ‘X’ alongside ‘Campaign Monitor Subscribe Form’ (or ‘Subscribe Form’). Then, go to Account Settings in your Facebook account (pictured), click ‘Apps’ in the sidebar and click the ‘X’ next to the app again. All Campaign Monitor account data stored in the app and forms will be deleted and most certainly won’t be stored by Facebook. If you re-add the app, you will be asked to login and create your forms from scratch.
At present, only the page admin who added the app can make changes to a subscribe form (apart from deleting it). If you would like another admin to take control, then you will have to remove the app and all forms first, as per above. Same goes for using the app with another Campaign Monitor account.
A huge thanks to everyone who requested this app, added their suggestions and egged us on during its development - we’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for future updates! Also, extraordinary thanks to James Dennes for bringing it across the line while skateboarding in Cambodia (no kidding), plus Matt Farag and Buzz Usborne for
putting Facebook to shamethe sweet design. All of us hope you’ll enjoy using the Facebook app as much as we have on our Facebook page! - Nov 14, 11
So, what makes a perfect, mobile-optimized email campaign? Is it using a massive
@mediaquery to rework your layout? Clever image re-sizing? Some new device hack?When getting caught up in the code, it's really easy to forget that good mobile email design means providing a great experience for recipients. A lot of this flows from usability decisions like ensuring that links are large and spaced out enough to be tapped by big fingers, or the call to action is immediately obvious and requires no scrolling to see.
Our friends at Litmus summarized these mobile design guidelines and more in their recent post on the 'Anatomy of a Perfect Mobile Email', featuring an infographic that you can cherish for all time. Also listed are common mobile email pitfalls like choosing a color palette with poor contrast - admittedly a trap that we all fall into from time to time.
What really grabbed us by the coattails was how Litmus put their lessons into practice with this especially fetching email campaign.
We usually pop top-notch email newsletters into our email design gallery. This time however, we really wanted to highlight how they translated the aesthetics of their infographic into email form, while never relying too heavily on images to do so. The code is definitely worth a look, as instead of using a
@mediaquery, they've paired a simple, one-column layout with large fonts to produce a design that is near-bulletproof on any device. At the top of the email, the "Email client market share and mobile design infographs" summary text also ensures that the email's purpose is made clear in Gmail's inbox, on the iPhone and on other mobile clients.Of course, if you're after a quick and code-less way to optimize your email campaigns for mobile, give our template builder a try. Come on, I had to sneak in a cheeky plug!
A huge thanks to Litmus for sharing their expertise. If you're into mobile email design, we recommend visiting the Litmus blog, which is a goldmine of clever nuggets like these.
- Nov 08, 11
If you've been following the blog, you've probably guessed that we've been a pretty busy bunch. Since the launch of our template editor and recently, the template builder, we've had loads of excellent feedback come in with the tide, which we've been responding to with a steady flow of improvements to the app.
In our recent update, we've made a few usability improvements to the template editor. Most of these are so subtle that you probably won't notice them, but in a way, that's the point. For starters, we removed the distraction of having the sidebar slide in and out of view when editing the various parts of a template. Instead, we've made it sticky and constantly present. You didn't notice this, because you were focused on your work instead.
We're also about making the editor more forgiving, so we've ensured that any content that gets entered into the sidebar is auto-saved. Consequently, this has eliminated the disruptive 'save changes' prompt when you move on to editing something else. Another prompt that we've given the flick is the one that appeared upon deleting an editable region. Instead, we've added an 'undo delete' link (pictured), should you change your mind.
These three changes have been directly guided by your feedback, so we'd like to extend a warm 'thank you' for all your tweets, forum posts and emails. Recording and acting on your suggestions remains a priority even at this busy time of year, so if there's something you feel we could improve about the editor (or the app in general), be sure to get in touch with our team, or leave a note in the comments below.
- Nov 06, 11
First up, we'll come clean here. While our template builder has sped up the process of creating templates for many designers, the inclusion of English terms like 'Unsubscribe' and 'Web version' has made the resulting templates slightly tricky to use for customers who send their campaigns in Danish, Dutch or one of many commonly-used languages. Naturally, it wasn't long before we received feedback to this effect.
If you send in a language other than English, we want to make things right by providing an easy way to have terms like 'Unsubscribe' and 'Web version' translated into your language. The thing is, we don't want to rely on robots or second-guessing, especially when there are great people like you who know what's best when it comes to email campaigns.
For this reason, we would like to ask for your help in translating some of the default words and phrases that appear in our templates.
Filling in the form below will only take a minute or two, but it will massively benefit designers and clients across the world. Once we've collected a variety of translations, we'll look towards adding a simple language selector to the template builder and taking the hard work out of localizing your campaigns.
Finally, a big thank you for your feedback and for helping us improve. We owe a lot to our international customers and hope to return the favor by building a better app for everyone.
- Nov 02, 11
We've recently unleashed a couple of API updates that should make things easier for our developer friends. Included are three new methods, plus a handful of parameters which are likely to be particularly useful if you're syncing subscribers between your app and ours. If integrating with Campaign Monitor is your business, here is what's new in our API.
New methods: Deleting subscribers and unscheduling campaigns
First up, the big one - you can now delete subscribers from a list using our API. Unlike our existing method for unsubscribing subscribers (wow, a mouthful), a delete request results in an email address being marked as 'Deleted', but not added to the account's suppression list. This is particularly useful when a subscriber is to be re-added to a list at a later time, say, when 'pausing' a subscription for a few weeks. Of course, a little discretion should be used when deleting a subscriber via the API, rather than unsubscribing them.
In tandem is a new method for getting deleted subscribers for a particular list. Results can be narrowed down by date range, ordered by date and more.
Finally, we've added a new method for unscheduling a campaign, which moves a scheduled campaign back to the account's drafts. This sure beats deleting the campaign, as was previously done.
Getting social: Forward, Like and Mention stats for a campaign
In the spirit of the social sharing reports in the app, we've now made sharing stats available via the API. Using the new parameters in our existing campaign summary method, you can pull forwards, likes and mentions for any given campaign, alongside the regular metrics. This is a timely addition for all you folks with dashboard apps (or ahem, 'information radiators'), not to mention other app adventures in analytics.
Clearing custom fields on subscriber updates or bulk imports
Last but not least, we've added a parameter for clearing custom fields to our existing methods for updating a subscriber and importing many subscribers. This allows you to clear one or more options on multi-value custom fields and totally clear other custom field types.
Our API wrappers, updated and ready to use
To reflect the new methods described above, we've updated all our official wrappers for v3 of the Campaign Monitor API. We've got wrappers for Ruby, PHP, .NET and more, so chances are, our API speaks your language!
A huge thanks to Paul Duran and our development and testing teams for this sweeping update. Most importantly, thanks to you - all of the above happened because developers stepped forward and provided us with amazing feedback, so if you have any any suggestions for new methods or improvements, get in touch with our team. Alternately, hustle with our lively API developer community and post questions, get the word on updates and most importantly, cut some darn good code!
- Nov 01, 11
When Mashable gave our very own worldview a plug in a post on solid UI designs, we found ourselves sharing the stage with a merman. Ok fine, so the merman was the mascot for Fork, an open source CMS and not a real, live merman, as I was hoping. But if Fork's fun, under-sea themed site was anything to go by, we figured that there would be plenty to like about the guys and gals behind this trident-weilding platform.
A few weeks later, the Fork team got in touch regarding an integration they had built using the Campaign Monitor API. Once I had overcome my dismay at not being contacted from 10,000 leagues under the sea, I fired up Fork for myself and found that the usefulness of their Mailmotor module well and truly made up for any perceived shortcomings. Here's a quick take on how their email marketing integration can streamline the sending of campaigns from a Fork-powered site.
Send and report on campaigns, all from Fork
After a fresh, self-hosted install and a little fooling around with Fork's backend, it's hard to ignore the tab for Mailmotor - a module that comes installed by default. On this tab, you'll be briskly walked through linking Fork to an existing Campaign Monitor account, selecting a client account, then having one or more subscriber lists imported into Fork's 'Groups'.
Once you've set up Groups, Mailmotor's rich-text editor and default email templates make creating a new campaign (or 'Mailing') a relatively simple task. That said, there isn't any documentation on how to add your own templates at present, so we're keen to find out if this function will become available in a future update.
Now a campaign has been created, sending it to one or more of your Groups from within Fork is a straightforward process. Campaign results are subsequently pulled into Fork, meaning that you can potentially never have to toggle between the backend and your Campaign Monitor account. You can even set up pricing per send in Euros, although Mailmotor's non white-labelness may not be ideal for Campaign Monitor resellers.
Fork also comes with a Form Builder module for rapidly creating nice-looking contact forms and more, but it saves submissions to an internal database. In a future update, we'd love to have Form Builder hook up with one or more Campaign Monitor lists, creating a seamless workflow from collecting email addresses, to sending and finally, reporting on campaigns.
An open source, free CMS... That looks good
I know what you UI folks are thinking when I say 'open source CMS'. So I'll just put it out there now - despite a few holes in their documentation, Fork is fairly intuitive to use. It's clean. You can create lovely sites with it. However, like many open source projects, it is angled towards the coder crowd, meaning that some technical knowledge is required to make the most of it as a CMS. While Fork comes bundled with a couple of attractive themes and nifty apps (like Mailmotor), as is the case with other self-hosted platforms like WordPress, there will inevitably be a point where you'll feel the need to get elbows-deep in adapting themes or heck, even forking Fork on Github.
To find out more, try a demo account and download a copy for yourself, visit the Fork site.
- Oct 27, 11
We regularly talk to customers who are keen on building mobile-optimized email templates, but have hit a roadblock. It's easy to empathise, as while we've put a fair amount of effort into providing resources on designing mobile email, chances are that you'll hit at least one of the following hurdles:
- Skill: 'Everyone says that you should 'code email like it's 1999'. After getting my head around that, I'm now being told to use CSS3 - help!'
- Time: 'Optimizing for mobile adds a whole bunch more coding and testing tasks. My clients can't afford to cover this.'
- Resources: 'I don't have a device to test on.'
- Motivation: 'This is going to be hard.'
One of the aims of our new template builder has been to overcome these hurdles. In essence, make it really easy to create email campaigns that look just as slick on your iPhone or Android handset, as they do in the inbox. Plus, save you loads of testing time, as you can be confident that they will just work.
After yammering on about mobile optimizations in this blog, it's about time that everyone gets to create responsive email campaigns for themselves and their clients.
Switching between desktop to mobile versions
In order to fulfill this, we've added a toggle button to the bottom of the template builder's preview pane. This switches between the desktop and mobile version of an email template, so you can customize things to your heart's delight without having to repeatedly test on a mobile device:
As you can guess, we've already rolled all the necessary
@mediaqueries into the template code, so at no point do you have to get elbows-deep into CSS3.Learning from the code
That said, these templates provide ample opportunity to learn about some of the coding fundamentals behind creating responsive designs. It's worth mentioning that you can export your template builder creations, fire them up in your favorite editing software and see how we've narrowed layouts, resized images and more, simply by using a few lines of CSS.
Finally, we'd love to hear your questions or feedback in regards to creating mobile email templates in the new builder. It has already saved us a lot of time and mental energy when creating our monthly newsletter, so hopefully it will do the same for you, too.
- Oct 26, 11
This morning I received one of those daily deals emails from a well-known online travel company. Seeing as I haven't been wearing my traveling pants as of late, I decided I'd unsubscribe from this one, only to trip across the following clause:
Now, for a business that automates a lot of what it does so well, a 5-10 day wait on processing an unsubscribe seems pretty unusual. Does this message mean that I'll be receiving daily emails for 5-10 days to come? Perhaps more importantly, why don't they just use an immediate unsubscribe process like the rest of us?
Now, it's true that the CAN-SPAM Act requires that opt-outs are honored within 10 days. But given that databases can be updated immediately, this sort of move demonstrates a certain one-sidedness to the customer relationship. It's a bit like them saying:
'We'll be awesome to you if you give us your business and your personal details. But ask us to do something that doesn't benefit our bottom line and we'll sit on it for a few days.'
The absolute worst-case of unsubscribe deferral I've seen was from an airline who stated that would take up to 20 days to be removed from their list. Given that they were capable of immediately bombarding customers with confirmation emails and offers on signup, it was a little irksome that they applied such a leisurely attitude to managing unsubscribes. Even if this process involved updating a spreadsheet of email addresses by hand or working with a 3rd-party company to manage their lists, pretty much anyone could agree that they were taking their sweet time to get a fairly simple task done.
So now it's over to you. Why do you think some companies take so long to manage unsubscribe requests? What's the longest delay you've experienced?
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Tweets
- @benjamin_payne thanks for letting me know - I'd love to catch up and hear your plans.
- @hogfish thank you! Gosh, it's crazy hot here - it's like I totally forgot about summer!
- @andrewspearnz no, sadly. The hubby is heading up to Wellington in a few weeks, I'm sure i'll find good reason to head north soon :)
- Good to be home, even though it's crazy hot in comparison to New Zealand! (@ Sydney International Airport Arrivals) http://t.co/w45fgnAU
- Saying bye to New Zealand yet again... This was a perfect holiday. We'll be back soon! (@ Queenstown Airport (ZQN)) http://t.co/yT6ZAthQ
- The road to Lake Hawea http://t.co/YNwl7XYG
- Farewell, we loved ya! (@ Franz Josef Glacier) http://t.co/x3FTmJ2Y
- @JetSetStephen sorry to hear that :( Cat heaven is full of overstuffed sofas and laser pointers - I'm sure she'll be well there.
- Sad to leave Franz Josef today - both its overwhelming glacier and its ice nerds and ice climbers. Queenstown will be a change of pace!
- @mathiasmaul haha! Actually, that was yesterday - now I'm warm and happy in a cafe :)
- @sarahJ26 it was a fairly claustrophobic hike at times! Didn't help that you could hear the glacier cracking and rumbling, too...
- Okay, so who wants to go in first? @ Franz Josef Glacier http://t.co/VWtvn5Lp
- @AnnaManasova Yeap, I think that's the shortcut. Wheeeeee!
- @diversionary haha, @atnan is out ice climbing today - yes, climbing that thing. Because rocks are like, so mainstream ;)
- From the forest to the sky @ Franz Josef Glacier http://t.co/wXFzNQx8
- It's a long way to the top... @ Franz Josef Glacier http://t.co/DkfZalhJ
- @chrislloyd we'll be back in AU on Mon, but then @atnan's back soonafter for Railscamp :)
- Cloud has finally lifted over Franz Josef. @atnan is going ice climbing, I'm off to take pictures! http://t.co/sKL6Mbkz
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Posts
- [Flash 10 is required to watch video.]
Tandem paragliding at Bukit Jugra, Malaysia. Located 1 1/2 hours from Kuala Lumpur and 45 mins from KLIA, Jugra is the very scenic launch point for Malaysia’s annual paragliding competition.
What a thrill! Remarkably, I didn’t feel any fear or vertigo. This may well become my sport of choice.
Thank you, Malaysia. This has been one of the most exceptional journeys I’ve ever experienced. You will always be close to my heart.
KL Sentral. High speed rail rocks, by the way. Sydney’s Cityrail blows in comparison to KL’s mass transit system. Trains that move at 160 km/h are rad!
Waiting at the terminal for a bus to Banting. What time does it arrive? Whenever it arrives.
- The Tune Hotels.com LCCT
I’m holed up tonight literally across the road from Kuala Lumpur’s Low Cost Carrier Terminal. In fact, I’m so bleedingly close that I can hear the unceasing jet whine and the low rumble during takeoff. My room is no larger than my office at work, yet includes a full bathroom and double bed. And yes, I’m loving it.
Here’s to the virtues of solo travel. Sure, I have Sandy the Proboscis in my bag, but for the first time in a while, I’m travelling for leisure, unaccompanied. It’s just amazing how folks open up to you and how much you see in return - I befriended another solo traveller from Shanghai at the airport and now I’m excited with the prospect of visiting Xian. We made it to the Tune together and whoo-ee! What a little gem this place is!
The Tune is the anti-thesis to the homogenous hotel experience. Apart from my Chinese friend, I’ve met British holidaymakers, smirked at cranky-looking Korean golf tourists, avoided frosty Germans and admired the serenity of an Indian mother, cradling her child in a doorway. There are Malaysian students sharing a wall with tired Australians and oh what a vibe, even after midnight! There’s cheap beer downstairs, to boot!
The Tune at KL LCCT is a modern-day tower of Babel. It’s a shrine to globalisation. And at around $20 a night, it’s my kinda hotel. Sweet dreams!
Here’s a good handful of my family - apart from my cousin and our helper, the rest live in the provinces. I don’t know how many nieces and nephews I have, but there are plenty!
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Posts
- Jul 06, 11
Last call for Tiger Airways? Photo: fox2mike (Flickr)
As a sometime customer of Tiger Airways and someone who has been affected by the prolonged grounding of the budget carrier’s fleet (I have a booking on 15 July), I could well consider myself entitled to write a hot-headed rant about risking passenger lives, the slow pace of refunds, or whatever catcall is fashionable while we await real news on the airline’s fate. But instead, I’d like to take the even tone of eulogist for a moment – for even if this recent safety fiasco blows over, the one thing that will eventually do them in is a total disregard for their customers.
Some voices in the media have penned customer care as being an obvious first casualty in a low cost carrier’s attempts to cut costs. After flying with profitable LCCs like AirAsia and Cebu Pacific in the highly-competitive East Asian market, I absolutely disagree that this is the case. On my journeys with both these carriers, I’ve had nothing but attentive service, even when the proverbial has hit the fan. In one instance involving a flight retime, I even received an email form the office of Tony Fernandes, AirAsia’s CEO, which promptly rectified what could have escalated into a tricky situation.
Many may regard AirAsia as a wonder child in this regard – not only are they profitable, but their front line – spread across airports, email newsletters, social media properties – actually seems to care. Why Australian customers can’t expect the same from domestic airlines is simply a matter of complacency. After all, Tiger Airways is in a strong position to not only learn from Singapore Airways’ experience in delivering courtesy, but benefit from their big pockets when making it real.
In retrospect, one could say that as the beneficiary of many non-critical $29 flights between Sydney and Melbourne and relatively few delays in the process, I’ve had a pretty good run with the flying tiger. However, there have been moments when the mindless culture that has undoubtedly resulted in the recent safety breaches, has also manifested itself in shonky customer policies. Policies that seem almost intentionally designed to upset and belittle customers, delivered by contractors instead of accountable employees of the airline.
I can source an example from less than a year ago, when the check-in policy changed from being, ‘yes, you can get in queue and check-in at the airport’, to, ‘no, you must check-in via the web a considerable amount of time before your flight, otherwise we ping you $25 for a boarding pass at the airport’. Sadly for all involved, this was not explained clearly via email or even SMS, so by the time our fate dawned on us at the airport, it was too late to check-in via our smartphones. There was no point arguing over the fee with the check-in staffer – she was an employee of a 3rd party services company, who agreed that it was silly that she could print boarding passes free-of-charge for checked-in customers, however had to charge $50 in total for ‘rule breakers’ like my husband and I (not her words). She was genuine and sympathetic. Unfortunately, the airline that she was beholden to is not.
Policies like this make a lot of sense from an accountant’s point of view. Discouraging the use of check-in counters means reduced staffing costs and potentially, faster turnarounds at the airport as customers attend to their arrangements online. However when not communicated properly, or worse, applied to ‘penalise’ travellers (as if we had paid to take part in some martial system), they generate anger, bad press and kill off repeat business.
I believe that most leisure travellers have moved beyond simply wanting the cheapest fare. If you look at how consumers spend their discretionary income (let it be on branded gadgets, dinners out or holiday travel), in many cases price point takes second place to experience, function or reputation. For this reason, I can understand why they have only captured 5% of domestic air travel market share after almost 4 years of operation, despite offering hands-down the cheapest airfares. If Tiger had tethered their business on providing on-time service, pleasant customer relations, or, heaven forbid, putting the glamour back into air travel, they could have comfortably charged an additional 20% without complaint.
The message here is relevant to all industries. If a company’s sole selling point is low prices, it is doomed to fail. A race to the bottom is one that cannot be won – either the cash will run out, corners will get cut, customers will feel alienated and vote with their feet, or in Tiger’s case, all of the above. Even if CASA’s grounding isn’t the final call for the ailing airline, their attitude has certainly put them on their last leg.
- Jun 07, 11
Jetstar's 7th birthday: Fly a friend for free!
Jetstar have finally sprung their 7th annual birthday sale upon us, releasing ‘fly a friend for free’ sale fares for many routes across their network. Both domestic and international fares are in the fray, spanning a variety of travel dates between mid-October 2011 and the end of March, 2012.
To be honest, I’m finding it a little hard to get hysterically excited about this one. Across the board, the fares presented deliver rather conservative discounts to the discriminating buyer, but certainly don’t echo the staggering generosity of sales past. For example, the 2 for 1 fares between international routes only apply to the outbound trip out of Australia. So for 2 people to travel from Melbourne to Singapore, the fare per person comes to (369×3)/2, or $553.50. Only last week, the same route was being offered for $503 return per person. Better value fares can be found on domestic routes, but again, the price tags aren’t as kind as we’ve previously witnessed.
At 8pm EST today, the Jetstar website was having serious troubles handling the demand for this sale. Searches have been near-impossible to complete. With this in mind, be patient and try to book later at night/early in the morning.
Good luck – now go get yourself some great fares on Jetstar’s sale page!
Update (10pm): Website is much better now. Some international fares have the ‘fly a friend for free’ promotion applied in both directions – Sydney to Manila for $410 per person return, not bad!
- Jun 06, 11
Emirates: Fares to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore for $700 return
Ok, so this is not some $508 Jetstar deal, for for a full-service airline, Emirates‘ rates are just great. For the travel period of 28 June – 30 November 2011, fares from Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur are on sale for $695 return and to Singapore for $701 return, including tax. On other booking websites, these fares are available until 30 June.
There are loads of fares available on Emirates’ website and thankfully, their booking system is one of the better ones for finding a bargain fare. So if Melbournites weren’t already spoilt for choice with fares, then scoot over to Emirates’ website – they sure are now.
- Jun 03, 11
Hainan Airlines: Low fares between Sydney - Shenzhen from $618 return
Many moons ago, this blog used to wax lyrical about an amazingly cheap airline, the now-defunct Viva Macau. Back in 2009, it seemed like every other day I was making mention of their rock-bottom fares between Sydney and Southern China – rock-bottom fares which consequently drove them out of business (alongside reports of crap service and antique aircraft).
When they folded, I assumed the era of the cheap Chinese carrier was dead.
Then this morning at the airport, I came across a banner for Hainan Airlines. Their claim to be ‘China’s 5-Star Airline’, combined with the fact that I had never heard of them had my curiosity aroused. So I did a couple of searches and immediately, memories of Viva Macau came flooding back. To cut a long story short, they offer wonderfully cheap flights between Sydney and Shenzhen, China. From here, they fly on to Europe and Canada, but lets keep this matter simple for now.
So, on to the good stuff: between 1 September and 31 October, 2011, fares for direct flights between Sydney and Shenzhen start from $618 return (inc. tax, see above). These fares are plentiful and appear to include weekends and holiday periods, including the Labour Day long weekend in October. Sure, that their booking system is a little slow, a little wonky and won’t return any logical fares beyond December, 2011. But play by the rules and you’re bound to get a cheap flight – book now on Hainan Airlines’ website. Hainan also accepts Paypal.
If you’re wondering what my fascination is with this southern Chinese industrial city is, let me get this straight – it’s Hong Kong, baby, Hong Kong. From Shenzhen, this shopping and cultural mecca is a bit over an hour away by train. Then once you’re ready to move on, Hong Kong is an excellent launch pad to the rest of Asia. Note that you will require a Chinese visa prior to departure.
Finally, I’d like to end the comparisons between Hainan and Viva Macau, except when it comes to price. Based on SKYTRAX passenger reviews, Hainan Airlines rates an 8.9/10 – an exceptional score, even outshining Qantas (who scored 8/10 at the time of writing). Unlike Viva Macau, folks genuinely seem to like flying with Hainan Airlines. So lets hope they enjoy greater prosperity than their low cost, low service cousin.
Have you booked tickets, or flown with Hainan Airlines? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below.
- Jun 01, 11
Southern Alps, New Zealand. Photo: GothPhil
If the smell of fresh snow from across the Tasman has become too much to bear, then take heart. A full-on fare war has begun amongst Jetstar, Virgin Blue and Air New Zealand over the hotly-contested east coast – Christchurch routes, resulting in some of the most competitive peak ski season fares I’ve seen in a long time.
All three airlines are offering promo fares during August, with additional travel dates spanning late-October to mid-December, 2011. Here are the cheapest return fares available at present between Sydney – Christchurch during the August period:
- Jetstar: $199.36 (New Zealand sale)
- Virgin Australia: $222.93
- Air New Zealand: $229.06 (using discount code ‘NZ150′, valid until 2 June)
All airfares include tax and don’t include optional extras like check-in baggage.
Yes, there are direct flights between Australia’s east coast cities and Queenstown, New Zealand’s ski mecca. However, unless you’re short on time, it’s always far more economical to travel via Christchurch, then drive, bus or fly Jetstar down to the snow. With fares starting around the $30 one way mark for the Christchurch to Queenstown leg, you get my drift.
Heading to New Zealand’s ski fields really is exceptional value. Unless you are unlucky enough to encounter a very warm season, you will find that everything from snow quality, to accommodation absolutely eclipses what’s on offer in Australia. So, pull on your boots – if you’re planning to hit the white stuff this season, this is the time to get planning. Happy flight hunting and first tracks!
- May 28, 11
Melbourne to Singapore on Jetstar, from $508 return
If you’re planning an Asian escape, there’s not many places quite like Singapore to use as a launchpad into the rest of the region. As the hub for Tiger Airways and a key destination for discount airlines like Air Asia and Cebu Pacific, it’s exceptionally well connected – not to mention, simply a pleasant place to visit for a few days.
To celebrate the upping of their frequency between Melbourne (Tullamarine) and Singapore to daily via their A330 fleet, Jetstar have quietly released bargain fares for the travel period of 19 July – 31 August, 2011. Starting at $508 return including tax (even during peak times, ie. weekends), it’s a real steal, only comparable to Air Asia’s ‘big sale’ fares to Kuala Lumpur.
As someone who finds Sydney’s winter to be a little too chilly for comfort, I’m personally very tempted to skip south to Melbourne, then north in pursuit of a strong Singapore Sling (or two). The good news is that if you’re like me and reside outside of Melbourne, it is possible in some instances to book fares from your nearest airport, to Singapore in a single booking (and presumably have your luggage transited between connecting flights). However, if you’re travelling light and have time to burn, it’s well worth shopping around flights spanning the Sydney (or wherever you are) – Melbourne legs separately, as you may be able to save money by either selecting different flight times, or going with another carrier.
See you in SG!
- May 23, 11
'Big Sale', tiny fares to Asia and beyond.
If you’re Asia-bound between 6 February – 20 June next year, then you can’t afford to miss Air Asia’s ‘Big Sale’. With tickets to Kuala Lumpur starting from $150 ex Perth and $200 for Gold Coast/Melbourne it really does pay to plan your travel ahead of time.
For those going further afield, there are fares from Perth to London for less than $400 one way (inc. tax) and Australia’s east coast to the same for $100 more. I’ll post further updates this evening, but until then, it’s time for you to get your bargain on! Take a look at AirAsia’s ‘Big Sale’ promo page for fares and conditions.
Note: AirAsia have a ‘waiting room’ system in place to deal with demand – you will be put in a queue for a minimum of 15 seconds before the site will search for fares.
- May 22, 11
Akaroa, New Zealand. Photo: math89 (flickr)
As the weekend very quickly comes to a close, my mind is in hazard-avoidance mode, trying to distract itself from the prospect of 5 days ahead sans a lengthy sleep-in and breakfast at midday. So, it’s time to look towards the next holiday – and if you’re a long-time reader of this poorly-kept blog (thank you!), well, you may reason that I’ve got a lot of things to think about, really.
This upcoming Queens Birthday long weekend (11-13 June) is a brief pleasure – it’s long enough to pack the bags for, but not quite long enough for anyone to really go troppo. However, if you’re keen to capitalise on the high Australian dollar and want to really feel like you’re overseas (instead of over the street), my tip is to give New Zealand a thought.
I’ve been tracking fares between Australia’s east coast and New Zealand over the last few weeks and without a doubt, we’re approaching the end of my ‘good value’ window*. Flights from Sydney to Christchurch begin at a tempting $263 return (inc. tax) with Virgin Blue over the break period, if you’re happy to tack on an extra day at the end. Combine that with accommodation and travel expenses that are considerably below Australian rates and you’ve got your sights on a tour that even the Queen would envy.
Now, I’m not going to skirt around the fact that New Zealand has had its share of troubles lately. Much of Christchurch’s CBD is still off-limits after the February earthquake and the odd tremor is a part of life for many South Islanders. However, as the locals have stressed repeatedly, outside of central Christchurch it’s business as usual – and boy, do they need the business. For a relaxed, earthquake-free weekend away, you can either rent a car or catch a shuttle to the French-influenced town of Akaroa. Just over an hour’s drive south of Christchurch, its main draw is an expansive harbour that is home to endangered (and very cute) Hector’s dolphins. Two hours of swimming with these little guys is a bargain $104 via Viator and the tour operator is keen to stress that warm wetsuits and warmer post-swim showers are provided!
If that sounds a little too energetic, there are also wine tours in the Waipara region, or even sneaky day trips to Mt Hutt to taste the beginning of New Zealand’s snow season. While we’re on the topic of snow, I’ve seen Jetstar NZ offering fares between Christchurch and Queenstown for roughly $30 each way. If you ask me, there are certainly advantages to swapping over 5 hours of sketchy driving, for 45 lazy minutes in the air en route to your massif of choice
If you’ve been to New Zealand before, then this excursion across the pond will seem like a bargain no-brainer. However, if you haven’t, then this is a good time to become a fan of New Zealand’s hospitality, winter-warming food and Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords. Even if you miss the latter, it will still be a truly amazing trip.
* A fortnight prior, fares for the same route were $202 return. The price increase since is most probably due to increasing holiday demand, but I’m also keeping an eye on whether the recent Virgin Blue brand and price restructure has had an impact on ‘everyday’ prices.
- Jan 11, 10
These sale fares should have you hanging out for Macau. Photo Credit: Henrik Berger Jørgensen
Viva Macau may not be the most classy airline, but it sure does offer the punters a cheap fare to China. For the next 3 days, they’re offering direct flights between Sydney and Macau for $700 return, including tax! Direct flights also depart Melbourne for about $20 less each way.
Sale is on now until 14 January, for travel between 1 March – 24 October, 2010. Take a look at Viva Macau’s promo newsletter for details.
- Jan 09, 10
When Winter starts to set in, take off with Jetstar! Photo Credit: Flickr user Christopher Bearman
Jetstar have dropped their fares between Australian cities and a number of international destinations including Osaka, Tokyo, Phuket, Bangkok, Christchurch and Auckland, for departures during April – June, 2010. My favorite – flights to Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City) are now only $427 return including tax ex. Sydney. Perfect for avoiding the blues as Winter approaches!
Other return fares ex. Sydney include:
- Christchurch from $264
- Bangkok from $587
- Tokyo from $617
- Phuket from $635
This doesn’t seem to be an advertised price drop, so get in quick for cheap fares. Naturally, visit Adioso to find select dates and fares for your destination of choice.
I anticipate we will see more price drops like this between now and Feb, however don’t let the opportunity pass if you genuinely want to visit these destinations. On a related note, it is not known if the detainment of two Qantas/Jetstar Pacific employees over a dispute regarding jet fuel futures will affect future Jetstar operations into HCM City. For the interim, I’d say it’s totally safe to purchase away. Happy travels!
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