Related Posts

Is your website up? Are you sure?

“What would you do for 25% more sales?”
It’s panicked gift-buying season, and I got mail this morning from Boutique Academia, part of their final push before Christmas.
Inbox__18_975_messages__26_unread_
They’re hoping for some Christmas sales in the next three days. They do make some lovely jewelry – ask Laura about her necklace some time – so I clicked on their mail.
Failed_to_open_page
That’s not good. I like Boutique Academia, and fixing email and dns problems is What We Do, so I took a look.
Safari isn’t quite as bad with not-exactly-truthful error messages as Internet Explorer, but I still don’t really trust it. Perhaps the problem is with the click-tracking domain in the email, rather than with boutiqueacademia.com? So I open the base page at http://boutiqueacademia.com, get redirected immediately to https://www.boutiqueacademia.com – which fails to load.
15542402_1501169219896451_6901276936993410491_n
OK, start with the basics. DNS.

Read More

Tools aren’t a luxury

I was on the phone with a colleague recently. They were talking about collecting a bit of data over the weekend and mentioned how great it was they had the tools to be able to do this. Coincidentally, another colleague mentioned that when the subscription bombing happened they were able to react quickly because they had a decent tool chain. I’ve also been working with some clients who are dealing with compliance issues but don’t have the tools they need.

Read More

Creating emails

Email is, still, primarily a written medium. This means that good copywriting is crucial. Today I opened up an email and the pre-header says:
Laura, should have get your Naturals Sample Bag.*Web Version
Editing
Wait. What?
Maybe they mean “should have got”? But that’s implying they’re sending out free sample bags to everyone. That can’t be right. But I can’t tell because with images off that’s the only text in the mail, except the footer and legal information.
When you load images you get a little more clarity. Apparently, making a big enough purchase trigger a bunch of samples to be included in your delivery. So the line possibly should be “Laura, get your natural samples bag.”
Maybe it was intentional. After all it did get me to load images to see what the email was about.

Read More