Over the last few days Onlineassist4u has been actively involved in helping Travel with Me with their first email newsletter.
Travel with Me are a Perth based travel agency who specialise in linking solo travellers to tours (some hosted by Travel with Me themselves) as well as planning/organising special interest groups such as hikers, art & crafts, cooking and gardening clubs.
The business is the brainchild of local travel industry expert Annette Porter and, in our humble opinion, is a sure fire winner for those looking for something unique and interesting in this packed marketplace.
The Email Newsletter
Travel with Me have a sizeable list of clients on their email list eager to find out about all the new deals on offer and to keep up to date with relevant information from the travel experts.
The brief for Onlineassist4u was to produce an email newsletter template that provided Travel with Me with the opportunity to showcase their products, services and knowledge in a format that reflected the company’s website design (not an Onlineassist4u product) and provided information in a clean, refreshing and easy to access format.
Travel with Me had already made a great decision with regards to their email marketing partner when they selected MailChimp to host and manage their mailing list and send out their email newsletters.
MailChimp have a number of inhouse email templates, however, this option was unable to provide the level of customisation or usability required to meet Travel with Me’s high standards.
Excerpt from the Travel with Me Email Newsletter
Onlineassist4u worked closely with Travel with Me Marketing staffer, Michelle Neil, to take the company’s informative and well written copy and present that in a well laid out, visually striking and user friendly format.
Onlineassist4u provided a hosted “demo page” where Annette and Michelle could quickly and easily privately view the email newsletter as it took shape enabling them to highlight inconsistencies and request changes throughout the development process. It was a very interactive experience.
The result of our joint efforts can be viewed here… Travel with Me Newsletter.
Some Challenges In Designing An Email Newsletter
Email newsletters are like a mini website in that they can be displayed in a browser and all of the same tools that are used to develop a website are also used to develop an email newsletter.
There are a few very big restrictions for email newsletters that had this web developer going back to some of the coding practices I had not used for years.
The main problem is that email newsletters are primarily viewed in email clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, Gmail, Yahoo Mail Hotmail etc.
Some of these mail clients have been around for quite a while and some just refuse to allow us to use many of the advances in coding that have made web design much more efficient and flexible in recent years.
Firstly you must stick to a rigid narrow width of around 600 pixels (or just over 8 cm). This ensures the newsletter displays in the majority of email clients.
You must use inline styles and tables (a practice that went out in web design circles quite a few years ago now for its lack of flexibility and inefficient coding) which can become very time consuming and inflexible, especially when making changes. The use of Cascading Style Sheets ( CSS ) is totally out.
There is no such thing as multiple “pages”. Content is displayed on one long “scrollable” page so, for longer newsletters, you must provide great navigation so that the reader is able to find and click on links to articles that interest them.
What Makes A Great Email Newsletter ?
A great email newsletter primarily provides interesting and relevant information (Annette and Michelle are certainly winners here).
The design shoud reflect your corporate style (especially the design of your website) to deliver enhanced brand recognition.
The email newsletter must be simple and intuitive for the reader to navigate.
Graphics and relevant images should be used to add interest to the newsletter whilst breaking up large areas off text and making the newsletter less “intimidating” for the reader.
As in all good web design, white space and color can also be used to add interest and delineation between sections.
A “text only” version must be provided for those email clients that will only accept a “text only” version of the newsletter.
I think the Travel with Me team and Onlineassist4u nailed it with this one.
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