Author: Josh Green

With his superior design skills and intuitive understanding of how people actually interact online, Josh creates the emails and web sites that clients want - even before they knew what they wanted! Josh likes HTML, CSS and beer.

User experience in email design

Posted by Josh Green
July 20, 2021

Email is a fantastic graphical way of communicating with others, however so often in email design the primary function of an email is forgotten. Sure, some emails are just to pass on information, but nearly every single other email is about selling. It is currently impossible to complete a purchase with just an email but this is no bad thing, it streamlines the email’s function. The email exists solely to drive traffic to a web page. The email exists solely to drive traffic to a web page. This key idea is so often lost in email design – often it is closely tied to reproducing a similar or lesser version of a website instead. I think this is a terrible…

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Email Coding 101

Posted by Josh Green
May 19, 2021June 9, 2021

It can be daunting writing HTML from scratch especially if you haven’t written any HTML email code before. As someone who has coded email for over 15 years I promise you it is not as hard as it looks and everyone had a day one someday. Being able to read, write and understand HTML is a fantastic first step into understanding the internet and is a valuable life skill even outside of the email marketing environment. In this post I will guide you through the first simple steps of hand-coding your first email. Before we even get started it is worth pointing out that email code is quite different from ‘modern’ HTML you might find on the web, and without…

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Getting started with Email Marketing for small businesses Part 2.

Posted by Josh Green
July 12, 2019July 15, 2019

Once you have started to send email marketing to your customers it’s important to listen to any feedback you get from your subscribers. You should also keep tailoring your emails based on how they perform. One easy way to do this is use a click map. This is a graphic representation of where in your emails you are getting the most clicks. Many larger businesses have quarterly or biannual email reviews, this practice could easily be adopted by a small business. These email design reviews are a great way to evaluate your emails. Use these reviews to build on successful elements within your email designs. With this knowledge you might want to make popular sections larger, more in depth or…

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Getting started with Email Marketing for small businesses Part 1.

Posted by Josh Green
January 4, 2019July 12, 2019

Starting out with email marketing for small businesses can seem like an impossible task. You have to make time to create content, you need to update your list of subscribing customers and many other tasks. All these tasks take time out of your work day. Marketing with email can also seem like a legal minefield with GDPR legislation to consider as well as all the laws governing spam email. Email marketing does not need to be difficult, however. It is easily the cheapest and most effective form of Marketing. 73% of marketers rate email as the number one digital channel for ROI (Marketing Week). It is also more often people’s preferred method of receiving marketing communication. Litmus’ 2016 State of…

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A collection of email best practices

Posted by Josh Green
September 18, 2018

Make better use of a Preference Centre Building more complete customer profiles not only helps your business but allows you to send emails to your customers relevant to their needs. By continually adding to each customer’s profile you not only learn about them but you’re better able satisfy their wants. One of the best ways to collect customer data is through a preference centre. It’s important that a preference centre functions (as the name describes) as a preference centre. Customers should be asked what their wants and needs are and they should also be able to come back and amend those preferences at any time. Basic demographic information should really be captured through sign-up forms or new customer profiles created…

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The top 6 features of great email in 2018

Posted by Josh Green
January 4, 2018June 18, 2018

Web fonts It has been possible to use web fonts for a while in email but brands have really only just started to use them from the end of 2017. This technology provides a massive improvement in terms of the overall look and feel for most brands. The ability to use custom fonts right within the email is a huge step forward both for email designers and also for the companies trying to show their branding correctly. One major additional advantage of web fonts in email is of course the opportunity of being able to include much more content of the email in actual html text. This improves the accessibility of an email not to mention the deliverability and overall…

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Responsive Email at the end of 2016

Posted by Josh Green
November 10, 2016November 10, 2016

So, during the mid 90s the web standards movement was started and W3C was formed. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organisation for the World Wide Web. The web standards movement had a large influence on the internet of today from initially pushing the idea of using CSS to style web pages all the way to adding accessibility to web pages. Creating a widely accepted standard in the various web technologies – CSS, HMTL and JS – allowed the web to accelerate as well as ultimately bring the various available browsers to offer an almost uniform experience across the web. During this period email marketing remained largely unchanged. Email marketing emails were built much like…

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How retail should use email marketing

Posted by Josh Green
August 9, 2016September 5, 2016

Email marketing can be the most effective sales support for retail companies. It is undisputed that it is by far the best value for money form of advertising. For every £1 spent, email marketing generates a £38 ROI. Email has been claimed to be more than 40 times more effective than Facebook or Twitter. This is easy to imagine as people have absolute control over their inbox in choosing to receive emails from their favourite brand it is reasonable to assume a retailer will be sending emails to people who want their emails. People have very little control over the type of content they receive via social media and most retailer brand messaging gets lost, not least because people don’t…

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How to recover from an email disaster

Posted by Josh Green
June 28, 2016November 10, 2016

Anyone who has ever had to send an email marketing campaign will know “The Fear” – the sense of dread you get when you personally are about to hit the go button on an email that is going to be received by potentially thousands and thousands of people. This fear also never leaves you. I have been sending email for 11 years now and I’m still very nervous when I send out emails. I always say, “there is ALWAYS time for another preview!”. Sometimes even to clients. I often test and retest to myself just to make sure I have got every last mistake fixed before the final send. But mistakes do happen to everyone at some point. It’s how…

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How to improve the preheader text in your email campaigns

Posted by Josh Green
May 25, 2016May 27, 2016

Preheader text is a small but vital part of every email marketing campaign. If written correctly in conjunction with a concise, benefit focused subject line the two can create a powerful 1-2 combo to greatly increase open rates for your email campaigns. Open rates are arguably one of the most important statistics for email campaigns because without any opens you’re not going to get any clicks. In most email clients within the list of received emails you will see three pieces of information. The From name, the subject line and the second line is the Preheader text. The Subject line is usually darker or slightly larger in size, however most clients allow more space for Preheader text so ideally it…

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