Check Check ... Check Your Email Rendering Or Beware The Results!

Let's consider the dilemma of delivery optimization through quasi real life situation that is, hopefully, somewhat amusing. Hey, it's mid-week, and we could all probably use a joke.

"Zoolander": Supermodel

So, a comedian in the 80s used to tell a story about his friend who married a supermodel. He thought "cool!". In terms of his perception of survival of the fittest, his kids were going to at least look gorgeous. But to his utter shock and disbelief, the fruits of his (or more precisely her) labor were what the comedian referred to as 'crocodile kids". Despite outward appearances, apparently the model wife had had some work done. And the resulting offspring looked more like "model wife 1.0" than "model wife 6.0".

How this relates to email marketing ...
Sure, karma can be cruel. But for those of us email marketers with better intentions, why do the results of our own deliverables sometimes look just as unattractive?

Everything may look good coming together, but in the end, the results can be an ugly nightmare. We're talking specifically about the X design chromosomes and the Y content chromosomes within your campaigns looking great in one email client, and like a hot mess in others. It happens - a lot. The good news is that JangoMail has a comprehensive delivery check feature that lets you preview how your emails will render across multiple email clients.

Preview before you send - it's easy!
JangoMail has integrated with a third-party partner to give you one of the most innovative email preview rendering tools available today. So, you'll see exactly how your emails will look in more than 25 different email clients (AOL Mail, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Windows Mail, Yahoo! Mail and more). Before you even think of hitting SEND, you'll have time to address any issues and remain top of the pro charts.

This special, sneak peek delivery preview is available as a standard feature with your monthly JangoMail subscription, so you can use it as many times as you like.

As always, if you have any questions about our Delivery Rendering Tool or any other JangoMail feature, just ask us. Until next time, have a great rest of the week!

When Good Emails Render Bad

Houston, you have a wingdings problem

Your email newsletter may have been conceived in love and raised under a watchful eye, but now it's talking in wingdings and ignoring every golden layout rule in Yahoo, Outlook and Gmail.

So, how do you teach it to play nice?


Exhale: HTML is still your baby
HTML email campaigns are not only more visually cohesive and polished than Plain Text, but historically also produce more clicks, consumer interest and traceable sales. It's obviously more appealing to show product pictures to your customers or include live links to relevant information. In addition, the DOS-reminiscent presentation of Plain Text is never a match for the brand-reflective power of HTML.

But if you're not following some simple Web Standards, your well-intentioned email campaigns can look like more of a maniacal bomb threat than a customized handshake.

5 tough love solutions for your HTML emails:

1. Avoid background images.
To efficiently separate content and design elements, images should be displayed inline. The CSS property, background-image is often not supported.

<background image: supported>

<background image: unsupported>

2. Keep FLOAT and CLEAR in proper balance.
FLOAT is the glue to your layout, while CLEAR ensures your FLOAT doesn't mask any images. If in doubt, avoid using FLOAT all together. Read more details here.

3. Be careful with your use of MARGIN and PADDING.
MARGIN alignment is the key to avoiding all-out text chaos in a bad render. PADDING is similarly critical, especially when used in conjunction with BACKGROUND-COLOR, LIST-STYLE-IMAGE and BORDER. Render test your emails first and find some fixes here.


4. Consider a different code to denote LINE SPACING.
To create a new line space, try using <br/> (shift+enter) instead of <p> (enter). Some readers push together new paragraphs, making your text look like this:

5. Don't ignore the importance of WIDTH and HEIGHT.
WIDTH directly impacts FLOAT and TEXT-ALIGN, so it's crucial to the overall look and tightness of your email. HEIGHT also lends a firm hand to overall readibility.


Phew - your HTMLs just avoided military school. But if they ever get out of line again - or you just want to learn more ways to enhance your email marketing - contact our JangoMail Support. We'd love to hear from you.

Have an idea for a future JangoMail blog? Talk to us

Stay On The Hunt For Engaged Customers

"Anybody out there?"
Let's help you find out. In fact, there's a quick and easy way to check the attention span of your existing customers, while rustling up some loyalty from new ones. And in the spirit of Easter, let's break it down in a familiar scenario:

The Egg Hunt:
"Quick Hit" email campaigns dangle a carrot of information (an offer, timely content or a social "must share") to engage your email list. Then, based on whose interested enough to hunt for the prize, you can determine what behaviors are saying about your current marketing outreach - and fix it fast, if need be.

The Carrot:
Think gaming. How many of us have played a video game for hours to unlock a secret code, power or sword of truth (just us?)? Uncovering a mystery or 'working' toward a hidden reward is not only engaging but also fun. If you're a retail organization, take the cue from companies like "Kohl's". Their famous "Save 10, 20 or 30%" email campaigns masterfully lure their customers to stores and online to "uncover" their personal deal. It's like a scratch ticket - but the odds are definitely more favorable of both sides winning in the end (for customers: discounts; for the retailer: highly traceable click results within a targeted revenue trigger).

The Spoils:
Using this Easter egg hunt system, you'll immediately gauge recipient interest to your thoughtfully placed and relevant treasure. The next step is to use JangoMail's key reporting tools to see results in real time. So, you can follow-up as quickly as the responses come in. Then, based upon the report showing those interested enough to "click", those follow-ups can evolve into more customized email outreach based upon the specific needs or interests of any recipient. Your email lists will be tighter, stronger, and lead to more specialized sales or overall engagement. Not to mention, your customers or followers will be pleasantly surprised at the level of personal attention within your communications.

Let's put our minds together
We'd be happy to walk you through. If you have any questions, reach out to our JangoMail support.

Have a great week, everyone!

Make The Most Of The 'Madness' this Month

Last year, Twitter users sent over two million Tweets about March college basketball tourneys.

While the 'madness' may not be the highlight of everyone's month, there are times you need to send updates and alerts to large, specialized groups before the buzzer.

Here are some hypotheticals:

• You're a coach, and team parents would love to see a video of that miracle play from the big championship game
• You're a restauranteur, and you need to get the word out that there will be half-priced mudslides during the Padres' home opener
• You're the bracket-master, and lunch is on Glenn in Accounting since he just pulled ahead in points

Forget bulletin boards. JangoMail's email distribution list feature (listserv) is an easy way to get everyone on the same page about brackets, club news, special events and more.

Here's how it works:

• Create a master email list, grouping recipients by interest (eg. college basketball fans, mudslide lovers, the Spanish club)
• Send one email to your group's master email list (one email to one, all-inclusive email address)
• Spark a live, ongoing email discussion. When someone replies, they can reply back to your entire list at once (eg. "This place's mudslides are epic. You should go!")

More good news:

JangoMail lets you track (opens, clicks, responses) to your email campaign in real-time to evaluate the effectiveness of your emails and re-customize, as needed. Bounce-backs and removal-requests are handled automatically. And you can add Facebook and Twitter social share links for even greater reach and viral opportunity.

Don't forget... We do surveys too!

Tie in a quick survey with your regular email campaigns. This is a great way to bring in seasonal events and unite them with your business campaigns.  For this time of year, you could throw in things like:

• Tell us how many hours of the workday you think your organization's employees or volunteers spend creating and tracking March brackets?
• Do you think March bracket office-play increases overall morale?
• What is your favorite basketball-watching appetizer?

A little levity, a little fun, and a reason to do a follow up email campaign to keep your brand in front of the customers with your results ... or perhaps have them return to your web site to get the final tally!

Questions?

Did we spring some ideas loose for you? We're here to help. Reach Support for assistance in getting these (or any) features set up!

A New Dashboard

We have a quick update for our JangoMailers – You might have noticed we launched a new dashboard for your login screen to help you navigate the site more quickly!

 
This dashboard is the first thing you'll see when you log in. We like it because you can easily jump to these popular destinations, with quick icons rather than the old text links.

Hover over any of the icons to see a short description of what the feature contains. You'll see some new links to places you might not have explored previously:

Quickly access your list of email database connections, such as MySQL/SQL, Salesforce, Magento, and more.

Jump to the tutorials section of JangoMail where you'd find access to tons of walk-throughs and guides to using features on the site.

Access the full Developer API Documentation for the JangoMail API. Get the in-depth details on all of our methods.






 
Go to the Developer API Playground. Read quick information on all of the JangoMail API Methods and run test calls (that work!) and show you the response text.





We hope that you enjoy the new Dashboard and that it enhances your experience with JangoMail. We've got some very exciting new features on the way that we should be announcing shortly, so stay tuned!

Magento, We're Integrated.

Roger that, we've added functionality on JangoMail to connect to your Magento installation!

Magento is a powerful e-commerce platform used by thousands of companies worldwide. JangoMail is a powerful broadcast and transactional email platform used by thousands of companies worldwide. They were meant to connect!

With Magento, companies can host their own secure, robust, and feature-rich web store complete with inventory management, shopping cart, credit card payment system, customer management system and more. Now with JangoMail, Magento users can connect directly to their site to download their customer contact information for seamless use in email campaigns. Setup is simple.

See the full documentation to connect to your Magento site in minutes. Happy emailing!