by Gail Goodman, CEO, Constant Contact, Inc., a provider of email marketing and online survey tools for small organizations, including small businesses, associations, and nonprofits, was recently awarded the Stevie® Award for Best Customer Service Team in The 2008 American Business Awards; and Gail Goodman was recognized as Best Entrepreneur in the 2007 Stevie Awards for Women In Business.

The good news about email marketing is that you don't have to be a design expert to create great-looking campaigns. Most email marketing service providers offer a selection of professionally-designed templates to choose from. You will still have some design decisions to make: Which colors and fonts to use, what size to make the fonts, and how much text to include, for example. Follow these nine tips and you'll create emails that not only look good, but also get great results.

Tip 1: Include your logo in the same location each time.
Build your brand with every marketing email you send. One way to do this is to include your logo in all of your email communications. The best practice is to include it in the same location each time. By placing the logo in the header or somewhere high in the email the reader won’t have to scroll down to see it. Don't take up the whole preview screen.

Tip 2: Keep the preview panel in mind.
A recent study by Marketing Sherpa found that 70% of recipients that have the capability read their email through a preview panel. This means that your subscribers may only see a portion of your email before deciding to open it. Make sure your logo—as well as some enticing information about the email contents—can be seen in the preview pane.

Tip 3: Use color for emphasis.
While it might be tempting to use a lot of colors in your email campaigns, resist!  When deciding which colors to use, start with your company's colors. All of your emails should represent your visual brand, and a key component of that is using your colors consistently. Colors outside your brand should be saved for emphasis only.

One of our designers at Constant Contact uses a cooking metaphor: Just because you have every spice on your rack doesn't mean you have to use each one: just use a little bit here and there to add flavor. It's the same with email design: You only need a little color for the best effect.

Tip 4: Limit the number of fonts you use.
A good rule of thumb is to use a maximum of two fonts in your marketing emails, one for the body and the other for the headlines and subtitles. Use standard fonts like Arial, Times New Roman, or Verdana for the greatest readability. If you use a less-common font, some recipients may not have it and their computers will make a substitution that will change the format of your email.

Tip 5: Make your point clearly and quickly.
Get to the point quickly. The reality is that most people scan. You don’t get much longer than a second to capture their attention. If it needs longer for them to engage, you may lose them. With every moment, a reader is determining whether to keep reading or abandon your email.

With newsletters, your copy will be longer than that in a promotional email, but the concept of getting to the point still applies. I've found that most first drafts of articles can be chopped by as much as half while still conveying their message.

Tip 6: Pick photos that support your message.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Including images in an email campaign make it more attractive and help you communicate your message. But this isn't true of any image. If the photo is too busy or of poor quality it will distract the reader and reflect badly on your business.

When choosing an image for your campaign, look for one that is simple and relevant. You don't want to confuse readers. If the image doesn't support the message, it will only detract from what you're trying to communicate.

Tip 7: Don't embed your text in an image.
Many programs used to receive and read email have images turned off by default. To ensure that people with this default setting get your message, make sure the text is not embedded in an image.

Tip 8: White space is your friend.
What is white space? It's a resting place for the reader's eyes. Without it, your reader will not know where to look. Make sure that you have plenty of room between headlines, articles, and any other content you've included in your email.

Tip 9: Keep it simple.
In design, less is more. Emails that are visually uncluttered and have a clear message get a better response. The goal of your email is to get your readers to take some kind of action. You want them to visit your website, buy now, get more information, etc. A well-designed email will encourage readers to pay attention and make it easy for them to respond positively.
Copyright © 2008 Entrepreneur.com. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from Entrepreneur.com.

About Gail Goodman:
A small business expert and visionary, Gail has revolutionized the way that small businesses and organizations can effectively and affordably communicate with their customers, clients, and members. Since taking leadership of Constant Contact in April 1999, she has led the company to more than 200,000 customers worldwide and to an initial public offering in October 2007, when common shares of Constant Contact began trading on the NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol "CTCT." Gail was recently honored as the Best Entrepreneur in the 2007 Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and Constant Contact was named number 16 on Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 50 fastest-growing women-led companies.” A frequent speaker at industry events, Gail develops and tracks best practices in small-business success, email marketing, customer communications, and entrepreneurship. Gail is a member of the board of trustees and an executive officer of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, a member of the Board of Directors of the ESPC (Email Sender and Provider Coalition), and Chairman of the Board at Constant Contact. She holds a BA degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a MBA degree from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth.

About Constant Contact:
Constant Contact, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTCT) is a leading provider of email marketing and online survey tools for small organizations, including small businesses, associations, and nonprofits. For more information go to www.constantcontact.com or call (781) 472-8100.

by Anna Murray, President of the e*media division of tmg-e*media. She is the author of articles and books on content and media, and her blog, Content Is Queen was voted Blog of the Year in the 2007 Stevie Awards for Women In Business.

YouTube is bigger than France. No really. I learned that recently at the OMMA Video Conference in New York, put on by Media Post.

Here’s how those numbers work. According to Brian Cusack, Sales Manager of You Tube, France is a country of 68 million people. In March, You Tube’s Comscore number was 85 million visitors.

So, according to this logic, YouTube is the 4th largest country in the world, behind China, India, and the US. And, as I mentioned before, already well ahead of France.

YouTubers aren’t the only ones at this conference quoting YouTube numbers. Nor is it only this conference. In fact, citing stratospheric YouTube statistics is getting to be a sport among digital video enthusiasts. Here are some more…
A Levi’s viral ad placed on YouTube shows a guy jumping into a pair of 501 jeans. Literally, he’s bouncing on his bed while a partner holds the pair of jeans. Bounce, bounce, bounce, then WHOMP! He lands in the jeans. In the first day of this video being posted on YouTube, it got 1 million views.

Soulja Boy is a kid who created his own dance craze through posting his “Crank That” dance on YouTube. He got 26 million views. Then others, both amateurs and professionals, did their own Crank That dance videos. If you add up Soulja Boy’s views and his imitators, you end up with 500 million views.

And then (here’s the whopping number) in that same month of March–the one when YouTube beat France– the site had a total of 4.3 billion video views.

So, here’s the thing. Just as a point of reference: The population of Planet Earth is, at this moment, according to the World Population Clock, 6.75 billion. The population of the United States is somewhere around 310 million.

Is it just me, or do the online video numbers not add up? I’m willing to be convinced. I’m a huge fan of online video. Content must move into new formats if it is to survive.  But I have to ask, are the numbers real? If so, what on earth do they mean? Is there any way to compare them to offline numbers?

Put another way, if Soulja Boy’s knock-off videos got 500 million views, how come I never heard of it? Okay, perhaps I do live under a rock, but a lot of other people at the conference hadn’t heard of it either and I could tell just by looking at the attire they were a LOT hipper than I am.

Jonathan Miller, former Chairman and CEO of AOL and now founding partner at VC firm Velocity Interactive Group, began the conference by talking about measurement. He quoted a former boss speaking years ago about Nielsen. That network executive said: “The numbers are absolutely wrong. But relatively correct.” Miller called for better measurement as a key building block to the eventual monetization of online video.

Is it possible for numbers to be too large? Perhaps it is. How is a brand supposed to understand that YouTube is indeed bigger than France, and that its video views are regularly blowing away Super Bowl audiences? How does all that scale compare to TV audiences? Are products just flying off the shelves for companies that are creating these videos? If not, then what’s different? Is YouTube simply fragmentation aggregated? On an enormous scale? Maybe it’s not France. Maybe it’s more like the Milky Way.

Media buyers here say brands are scared. I don’t blame them.  I’m scared. “Billion” is a scary word, whatever way you slice it. They’re even throwing around the T word.
I concur with Jonathan Miller. Monetization will require an agreed-upon metric, however flawed. But we also need much deeper analysis than we currently have of what all those numbers mean.

Fine. I buy it. Maybe YouTube IS bigger than France. But if YouTube is now its own country then it needs a better Lonely Planet guide for marketers.

About Anna Murray:
Anna Murray is the president of the e*media division of tmg-e*media, inc., a technology and new-media consultancy based in New York. She has worked in interactive media for Fortune 500 brands and publishers. She is a frequent speaker at gatherings like Ad:Tech, and a writer for publications such as Marketing Sherpa. She can be reached at anna@tmg-emedia.com

Wingstop Restaurants was one of just a handful of companies to win multiple Stevie Awards in The 2008 (6th annual) American Business Awards last month, taking home Stevies for Best Overall Company (More Than 2,500 Employees) and Best TV Ad Campaign.

Wingstop has more than 600 restaurants open or in development across the U.S.A., and focuses on just one signature dish - chicken wings.

We recently spoke with Andy Howard, Executive VP of Marketing, Purchasing & R&D for Wingstop, about the company's origins, about what sets it apart from competitors, and what winning two Stevies has meant to Wingstop employees and franchisees.

		Listen to Our Interview With Andy Howard of Wingstop...

Blogs, or web logs, are all the rage these days. Each month in this space we'll point you to several blogs that we think might be of interest to you.

BlogHer : The online community for women who blog.
Web Worker Daily : Offers practical tips for anyone who uses the web for work abd wants to use the web to be more productive, more connected and more successful.
Rain Today : Published by the Wellesley Hills Group, RainToday.com is an online resource for insight, advice, and tools for growing a service business.
AstroPixie : Interesting info on astronomy, science, and life.