Email UX Fail
I just got a call from a PR agency asking if I’d received their email. There’s nothing new about this as I get calls all the time chasing up if I want to publish a story.
This particular PR agency refers to the mail they sent me on Monday. I know the PR girl’s name and scan my inbox but she quickly notifies me that it’s not in her name but a generic name. There it is, it’s from… News.
I open the email. There’s nothing there. I’m running MS Outlook Web Access and the image is blocked. I tell the rep this. She responds with…
“All that beautiful design and the content’s blocked!”
Exactly.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing to help me out as a reader. The subject line says…
“An invitation from…”
And the tool tip says…
“An exclusive provate evening”
I have to unbl0ck the content to read the email. And yes, it is a beautifully designed email, a very nice image including embedded text.
I may not be able to attend the invitation so I forward it to a colleague. They receive the email but not the image.
The only way I can get it to them is to save the image locally and write a new email attaching the image from my local drive.
In so many ways this email is a complete fail.
As a designer and an email marketer I’d recommend the following solutions:
- Ensure the email is from a person, a name, not just the generic title “News” – As an editor I receive hundreds of emails from senders called “news” and I’m less likely to look at generic sender emails.
- Maybe the subject line could have detailed the invitation? Maybe an invitation to a book launch or an evening with a top publisher? Maybe.
- How about the alt text of the image is a little bit more descriptive? ”An exclusive provate evening” just doesn’t do it for me – I am still none the wiser as to what this is and what if the email recipient doesn’t hover their mouse over the image for long enough to see the alt text?
- In addition to point 3, it’s good practice to include the title attribute in an img tag as some browsers/readers will only display the alt or the description or vise versa.
- What about a “text alternative” email version? Qmailer allows you to send an HTML version backed up by a text version so the open rate will be higher.
- How about include a link to an HTML version of the email. These usually go along the lines of ”If you’re having difficulty reading this email click here for an online version”.*
*As an aside to point 6 I used to keep versions of all my email newsletters online until an ex-employee called one day asking about the HTML I’d written for these newsletters. He’d taken one of my HTML newsletter templates and started using it for the new company he worked for and was having problems getting it to work for him (The HTML was very simple, BTW). It would have been courteous if he’d asked politely if he could use the HTML and I would probably have said yes, but it was just a little shocking that he was stupid enough to say that he’d already taken the HTML and was using it!
MOO II
My MOO business cards arrived yesterday.
The business card holding box was very solid and cardboard rather than the usual plastic boxes, made from recycled pulp and biodegradable.
The MOO branding was fun & funky, as you’d expect, with a paper wrap on the outside of the card holder declaring
“Quick, schedule a meeting! Your Business Cards have arrived.”
As for the cards themselves I’d placed the company logo on the back of the cards from an original PNG and it looked OK in landscape. On the flipside I’d placed the logo again but in portrait with my details below.
The logo wasn’t as sharp as I expected even though (I thought) I’d supplied a hi-res PNG. The 350gsm card felt a lot flimsier than the cards I created for a client the other week at 400gsm. The lettering was OK – it was from a restricted number of fonts available (about 12) and the choice of formatting was also limited (bold line or not bold line, no bold characters or individual words)
So, on the whole? I like the MOO brand and their marketing, they certainly have an appeal and a personality that is very pleasing. The cards were the “Green uploader” – 100% recycled, totally chlorine free (TCF) and no frills. The limitation of font use and control over the layout was not something a designer likes to have to deal with.
But the price and the relative ease of creating the cards means that they’re are popular and MOO will go far. £14.04 for 50 green cards including delivery (That was with a 10% discount code)
If you’re a designer or you need to impress your clients with a top quality card or your clients expect no less than a spot-varnished sliver of royal standards then it’s probably best to create your business cards in Photoshop or Illustrator and go see your local printer. But if you’re on a budget and need a fistful of cheap, quick cards that are better than the usual entry-level fare then MOO are a good choice.
I’m now going to dig out that issue of Computer Arts with the tutorial on designing for the foil/metallic printing process – I need my cards to look like chrome…
MOO
In the 9 years that I’ve been running 22i design I don’t recall ever having any business cards. That may sound a bit strange but we’ve honestly never really had the need for them.
However, with the latest upturn in business (thanks to all the good people who’ve recommended us) plus recently designing the classy little business cards for ICCTS I decided to dip my toes in the water and thought I’d give the much talked about MOO a try.
Compared to the normal process of designing business cards, where you completely craft the artwork from scratch and send it to your friendly neighbourhood printer, (in our case Charterlith Printers in Fleet) MOO is a simple automated online affair where you pick the type of card you want, upload the artwork, type some text in and then pay.
One of our web clients uses the well-known Vistaprint service for their stationery. You can tell that the print quality and design/style is below what you pay for regular design & print but there is a market out there for cheap business cards.
So whilst we’d dearly love to have dreamt up something along the lines of any one of the 100 really creative business cards (our logo would look great with a bit of spot varnish on a completely matt card) all we’re trying to do here is test out the budget end of the market and, all-in, we paid around £14.04 for 50 double-sided 350gsm 100% recycled card TCF business cards to be printed and delivered (by next Thursday). That’s about 28p a card.
The process was relatively painless but, as a designer, you miss the total control you have over the creative process. There were, for instance, only a dozen or so fonts to choose from and only line-by-line options (for example you can’t increase the weight of, italicise certain words or letters or switch fonts or font sizes).
It’s all very simple and templated however, for the price, you can’t complain so I’ll report back when they arrive; I’m sure they’ll “do the job”.
ALA Survey
A List Apart are running their 2008 survey for people who make websites. I took it and so should you 
The results of last year’s survey (1.7Mb PDF) makes good reading. From my own perspective it’s interesting to see that the majority of the 2007 survey’s respondents were:
- mainly developers (I class myself as a web designer)
- younger than me
- educated to a higher degree
- working for MUCH bigger companies
- only recently into blogging
- mostly getting excited by the web design field
- working less hours
- fairly “green” in the web industry
- not having as much holiday
- earning less but getting pay rises