He may be a Spuds Spurs fan, but Red C Account Director Steve White is not completely useless. He knows an awful lot about Email Marketing for one thing. So when he gave me a 700-page document from MarketingSherpa called Best Practices in Email Marketing I thought to myself, this is probably worth reading.*

MarketingSherpa is a research firm that specializes in tracking what works in all aspects of marketing (and what does not.) Their goal: to give marketers of the world the stats, inspiration, and instructions to improve their email marketing results.

According to their Research Manager Stefan Tornquist this guide was written “to provide one-stop guidance on building a ‘best in class’ email program, whether you’re managing an enterprise level marketing department or a small business.”

Read more…

Want to own a piece of original art by the current enfants terribles of British Art, Jake and Dinos Chapman for £4.95? Then make haste to Liberty’s in London this week and buy a copy of AnOther Magazine’s Decade in Style Issue.  Apparently each person buying a copy of the magazine from Liberty will be entered into a prize draw to win one of 5 banknotes illustrated by the Chapmans. And you get 5p change from a fiver for your fiver.

I like this cheeky little promotion. It’s a genuine chance to own a bit of the Chapman’s art without having the bank balance of Charles Saatchi. These naughty notes bear all the trademarks of the Chapman’s subversive wit (complete with Goya references) without living with the full horror of a Chapman installation in your front room.

Read more…

If you want to improve your business writing, be more like Satan.

That’s the advice John Simmons offers at the end of his Writer’s Materials Trilogy. Don’t worry. We’re not talking Satan in the epitome-of-all-things-evil kind of way here. Rather the Satan who appears in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Now for those of you not up to speed with your 17th century blank verse epic poetry, Paradise Lost begins with Satan and his dark angel buddies being banished to Hell by God, after a failed attempt at taking over Heaven.

Read more…