Running The Ladder is the company blog of Bainbridge Studios, a tiny runt of a design practice based in lovely Tacoma, WA.
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Wishing Everyone a Safe and Happy Holiday Season
Friday, December 21st, 2007 | Tom Carmony
As we pack it in for our brief holiday break, Bainbridge Studios would like to take a moment to thank all of our clients, associates, freelancers and more for a wonderful 2007! We’ll be back in the office beginning Wednesday, January 2nd, ready to tackle the New Year.
Happy Holidays!
Thanksgiving Schedule
Monday, November 19th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
Just a quick reminder that the Bainbridge Studios office will be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday this Thursday and Friday, November 22nd and 23rd. We’ll be back on our regular schedule on Monday the 26th.
To all of our clients and readers, we’d like to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and a successful Black Friday!
A Lazy Friday
Friday, November 16th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
Despite the best of intentions, sometimes you’re just not as productive as you’d like to be. The key, aside from not finding yourself in that position too often, is to learn to accept it when you do.
This afternoon was the perfect example.
While I had a very clear, well-planned agenda for things I needed to get done today, by the time lunch had passed, I found myself unfocused and struggling with the tasks at hand. Perhaps it was the culmination of a long week of project work, a lack of sleep (to which any new parent can attest), the ever-present Friday afternoon distraction of Layer Tennis, or the fact that a seemingly large scale anti-war protest materialized outside the office this afternoon (complete with hovering news helicopters). Or some combination of all of the above. Either way, I wasn’t getting a damn thing done past 1pm today, and once I accepted that fact, my tension dissipated.
Sometimes a little goofing off is the perfect way to recharge your batteries.
BTW, props to Aaron Draplin for doing the Pacific Northwest proud in this week’s Layer Tennis showdown.
Designing Email Marketing for Mobile Users
Thursday, October 25th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
Tamara Gielen of BeRelevant!, a blog focusing on best practices in email marketing, cited a range of statistics on business-to-business (B2B) email in a post this afternoon. The item that really caught my eye was the following stat:”The percentage of business people who regularly read business emails on their mobile devices (keyword “regularly”) was 37%, up from 30% just a year ago.”This is a significant percentage to consider for anyone sending marketing emails to customers, clients, etc.
Much has been made in recent months in garnering across-the-board support for CSS standards in HTML (graphic) emails, but marketers need to pay just as much attention to the mobile user. While some mobile devices fully support and render HTML emails (the iPhone is one such device that does an excellent job of this), others are very spotty in their support for such messages (my last phone, a Blackberry, regularly chewed up HTML emails into an unreadable mess).
What’s the solution? Well, ideally, implementation of HTML and CSS support in mobile email apps. That however, is a bit beyond the control of Joe Businessman. What you can do, however, is make sure you’re covering your bases with not only the graphic/HTML versions of your marketing emails, but pairing those with plain text versions. Email marketing services such as Campaign Monitor support and encourage the practice of sending plain text versions with all HTML campaigns; the idea being that mobile users (and customers who elect, on for perceived security reasons, to block/not enable HTML emails in their mail app) will be able to view the plain text version. Granted, it may not pack the visual punch of your snazzy graphic-based email, but at least the core message is getting through, right?
Here at Bainbridge Studios, we’ve begun pairing plain text versions with clients’ HTML emails in a number of cases, and are in the process of updating our workflow to implement this practice across the board. Our goal is to send both HTML and plain-text versions of all customer marketing emails before the end of the year, and we’re on track to complete that transition.
We feel that’s the best way to offer full value to our clients for their email marketing practices and to insure that their messages are read by the widest audience possible.
It’s Been a Busy Week
Friday, June 1st, 2007 | Tom Carmony
Despite the short post-holiday work week, we’ve managed to get a couple major projects wrapped up. Yesterday, we launched the new website for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California Commission for Jobs and Economic Growth, and today we went live with a new site for Sunridge Medical Wellness Centers in Scottsdale, AZ.