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Designing newsletters for Outlook 2007

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Have you played around with Outlook 2007 yet?  There are some great features, but also a few changes that make a big difference in how your email works.

Our Creative Director Tim Newton came up with some helpful tips and tricks for designing a newsletter to play friendly in Outlook 2007.  You can read the entire Help File here with great visuals and explanations, but read on for the short and sweet version:

  1. Design your layout without any background colors or images – but creative with border or backgrounds that blend into the layout! (see the newsletter image to the left as an example)
  2. You can use a tiled background in Outlook 2007, but must put it into the body tag and specify the image path like this:

    <style type="text/css" media="screen">
        body {
            margin: 0px;
            padding: 0px;
            color: #666;
            background: #5a200e url("http://www.creativeleak.com/images/nl1/bg_Tile.gif")  } 
    </style>

  3. Background colors can be used in a table or a div, but only if there’s not another table or div inside of it.
  4. Try adding these elements to your email designs but remember, the key to any good looking design is what the content looks like

Too busy to design an Outlook 2007-friendly newsletter?  Contact us today and let us know what our awesome design team can create for your organization!

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Google’s Open Social – Good News for Tendenci!

Techcrunch pre-announced Google’s Open Social social software developer APIs today. This is very good news for Tendenci and a lot of other software companies! To explain.

Tendenci has always been written distributed. We have lots of small sites and they do not authenticate against one common source. This distribution is modeled after other fault tolerant systems to function best on a very hostile Internet. And is of course in addition to backups, etc. Nothing is fool proof, but this is a common sense start for the benefit of our clients.

Unfortunately distribution brings with it a set of problems. I am registered on Tendenci, the Houston Technology Center, The Houston Red Cross, etc etc and they are all Tendenci sites. Yet my "friends" list on each site has to be recreated each time and it doesn’t mirror vox, or linkedin or facebook anyway. What a pain! In fact, I just don’t bother.

From the Techcrunch post:

OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined
by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core
functions and information at social networks:

  1. Profile Information (user data) (Tendenci users and userprofiles)
  2. Friends Information (social graph) (Tendenci contacts table)
  3.  Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff) (Tendenci eventlogs and authors table)

So the question is "on release can we really just connect Tendenci to Open Social?". Well it won’t completely be THAT easy, but pretty close. We already use third party authentication services and integrate with numerous vendors through an XML data interchange. And we won’t really know until we get to sink our teeth into the Open Social API. But right now it looks very promising. More as we learn more!

Ed

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User identities to show Online Social Connections

Did you know that from your Tendenci user profile you can add user identities to identify areas of social networks you are connected to?  Encourage your Tendenci users/members to add their identities to display social networks.  This is a great way to see who is socially connected to sites like Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, Digg etc.

After have you added your user identities, there will be a visual display of icons on your user profile of identities you have added and are connected to.

I am pushing to integrate blog identities here also. Check back soon.

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Thanks for a great Tendenci User Conference!

We had a really great Tendenci User Conference this year – thanks to our amazing clients and partners!  With around 100 attendees, there was a lot of connecting, knowledge sharing and Tendenci feedback going on.

For those who couldn’t make it this year (we missed you), we have uploaded our presentations from both the Tendenci User Conference and the Web Marketing Bootcamp training sessions.  Definitely check them out online!

Also be sure to take a peek at our User Conference photos and Anniversary party photos.  We had a really great time – especially as this was the first time that many of us got to meet clients that we spoke to so regularly.  Can’t wait to see you all next year!

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Read Schipul’s new Search Engine Marketing Blog!

Thesemblog Schipul’s Search Engine Marketing team has just recently launched the brand new ‘The SEM Blog‘ at www.thesemblog.com. 

It’s a great spot for current SEM clients and also for Web site administrators interested in learning handy tips and tricks for succeeding in the search engines.

Expect up-to-date search engine news, useful links and engaging posts on ways to convert online visitors to repeat customers.  You can subscribe to The SEM Blog’s RSS feed here and even talk back to us on the Schipul SEM forum here.

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Learn more about your site traffic with built-in statistics!

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Knowledge is power – especially on the Web where a good understanding of your site’s traffic patterns can mean the difference between growing your business and staying stagnant.

Tendenci’s built-in statistical reporting utilities enable you to learn what content is the most popular on your site, see how your email distribution lists have grown, how many contacts you have received through your site and much, much more.

Check out these great help files for more information on your Web site’s event logs:

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Monetizing your association’s Web site

Want some ideas on how to help make your Web site work for you?  Check out these revenue generating tips from Ed Schipul’s article:

  1. Membership fees –
    Organizations can increase membership and generate profit from their
    event online registrations and having a healthy organization.
  2. Job listings – Job boards are a proven money maker, with association Web sites like www.ppag.org and www.haf.org
    benefiting financially.  This is a valuable service to provide your
    members as it helps connect companies to good people and brings in
    extra dollars to grow your organization.
  3. Business Directories – Tendenci’s business directory module is another proven money maker, for example Only in Houston’s Creative Directory Listing.
    Some organizations choose to offer this as a member privilege, while
    others open the directory up to any and all interested businesses.
    Either way, it’s a valuable component of your association’s Web site.
  4. Newsletter sponsorships – Newsletter and email sponsorship opportunities, for the right vertical market, can produce great results! 
  5. Courses – Association Web sites like www.pharmacytechnician.org
    charge for continuing education through Tendenci with great success.
    Their pricing model is around $7 per course, or free with membership,
    which also drives membership.
  6. New lead generation
    – People being found on Tendenci sites typically renew their membership
    in that organization. This isn’t able to be directly tracked back to
    Tendenci like Membership Fees, but overall a healthy organization
    brings in more members and makes a profit.
  7. Banner Ads – Banner ad click through rates are rapidly decreasing, but it *is* a valid way to get brand impressions and does drive some traffic while providing revenue to the organization. www.spegcs.org is a good example of this.

How are you making YOUR Web site work for your organization?  Let us know – we love to hear your success stories!