MindComet

Video within email is finally becoming a reality

The holy grail of email marketing is finally becoming a reality, and the geniuses at Gmail are the proverbial Indiana Jones’ who’ve discovered it.  As far as I know, Gmail is the first browser-based email client to allow videos to display within their emails. In order to turn this feature on, enable YouTube previews under “Settings” > “Labs”.

Yes, yes, I know this was blogged about everywhere last week, but I haven’t had the chance to test it myself until today. And I don’t mean to sound exaggerated, but this has the potential to be pretty ground-breaking in the world of email marketing if you think about it.

If you’re an email marketer you have to turn off click-tracking within your ESP in order for the video to work.  The video will only display if the YouTube URL is in your HTML… not the unique URL your ESP creates in its place for click-tracking purposes.

I only have one other criticism with this: The video displays separated from the email—below it. You have to “unhide” the video for it to actually play. See below:

This is all well and good right now… But once they allow emails to include EMBEDDED YouTube video, then that my friends, will be Gmail’s overarching killer app.

With all things considered, I can’t wait until I get the opportunity to segment all of my Gmail users and send them an email with a YouTube video.  I suggest first sending out an email asking your Gmail subscribers if they’d like to receive videos in their emails. Provide them with the simple directions on how to enable the videos in their account.  A week later, start sending them videos relevant to their interests. I’m guessing your response rate will spike significantly.

If anyone has incorporated a video into any of their email campaigns, comment below.  I’d love to hear about the results!

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Posted by MindComet on Mar. 27, 2009

Gmail Unveils Multi Pane Viewing

Being the masters of all things related to email organization, Gmail has yet again outdone themselves.  They now have a new feature which allows users to simultaneously view multiple panes within one window.  You can save searches based on labels, which makes Gmail even more efficient for existing users and appealing for non-converted.

All you have to do is activate Gmail Labs, then enable Multiple Inboxes and click saves changes.

From there enter the “code” of your label by searching for “label:coworkers”.  Anything that’s tagged with “coworkers” will pop up in a separate pane.  It also allows you to integrate multiple searches such as “is:drafts OR is:sent”.

With labels & themes, and now with multiple panes, Gmail is undoubtedly paving the way for the ultimate in email personalization.

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 06, 2009

Gmail Themes Causing Rendering Issues

With the release of the 30 or so Gmail themes this week, comes some predictable rendering issues.  Now, with the implementation of these themes, it’s even MORE important to style all of your emails using inline, longhand CSS.  The most obvious issues come with the attributes of backgrounds, text and links.

According to The Retail Email Blog, “approximately 40% of all retailers have the potential to be significantly affected by this rendering problem”. Click here for an example of the rendering issues that may persist.

You should have been doing it to begin with, but make sure to ALWAYS define background, text and link attributes independently—colors and otherwise.

If you see any other issues related to the Gmail themes pop up, comment below.

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Posted by MindComet on Nov. 25, 2008

Gmail Unveils New Design Themes

It looks like GMAIL is breaking the mold again; this time with allowing their users to add themes to their interfaces.  The “themes” tab still hasn’t been added to my account, but I’m sure it’ll only be a few days until I see it pop up.  Some of the themes are obviously tacky and for the youngin’s, but most are designed quite nicely.

The tab will be under the settings section when available which, again, will be within a few days.  I can’t wait to see when they roll out the “upload your own theme” function.

Check out some screenshots below:

Thanks to albert via lifehacker via the official gmail blog for pointing this out.

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Posted by MindComet on Nov. 19, 2008

1 Gmail Address = Infinity Gmail Addresses

Being obsessive compulsive like myself can be a drain.  Constantly trying to keep everything in it’s place; nice & neat and tucked away in their own little corner is a job unto itself.  I take the same OCD approach to every aspect of my life, especially organizing my email.  I definitely take pride on how my work mailbox is set up.  Every person, mailing list and company has their own dedicated folder.  But my personal Gmail mailbox is seriously lacking in the organizational department.  It’s neglected, to say the least… until now.

I stumbled upon this post at the Official Gmail Blog which was an earth-shattering epiphany of sorts.  Apparently you can do one of two things to ultimately help organize your inbox on the fly:

• By simply appending a “+“ after your email address followed by any combination of words and you can create as many variations of the same email address.  For example you can use “mindcometblog+mailinglists@gmail.com” to sort out all mailing lists.
• You can also add periods (“.“) within your email address such as “mindcomet.blog@gmail.com”  or “mind.comet.blog@gmail.com”.

So once you set all of those up you can set up organization variables (or filters) within your account that will direct specific email addresses to their corresponding folder.

Kudos to the Gmail team for keeping OCD freaks like myself sane and perpetually organized.

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Posted by MindComet on Apr. 30, 2008