We will be bringing you lots of helpful tips in the coming months, starting with our top tips for getting email marketing right!

1. Avoid spamming

To make sure your emails don’t end up in spam land - avoid using words such as '£££', 'DISCOUNT', '!!!', 'FREE' (and naughty words!!) in the subject line and the content of your email. Most email marketing software give you a spam rating for your email before you send it out so that you can amend the content if you need to.

2. Make your click throughs bold and clear

Make sure your links and call to actions are bold and obvious. This means bolding, underlining and/or using a contrasting colour for links to distinguish from normal static text. Try to include text links as well as a graphical buttons just in case your subscriber has their images disabled by default.

3. Keep it personal

By simply starting your email with “Hi [subscriber_name]” instead of the general “Hi there”, you can increase both your reading and click-thru rates by vast amount.* If you want to try and run your own test on this, try segmenting your email send, one half with no personalisation, and the other half with personalisation. Look at your reports a week after the send and see what works best ... and run with it ...

4. Pick your send day wisely

Online research analysts have said that the best days to send email to your subscribers are Tuesday and Wednesday, as this is when people are more receptive to communication. If you have a normal 9-5 job, think about how stressed, busy and tired you are on a Monday, and how excited you are on a Friday to get out of the office. Best avoid those days to send an email. But again, test it and see what works for you. You may find your particular readers open their emails on a weekend, theres no reason why you can't send an email on a Sunday if it works!

5. Consistency is key for strengthening your brand

Make sure you keep the look and feel consistent from issue to issue. This will help to maintain and strengthen your brand. Have a graphic designer come up with a striking template that you can use time and time again, that small cost at the beginning of your campaign really does make the difference.

6. On time, every time

After time, your subscribers will come to expect your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day and time, meaning that they are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.

7. Grab attention quickly with your subject line

You have about half a second to catch your subscribers attention with the subject line of your email. Try to specify a benefit that the subscriber can expect by reading your email. Give them a bit of money off or entice them in to entering an exciting competition, this tends to works wonders!

8. The Preview Pane

Email clients such as Outlook show a preview of an email when it’s selected in your inbox. Try to include some interesting content at the very top of your email to grab your readers attention. Having a list of contents at the top of the email will help the reader establish which parts they would like to read, having the link click straight through to the coresponding part in the email will be really helpful for the reader and stop them getting overwhelmed, especially with a text heavy email. Help them choose the content they are most interested in.

9. Find out what works for you - test, test and test again

The key to email marketing is to TEST, TEST, and TEST again! Get to know what works for you, test positions of links, test graphical links versus text links, test subject lines. Email marketing software will help you create tests and report on them.

10. Some interesting statistics

The average open rate, based on studies in 2009 is 22.2% and the average click-through rate is 5.9%.*

At jammmedia, we have years of valuable experience designing, building and sending email communications to and for clients big and small, so if you need any help or advice, just give us a call, or email on info@jammmedia.co.uk.

*Further reading:
mailchimp.com - resources and charts
campaignmonitor.com - email clients stats

jammmedia launch Creative Boom Reading

jammmedia are proud to announce the launch of the twentieth and final Creative Boom Hub for the national online magazine that aims to celebrate, inspire and support the creative industries throughout the UK!

Creative Boom Reading is an exciting expansion of Creative Boom - which has hubs up and down the country. We, the team at jammmedia are very happy to be part of this movement and will be bringing you all the latest creative news, events and opportunities regarding the creative industries across Reading and Berkshire as a whole.

If you'd like to be featured, simply email us at reading@creativeboom.co.uk and we'll load your story onto our website. This is a great and free way of raising your profile, boosting your website in terms of Search Engine Optimisation and networking with other creative folk in Reading.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Lucy McShane

Co-owner & Web Director - jammmedia

Editor - Creative Boom Reading

Check out our igloo!

Just thought I would share a pic of the igloo we helped make late last night. It looked a lot more impressive when it was being built mind you as you could see the 'bricks' ... might make something much better tonight ... watch this space!

jammmedia staff spotlight - this time it's Lucy ...

1. Describe your design style?

Lots of white space, big imagery, massive typography, lots of creative touches.
I find it easy to adapt to each project, so my style is always changing. I don't get much time to design these days as I am mostly developing, but I LOVE getting into Photoshop when I can.

2. What is your fave tool or equipment?

I love my iPhone camera, it's not an amazing camera at all but I like to take photos all the time, to capture my surroundings and things that inspire me.

3. Describe your fave space to work?

Depends on what project I am working on. I love to work on my own, with my earphones blasting when I am coding, doesn't matter what is around me. But when I am designing, I like to be surrounded by books and magazines and my sketchbooks to get my brain thinking in that way.

4. What is your favourite place to gain inspiration?

I love bookshops and stationery shops, cafe's and streets. I like to wander around and see things.

5. Career defining moment so far

Setting up jammmedia, it's been hard work, but it is very much worth the effort!

6. Fantasy comission?

I would love to be involved in a project where I can design a space for a fashion brand, whether it be a shop or boutique or a catwalk show. I really really love the buzz, but not the pretention of fashion which is why I stayed on the graphics side of it.

7. Best creative facility near to where you live?

That would be nowhere! Reading seems to be a bit of a non creative town and I do wish there was more to offer in the way of museums/galleries/shows etc. I tend to get inspired by the space immediately round me, so doesn't matter too much. When I can spare the time, I like to go to London to the markets and galleries as this really gets my creative juices flowing!!

8. How do you keep up with the design industry?

I subscribe to Design Week, Grafik and Creative Review. I read these like bibles and carry them around with me all the time. I use lots of blogs and subscribe to lots of bits and bobs so am pretty up to date. In this job you cannot afford to walk around with your eyes shut otherwise you will get out of touch so quickly. You have to live and breath web design and development to do well.

9. Favourite online publication

Smashing Magazine is a good allrounder, and has some really useful posts.

10. Favourite book (design or something else)
My current favourite book is Studio Culture which I have only read the intro of as I haven't had time to sit and read it yet!

11. Your goals for 2010?
Read more, play more, make more, draw more.

Ciao for now. Lucy

School Of Saatchi

Hi,

Just thought i'd say that i actually quite liked the 'tree trunk impaled on a length of fence' work that won the School of Saatchi BBC program. Modern Art is, in my uneducated opinion, interesting. It certainly stirs debate, which can only be good. The art is one thing, but some of the explanations and critics are above me. I'd love to have a go at creating something like this. Thats not meant to be a condesending comment in that i think anyone can do this, but i suppose i need to promote some creative ambition, bearing in mind what we do!! Anyway, congratulations to Eugenie Scrase, the best piece won.

James

jammmedia designs Decon Sciences advertising campaign material

A message from Andy C

We were approached by Decon Sciences to come up with a series of adverts to help promote a non-conformance and complaints management system. The designs were greatly received and will feature in a number of clinical service publications.

jammmedia banner artwork featured on Creative Boom website.

A message from Andy C

Last week I submitted a banner to appear on Creative Boom's website, much to my delight it was greatly received and went live on Friday 28th August 2009.

As a designer it is always nice to get exposure and recognition for your work.

Here at jammmedia, the team have a wealth of experience, however, as a young and recently formed on and offline design agency, coverage such as this is invaluable.