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  • May 18

    Modern Web Layouts, Part 1: What is Responsive Design?

    The hottest trend in web development today is responsive design.  But what does the term really mean?

    Simply, responsive design means that content is designed to best-display based on the width of the viewer’s screen - be it mobile, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer. In recent years, we were at the mercy of devices as to how a website was displayed on our mobile devices. A wide site meant lots of awkward side-scrolling to get into site content. A long, content-heavy site mean lots of vertical scrolling.

    How does responsive design work?

    Responsive design...

  • Apr 18

    5 Tips For a Smooth ESP Migration

    Over the past few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to assist multiple clients migrate their email marketing campaigns from one email service provider to another. As there are many moving parts to be taken care of, both in setting up the platform and performing any necessary configuration, I thought it would be helpful to outline a few independent elements that will help make the switch a much smoother process.

    1: Sending a Whitelisting Campaign

    As you migrate from one Email Service Provider (ESP) to another, you will most likely obtain a new domain or subdomain. This change...

  • Mar 23

    When was the last time you freshened up your email newsletter?

    If your answer is anything over 6 months ago, now is a great time to dive into some analytics, and break out the red pencils. Don’t start pushing those pixels just yet; it’s time to think like a marketer and put some numbers behind your creative decisions.

    Pull some analytics reports and find out what subscribers are clicking and what they aren’t. Your target areas here should be: text links, image links, social media links, share-to-social buttons, company logos in the header, footer information links, banner ads, and anything else that a reader might...

  • Mar 09

    Why use Drupal?

    We sing the praises of the Drupal open source content management system a lot around here, and we get asked why we like it so much with great regularlity. For this entry, I thought I'd try to distill it down to the key things that make Drupal great. I'm a programmer by day (and by night a lot of the time), so I could go into things about software design, systems architecture, development methods and frameworks - but I'd rather start at the highest level - the three pillars of Drupal Zen if you will.

    It's easy to find glowing praise and fiery criticism of...

  • Feb 16

    Designing The Email Call To Action


    one one-thousand...
    two one-thousand...
    three one-thousand...

    You only have 3 to 5 seconds to convince a subscriber to click on something in your email.  3 to 5.  That’s it.  The time it took you to read those first three lines. The other options are save it for later, delete it, or mark it as spam.  At the end of the line, every email is deleted. It’s what happens BEFORE an email is deleted that makes it count. An email message can begin a conversation.  It’s not the whole sale.  It merely initiates.

    First...

  • Feb 15

    The Importance of Email List Hygiene

    As an email marketer you're probably more concerned with email design, content, subject lines and of course list growth. Now don't get me wrong, these are all important components of a successful email campaign, but there is something else that is equally important but often overlooked - list hygiene. Sending campaigns to inactive or invalid emails addresses sends a message to the ISPs that you don't know about following industry standards. Today, more than ever, it is essential for marketers to adopt list hygiene practices if they want to stay ahead of the game.

    Validate...
  • Feb 08

    An Introduction to Content Type Image

    We recently released our new Drupal 6 module called Content Type Image.  It is a simple helper module we have developed that is designed to give content creators a more intuitive node/add screen by providing a thumbnail preview of the content types available on the site.

    When configuring any content management system (CMS), you want to make the content creation process as easy as possible. If you've worked in a CMS long enough, chances are you've run into situations where content has been created using the wrong template type.  It can be confusing for a content...

  • Jan 02

    A New Year, A New Dashboard

    When was the last time your dashboard was updated? A year? A couple years? Never? Are you…heaven forbid…not even looking to your metrics regularly to answer key business questions and drive your business? If it's the latter, you are not alone!

    Never fear, with the New Year upon us and new data sets eagerly awaiting analysis, now is the perfect time to update your corporate metrics dashboard to better guide your business decisions in 2012, or create one from scratch! However, before throwing away existing reports, first ask yourself these questions:

    What...
  • Dec 15

    I Am Not A Spammer…REALLY!

    Getting reported as a spammer even when you are not can be upsetting, especially when you have received the recipients' permission to send them messages. Whatever the reasons, complaints have a negative impact on your sender reputation. Here are 4 common reasons why someone may complain about your emails, and how you can prevent it.

    The subscriber is doing what comes easiest.

    In web-based mail clients like AOL, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo it is all too easy to click the "spam" button to get rid of unwanted email messages. In fact, subscribers look at this as...

  • Nov 28

    QR Code Best Practices

    Allora Media has it's roots in direct mail, so the advent of the QR code was a potential boon for us. They promise to solve the age-old promise of driving people from print to the web, where a customer can fulfill a transaction at a much lower cost. As with any new technology, the standards for the use of these scannable wonders are seldom followed. With that in mind, we have compiled our hit list of best practices for using QR codes

    QR Code Tip: Why is there a QR code on your website?

    QR codes go onto printed materials: postcards, flyers, catalogs, tradeshow displays,...

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