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An introduction to HTML email . . .

You know when you wake up suddenly and find yourself not where you were just a moment ago? A heavy dissonance ringing between where your mind wanted to go and where you find yourself now. You take a moment to make sense of the jumbled jigsaw in front of you. This may repeat for what sometimes seems like an eternity. These folks know what I’m talking about.

Behind the continuous advancement of online technologies can be heard a constant call for standards. This establishes common ground upon which communities can build — agreements in language and foundations that aim to ensure innovation. But of the Internet technologies used today there is one that remains complacent in its compliance: email.

In a recent study by Radicati Group, Inc., the number of worldwide email accounts is projected to increase from over 2.9 billion in 2010 to over 3.8 billion in the year 2014. Though most users may not be aware of the inconsistencies in standards (as a majority limit usage to plain-text emails) the application of HTML in email is akin to that of the Internet Stone Age.

In danger of deletion

Too often, this is the unfortunate reality of the HTML email. What should be a convenient way to deliver tasteful content to a regular audience can backfire. Left at the mercy of misfit email clients and browsers, email designers are unable to take advantage of techniques used elsewhere on the web. Would you be content with your telephone company only guaranteeing transmissions spoken in monotone 1920s slang? You might think it to be the bee’s knees now, but it’d get old real fast.

Dumb it down

For now there are tricks to getting around these shortfalls in standards. You just have to dumb things down. Forget what you know about the latest advances in HTML and CSS and travel back to a simpler time. Organize your information into nested tables. Avoid linking to external style sheets and rely on inline CSS. Keep imagery small and rather than embed (causing bloated file sizes), link to them using absolute URLs. It’s smart to keep an eye on what happens to your emails after delivery. Take advantage of the many tools like Google Analytics or Campaign Monitor. They can go a long way in measuring your effectiveness.

No matter the shortcuts you employ, the most important tip is to test. Test in each major email client (Outlook, Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Gmail to name a few) and test after each significant change. At first it can seem to be an endless loop but by distilling down to the essentials and progressively harmonizing your designs through testing, you’ll find yourself conducting quick and reliable HTML emails like a regular maestro in no time.

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Not so long ago if your child came home and told you she had “friended” the new kid at school, you, being the thinking and dutiful parent you are, would have corrected her grammar. “No, dear, you be-friended him.” Now, however, you merely nod and say, “That’s nice, honey.” That is, if you’re cool and with it and hip to the glib jive.

Hey, even if you’re not cool* you probably know at least a little something about the techno-tools known collectively as social media as well as its particular patois: to friend, to like, to Tweet, to re-Tweet… it’s all the rage. It seems these days you can’t turn around without bumping into somebody’s Facebook wall.

But while it’s no secret that social media is changing the way we communicate, I find it remains dangerous for any commercial concern to fall victim to its charms without understanding its limitations. The fact is, social media is not really all that social and indeed often serves as a barrier to messaging that is either genuine or credible, even as it purports to captivate the masses.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, columnist Eric Felten addresses this issue in his discussion of Sherry Turkle’s new book Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011). Felten explains that what sets Turkle’s work apart from similar studies of social media behavior is her decade of interviews with the group most comfortable with its tools: high school and college-aged subjects.

What Turkle found should come as no surprise: Just as adults today are exhausted by constant connectedness, so are young people. Just as adults today are exhausted by constant connectedness, so are young people. And here’s what these kids have figured out: You simply must own a phone, but its primary function is not for placing calls, or what we used to call “phoning” someone. Instead, you text. You Facebook. You videotape and post to YouTube. You measure your words, manage your profile, and present your best self to the world. Now, if Jazzmyn and Jaxon and Brit’Nee are able to grasp these insights into personal marketing strategy by the tenth grade, shouldn’t those of us in the business of communicating?

Okay, so we pretty much all recognize that, like any avenue of advertising, social media is a place to highlight your best features. But there’s a great risk for a business that’s too simple-minded in its approach to social media. Today’s audiences are savvy and cynical. If all your social media does is repeat the same messages you publish elsewhere without regard to this medium’s unique aspects, you will miss the boat on social media. Well, maybe you won’t miss the whole boat, but you’ll certainly find yourself in much more of a rowboat than a powerboat. And while it’s true that some charities and events – charitable and otherwise – have found success via social media blitzkrieg (remember last winter’s snowball fight in DC’s DuPont Circle?), it is also true that short-term mobilization is not tantamount to long-term sustainability, profitability, or influence.

A recent AdAge article by Matthew Creamer describes this important and material difference between influence and mere popularity. Here, in Your Followers Are No Measure of Your Influence, Creamer explains how Justin Bieber’s powers of sway could be viewed as vastly superior to those of a senior VP at Apple. Such is the absurdity of equating modern-day “Followers” and “Friends” to, well, true followers and friends, not to mention loyal customers.

There’s No Such Thing As a Free Tweet

And by the way, these blog posts don’t write themselves.

Even if tools like Twitter and Facebook have the appearance of being “free” their marginal cost is actually far from it. All that composing and editing and posting and commenting take time and work. But can you really afford not to? Even if tools like Twitter and Facebook have the appearance of being “free” their marginal cost is actually far from it. To wit: Both the articles referenced here and this post itself include options for social media. Even as we issue warnings about its use, we too are joining in on the craze.

The question then becomes, If I can’t beat’em and have to join’em, how do I make it worth the effort? A recent post by Matthew Ingram at GigaOM (again with the requisite Tweets and Likes) points to a success story at NPR, where they have chosen to use their Facebook page not as a source for breaking news but rather as a forum for discussion. This discussion, in turn, leads directly to traffic on its Web site, currently coming in at a whopping 4.5 million page views per month. Now I say that’s what Friends are really for.

What NPR seems to have figured out that so many others have not is that content is king, community is binding, and conversation is essential. It’s also clear that they carefully consider social media tools as a part of their communications strategy but only after they have both (A) a strategy and (B) something worth communicating.

And speaking of a communications strategy…

Recently while having lunch at a college-town diner, I noticed a group of three male students, each of whom was not only eating and chatting with the other two but also texting. I struck up a conversation with them and asked about their use of social media. Here’s what they told me: They currently rely a great deal on Facebook to help them keep up with their friends but can’t imagine doing so after graduating, particularly when job hunting. When I asked how often they text, they answered, “Too much.” They agreed that they would simply much rather type out a text than have to hold a conversation, saying, “It’s just easier.” The good news, though, is that there is one person who still rates an actual phone call: Mom.

Sounds to me like these kids have it pretty well figured out in terms of which tool is best suited for which audience. And that, my friends, is an essential ingredient in any communications strategy. Such was true long before Facebook — even long before the phone book — and it’ll still be true long after both are history.

*Sorry. Didn’t mean to imply I was questioning your coolness. Obviously you’re cool: You’ve been reading the MerryFools blog, and few things are cooler than that. So be a pal, and Tweet this post.

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Last Saturday I stretched out on my supersize sofa with a supersize bucket of special edition Halloween Twizzlers and a bajillion technicolor options on my supersize HDTV, the one with visuals so big and crisp and lifelike it almost looks like you’re actually doing something with real people and real stuff in a real place. I flipped through the channels more or less brainlessly, without purpose or need or direction. I rationalized the wasting of time because I felt like I (A) had earned it after a week of work and (B) had nothing better to do.

But, wait. Yes, I did have something better to do. Lots of better somethings, in fact. Things that really did involve real stuff and real places and perhaps even some real people. The truth is, sometimes I just waste time.

Alas I am not alone. Indeed I can take comfort in the fact that plenty of other average Americans also mindlessly waste terrific amounts of time, despite presumably also having many better things to do. I know because so many of them document it on Twitter.

For those of you who haven’t yet hopped aboard the Twitter bandwagon, I can tell you that this “micro-blogging social app” has been successful for three reasons.

It appeals to the basic human need to be heard, regardless of how meaningless your life (or at least your current activity) really is. Think of it as promoting you to host of your own talk show, with an enormous potential audience, again regardless of how little of real value you have to say or even how affable you are in person. It’s nearly noon and I can’t believe I’ve only had one cup of coffee!!! Note how the repeating exclamation point is often used to simulate personality.

It appeals to the basic human need to be liked, to have people care for you so much that they’ll tell you what’s really going on in their pretty little heads, and with Twitter it’s often people who would never, ever, ever really be your friend in real life. Ever. All you have to do is “follow” them. Think of it as legalized stalking. Oooh, Ashton, thanks for the sweet Tweet. UR so awesome!!!

It’s free. Think of it as, well, free.

Wait a minute. Free? Is it really free? Uh oh. I think we better brace ourselves for some tough love here, folks, because just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, there’s also no such thing as a free tweet.Twitter-Study-August-2009

Let me explain. (No, no, let me sum up.)

Twitter isn’t free. Fact is, Twitter is pretty darned costly. And I’m not talking about the kind of expensive that keeps teenagers from loving Twitter. (If you can send only a limited number of text messages per month, to whom should they go: a closed group of Facebook “friends” you have individually approved or an unlimited world of people that could easily include your parents, teachers, employer, coach, AND ex-girlfriend? The choice is obvious, assuming of course you remember being a teenager.)

Teenaged angst aside, Twitter was developed, and has been able to exist/grow/expand exponentially, with huge amounts of venture capital, including of course the recent mass infusion ($100 million) of VC that is allowing Twitter’s founders to “put on hold” any “plans to build up advertising in the service.” —-  And not only did they pony up the big bucks, but these latest fairy godmothers are actually patting themselves on the back,  smug as bugs in a rug that they’re getting a bargain, as Twitter’s valuation (a word that evidently means having more dollars than sense) is something more along the lines of a billion (with a b).  Seem they’ve taken in at least a few believers.

Others disagree and compare this situation to the ’99 dot.com bubble burst, but I’m reminded of something more along the lines of the late ‘80s collapse of junk bonds. I have to wonder if Twitter’s most recent investors even bothered to check the August ’09 study of Twitter conducted by Pear Analytics. If so, they would have known that a full 40% (actually 40.55%) of tweets are what they’ve labeled “pointless babble” and that 35% of all tweets are contributed by only 1%  (ONE percent!) of its users, or what they call “addicts.”

Whoa. Addicted to Twitter? Now that’s what I call wasting time. What this says to me is that 35% of their traffic is from people who are so busy using it that they couldn’t possibly have time to earn a decent living, which might come in handy should there ever be a registration fee attached (not to mention a sin tax).

Sure, once in a while you can find something meaningful, helpful, insightful, or newsworthy tucked into a tweet, but those little nuggets are rare, and a HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS is a lot of money to gamble on this particular longshot.

Yes, my friends, Twitter is far from free, unless by free you mean hasn’t made a dollar. And may never make a dollar. Even though it already employs sixty people who presumably earn paychecks. Bottom line: Don’t try this at home, kids, for the sake of your own bottom line. As a business model, Twitter defies logic, common sense, good karma, and everything else that is right with this world.

Full disclosure: Hey! Follow us on Twitter@healthcomm!!!

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