Categories
High-Voltage Newsletter

Jan. vol 1.

Content Creation Tips
“Embedded” Video in Your Email
Clients frequently ask, “Can I embed a video in my email.” The short answer is “yes and no.”

Here’s the longer answer: If you want your email recipients to see an online video, you can do it in a few simple steps, but technically the video will not be “embedded” in your email.

This email demonstrates the idea. Click here or on the screen to the right to see the video we’ve added to this email. The basic steps: 1) Put your video on YouTube or some other site. 2) Create an image of one frame from your video. 3) Add the image to your email. 4) Link to the place where your video is hosted.

We’ve created an instructional video that demonstrates all these steps so you can see how we did this.
How to…
Retrieve Your Password

If you have forgotten your password, there’s an easy mechanism to get a new password.
On the login screen, click on Forgot PasswordEnter your username and email addressAnswer the security question and click Retrieve PasswordAn email will be sent with a temporary password.If you wish to change your password or the retrieval security question, click “User Settings” (right of the MarketVolt logo at the top of the page). 
Recent Changes
Recipient Quick Add

It’s now extremely easy to add email addresses to your MarketVolt database.* You can use this feature to add new recipients, or assign characteristics to current recipients

Simply go to Recipients -> Add Recipients -> Add Multiple Recipients. You’ll see a text box where you can type or paste in the email addresses. Select the briefcase, the characteristic, hit Add and that’s it!

*This feature adds email addresses only. It does not allow pasting in any additional recipient fields.

New Template Released
Box – Banner Image on Left and Text on Right
This new layout allow you to create templates with the following features:
A 200 pixel image in the left area of the banner which can be linked to a website. Fully editable per email
Editable text on the right side of the banner which would be useful for newsletter titlesMessages have a simple headline followed by a thin line (called a rule) to draw readers attention.
Categories
High-Voltage Newsletter

2011 December Vol 1

Interactive Survey
Please let us know if you’d like…

…MarketVolt to store sent versions of your mailings online.


As we plan enhancements for MarketVolt, we will ask your opinion to guide our plans. We’re thinking about adding functionality that would make it easy for you to save a copy of any email you send. This may include allowing you to:
Create links (for your web site or other places) that point to online versions of your mailings that we host for you.
Publish a copy of any mailing on your own web site.
Allow readers to tag specific mailings on social media (i.e. “like” this mailing on Facebook or share on twitter).
Please click here to vote yes or no on this functionality and to offer suggestions on this or other enhancements you’d like to see.

Why should you vote?

If you want this functionality, your “yes” vote and suggestions will help to convince us that we should push ahead with this idea.

If you don’t want this functionality, your “no” vote and suggestions for other enhancements will help redirect the development agenda.
Marketing Tips
List-Building is Easier than You May Think. Here Are Some Tips…
Your most valuable asset is not your inventory, employees, or intellectual property; it’s your list—the herd of people with whom you can communicate regularly to sell your products and services.

We have a several articles on our blog that can help you with this. Here are two we recommend:
An oldie but goodie from 2009 includes a includes a list-building checklist. If you answer, “no” to any of the questions, you’re missing list-building opportunities that could drive your business forward.Tips to make your web site a list-building machine. We just published this one this week. It includes four things you must do to collect email addresses on your web site.Here’s a link to all of our articles about list-building.
Formatting Tips
Wrap text around your images

Image placement and text wrapping can go a long way in making your emails look professional. Here’s a smart tip to add a little white space around your image so that your text doesn’t bump up against the image.
When selecting the image, be sure to select the alignment. Once your image is inserted, click on the image, then click the image properties button  found in the lower editing portion of the screen.

To add white space around the image, enter numbers in the margin area.
By entering the same number for the top and bottom, and left and right, you’ll ensure Outlook 2007/10 and other email clients adds the space you want.

The example at the right has 5 pixels of white space surrounding the image.


Recent Changes
See Who Opted Out

A common question received by the support team is, “How can I tell who opted out of my mailing?”

That answer is now easier to find on the statistics screen. In addition to seeing the number of recipients that clicked the opt out link, you can also filter the delivery grid to see their email addresses. Simply click the >> in the details column, then filter the list by opted out. You can then easily assign a characteristic, download or export to a spreadsheet.

Coming Soon…
More Control Over Your Sign Up Page
Our included email signup pages have been pretty boring – a banner, some plain text and a button. Ho Hum. Soon, we’ll be adding more editing functions so you can add some sparkle and additional branding to your sign up pages.

Check out our sign up page.
Categories
High-Voltage Newsletter

November Vol 2

ontent Creation Tips
Subject Line Tips
Emails can serve your business goals only if people open them. The most critical factor in email open rates: the subject line.

The subject line is the headline for your email. If the headline is not compelling and inviting, the reader will not continue – the recipient won’t open the email.

We’ve written a great guide for you entitled  “10 Secrets to Write Email Subject Lines that Sell

Here’s one of the 10 tips: Ask a provocative question. “Would you like to make perfect lasagna?” is a better subject line than “Recipe of the Month: Lasagna.” Here’s a great subject line we saw for a weekly technology newsletter: “Will my device work with Windows 7?”

Want more subject line tips? Get them here…
Formatting Tips
Paste from Word

Trying to paste into a mailing from another source but keep losing the formatting? Frustrating right?

Here’s a simple process to avoid this problem in the future.
Select and copy the text from the other source.In your mailing select the text you want to replace:Place your cursor at the beginning of the text,Press and hold the shift key while you click the cursor in place at the end of the text.
Use the “Paste Plain Text”  button to paste in the new text
Recent Changes
PNGs

In response to many client requests, MarketVolt now allows you to add .PNG images to your mailings — along with .GIF and .JPG images that we have always allowed.

PNGs have been around for several years, but many email clients did not support them. Fearing that you might create emails with PNG images that would not appear in those clients, we chose not to allow PNG images in MarketVolt emails.

We added the capability recently because virtually all of the known email clients now display PNG images properly. You can insert PNG images in your MarketVolt mailings and be confident that your recipients will see them.

The PNG format is great for graphics and images that aren’t photographs — especially images with transparent backgrounds (the image in this message is a PNG with a transparent background). We used to recommend the .GIF format for such images, but we now recommend that you use PNG format for such images. We still recommend the JPG for photographs.
Coming Soon…
Easy Email Entry for Adding Recipients
Ever find that you have just a few email addresses you need to add? And you don’t need to enter in all their information; just need to get the addresses in the characteristic for a mailing that your ready to send. Soon, we’ll be making this a whole lot easier. 

Instead of doing an upload or manually adding one by one, we’ll be adding a new page that will allow you to simply paste in your list of emails.
Interactive Survey
Quick feedback question…
Have you created or customized an online signup form for your mailing list?

Click to answer now.
 (And learn more about this feature…)
Check Out Our New Web Site
A few weeks ago, we launched our new web site. Check it out here…

We think it tells the MarketVolt story in a clearer more concise way than the previous site. We’ll be adding new content over the weeks ahead and tying this site more closely with our blog — on which we share interactive marketing tips and ideas.



If you have any suggestions for the site, please don’t hesitate to share them with us.