Tips for Coding Good HTML Emails

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Mobile email accessPutting together the code for an HTML email isn’t by any stretch of the imagination the same as coding a web page. Email has special constraints and special issues. The way you code it can affect everything from how it displays to recipients, to whether it gets into their inbox at all or gets flagged as possible spam.

Things are even more complicated than they used to be – and better, really, for email marketers – because it’s now possible to code emails to display one way for people who open them on a desktop/laptop and another for those who open on a mobile device. With more and more people using smartphones to access email on the go, it’s critical to make sure your emails display well on these devices. Continue reading

Tips to Improve Your Website Submission Forms

Declaration of Intention for Albert EinsteinIs it easy for people to give you the information you need?

Do you have submission forms on your website? Chances are you do. And if your website is an integral part of a thriving organization (and no doubt it is!), chances also are good that those forms enable or support some pretty important functions. They may capture information about your members or donors, get email addresses you need to communicate with people, or even collect money – membership dues, donations, payment for products. Continue reading

Rebranding vs. Reinventing

Does Your Organization Need More than a New Paint Job?

Rusting Fire Hydrant - Red/Blue
The editorial director of the Harvard Business Review Group, Justin Fox, wrote an interesting commentary last week about the Republican Party’s attempt to rebrand itself in order to become more attractive to minority voters and other groups. Rebranding, Fox argued, wouldn’t go nearly far enough to address the party’s problems. “The GOP needs a new product, not a new brand,” he wrote.

No matter your politics or opinion of the GOP, Fox’s article is worth reading. His perspective on the party’s troubles has a lot of application to the challenges many associations face as well. Continue reading

Happy Pi Day!

Celebrating All-American Pie and the Election of the First Pope from the Americas

Tarta Pascualina

Argentinian Tarta Pascualina

Remember when I said a couple of weeks ago that my family had a Japanese exchange student coming to stay with us? Well, Sumika is here, and her visit happens to have coincided with some special occasions that have been a lot of fun. Her first Monday in Chicago was Casimir Pulaski Day, an Illinois state holiday celebrating a Polish-born Revolutionary War hero. You really can’t get much more Chicago than that. But maybe you can. Because the day before she leaves will be the day of Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, when the city dyes the Chicago River green – so we’re hoping to take her to see that.

But that’s all in the past and in the future. In the present, we have an international celebration, Pi Day, when we honor the mathematical concept Pi – which in my home (because everyone in it really is a geek at heart) is celebrated with the baking and eating of pie. And since pie seems to me a very American food, I’m thrilled to be celebrating Pi Day with Sumika as well. Continue reading