When designing for an email marketing campaign, designers should always consider how their designs will translate into an online format to ensure the design looks good once programmed. The way it commonly works is, the designer creates a PSD file and passes to the web developer. The developer then takes the design and properly formats it into an HTML email, using a combination of HTML and CSS. If both designer and web developer have a good understanding of the end goals, their lives should be easy. But then there’s Microsoft who has ensured that their lives will be a living hell.

Most email programs use a browser based rendering engine to display HTML content. Apple Mail uses WebKit, the same engine used by Safari and Chrome. Thunderbird shares the Gecko engine with Firefox. Even Windows Mail, which ships with Vista and Windows7, uses Internet Explorer (IE) to render HTML emails. In the past, Outlook, which ships with Microsoft Office, used the IE engine as well. Life for web developers was, for the most part, good.

Everything changed in 2007. Microsoft shipped the latest version of its Office Suite, which contained numerous improvements to the applications, to millions of home and business users who rely on it daily. Indeed, all programs showed significant advances in usability — except for one: Outlook. Microsoft made the decision to replace IE with Word as Outlook’s rendering engine. Yes — Microsoft replaced an engine designed to display web content with a word processor.

Below is a comparison provided by fixoutlook.org, that shows an email design displayed in Outlook 2000 (IE rendering engine), and Outlook 2010. Pretty different.

Photo by Fixoutlook.org

There isn’t much that we as designers can do about this situation right now but I do encourage all developers to voice their opinion to Microsoft. Let’s hope Office 2012 shows some forward progress.

So this little thing called the Internet is starting to make a big push into brand’s pocket books. Not only are we hearing more companies investing in the display category (total revenue spent was up 15% last year) but now the advent of branded video content continues to push the space.

That’s right, TV — be scared…be very scared. Broadcast has traditionally been the mainstay and money maker in the media realm, but in my humble opinion this will change drastically in the next few years and I’m not the only one who is seeing trends of brand budget migration. This is just the beginning.

YouTube is pushing the envelope online by developing opportunities for original content development through its YouTube Creators institute. It is offering $35,000 grants to help up and coming producers on YouTube become the next big thing with its YouTube Next Up program. So what does this all mean? Well first, if you think you can create a bad-ass video in your garage that will generate a viral following, you should probably apply to one of these programs. Second, it means that original content generation on platforms such as YouTube has value to more than just dorks sitting at their computer watching web vignettes all day. People are watching this content.   Millions of people. Everyday. And that means that brands want to pay for the content and the space around the content. This will become a viable career.

It is time to recognize that online video is forever shifting how we consume content. Obviously my laptop hooks up to my TV. Yes, I have streamed Netflix and yes, there is a reason Blockbuster is going out of business people. I look at YouTube (who in addition to investing in content is also getting into the rental game) and I smell an opportunity for new media and advertisers. It’s only a matter of time until we see brand dollars pour into this space. I can’t wait.

And no I don’t work for YouTube. Google is just awesome.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Sean Monzet from NBC.  Sean was listed as one of the 50 People to Watch in 2011 by San Diego Magazine and has been helping NBC move into the digital space by integrating their media offerings. Take some time between meetings to check out the 3 videos below. Sean has some excellent insight into utilizing multiple channels and the digital space to support local marketing efforts for both small and large campaigns.

Video One: This first video covers some of the recent changes in media habits and how marketers should think about reaching audiences locally.

Video Two: The interactive landscape is changing and consumers have become much smarter about how they interact with advertisers in the space. Branded (sponsored) content has become a valuable tool that allows advertisers to reach their audience without being interruptive. It also provides excellent engagement with the brand, allowing for better communication with the consumer. In this clip, Sean provides background on recent programs he has seen work well in this space.

Video Three: NBC recently launched, with great success, two entities focused on lifestyle in the local market. The first, SoundDiego, is a blog that has a beat on the local San Diego music scene while offering monthly hosted events focused on different genres of music throughout the county. The second site, The Feast, is another NBC property that details three main categories – Eat, Shop, Play and has been launched in other owned and operated NBC markets as well. By building these entities the media outlet is able to offer great cross-platform content through broadcast and digital, reaching several different demos and channels. Hear more from Sean on the opportunities for marketers in this video.

Foursquare has been busy lately. The LBS darling released a whole slew of changes this month that proves what I have been saying all along – if you are in marketing, you should be paying attention to Foursquare.

The two-year-old platform now boasts over 15 million venues and more than 1/2 a billion check-ins amongst its 6 million users. But even more impressive than the growth it has shown, is the potential for growth that these new changes bring. So, without further ado, here’s what is new at Foursquare. And more importantly, here’s what it all means for you, the marketer.

The Explore Tab

Think of this as the equivalent of Amazon recommendations, except instead of recommending what you should read, it tells you where you should go. The value in these suggestions comes from the sophisticated algorithm Foursquare uses to make them. Before suggesting a venue it looks at:

• Places you’ve been
• Places your friends have been
• Places that you are uber-loyal to
• The types of places you go
• How popular each place is with all users
• What day/time you are exploring
• What tips each venue has

It then serves you its best recommendations and tells you why it has chosen these for you, so that you can make an informed choice.

Why this matters: This added functionality will likely draw many new users – potentially a LOT of new users. Not everyone was able to see the benefit of keeping track of where they’ve been, but history tells us that most everyone can see the value in good recommendations. And recommendations that are tailored to your preferences – well that just makes sense. An influx of new users will also increase the activity amongst existing users, therefore making your company’s Foursquare program substantially more visible and enticing.

The New Leaderboard

Also in version 3.0, Foursquare revamped its leaderboard. What’s that you are wondering? Exactly. The leaderboard was actually a pivotal aspect of baby Foursqaure and it tracked the points each user got for checking in. The goal was to create competition and to encourage people to check-in more often. This element fell by the wayside as the platform grew, so Foursquare revamped the leaderboard and its point system in this latest version of its app.

The new leaderboard lets you easily see your points vs your friends points right from your phone. It also comes with a much cooler point system that awards you for a wider variety of things. Will this refresh of the gaming aspect motivate everyone to check in more? Heck no. Will some people certainly be into it? Yes.

Why this matters: Anything that encourages more people to get out of their homes and check in to public places will ultimately be a good thing for your venue. Plus, the more active the users, the quicker the platform grows, and that’s good for you, too.

New Specials

The key to Foursquare’s initial “mainstream” success was the Mayorship special that rewarded users for being the most frequent visitor to a venue. Now there’s much more. This month, Foursquare rolled out five new types of specials and a new interface to make the platform that much more valuable to businesses. Your company can now offer:

• Short term flash specials – The first 3 people to check in get X
• Friends Special – check in with Y friends and get X
• Swarm Special – check in with a large enough “swarm” and everyone gets X
• Newbie Special – check in for the first time and get X
• Frequency/Loyalty check-ins – Like a punch-card, check in X times and get Y on your return visit

With all these new options, Foursquare also released a printable poster to help small businesses promote their special on-site and a new analytics dashboard to track the success of each campaign.

Why this matters: You now have a whole heck of a lot more ways to entice people to come to your venue. In addition to getting more people to spend money with you, these new specials allow for more creativity, which could become fodder for PR stories and will likely increase your word-of-mouth buzz as well.

The Venue Project

Without getting too techy on you, Foursquare released its venue API to developers. While this may not seem like a direct change for marketers, it is hugely indicative of where this platform is going, and thus important to note.

Remember when Twitter just started out? After growing slowly and steadily for awhile it began to draw attention by 3rd party app developers (think Tweetdeck and Twhirl). Twitter didn’t have the capital or the brain power to develop the innovative tools that these developers did, so it gave them the API and let them do all the work. Such tools raised Twitter’s popularity immensely and made the platform incredibly more useful. Sounds like a good growth plan, right?

Well, clearly Foursquare thinks so, and the timing couldn’t be better. With the recent announcement that Twitter will no longer allow 3rd party app developers, there are a lot of: A) Pissed developers, and B) Developers looking for somewhere to funnel their genius ideas. Enter Foursquare.

Why this matters – Similar to the previous changes, this change means that Foursquare is primed to grow. With the support and ingenuity of so many talented developers, we haven’t even scratched the surface on what Foursquare could be.

The Best for Last

Foursquare is particularly excited to release this last piece of news. As of last month, the BG team has officially joined Foursquare (They’ll be issuing a press release on this any day now, I am sure).

If you’ve met us, you know we are an active bunch. We are always out and about – at a client event, a happy hour, or an industry social – and we are chock full of suggestions and tips about the places we go. So, we thought, why not aggregate our knowledge and make a profile so that you can follow our team? This way you can stalk us and come drop off your resume at inappropriate times. OR you could just check our tips and our check-ins to get our recommendations on what’s hot – and what’s not.

Either way, here’s where you can find us: http://foursquare.com/user/6839891. Hope to see you on there!

I had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Hodges and pick his brain on the newspaper and publishing industry.  Mike is the VP of Interactive for the Union Tribune and General Manager of SignonSanDiego.com and has extensive experience in the digital space.

Newspapers around the country have been looking to re-invent themselves and take advantage of their existing offline audiences while building online audiences and implementing new programs within the interactive medium. Lots of changes are taking place in this space as newspapers look to please multiple audiences and continue to provide great content.

Take a break from your emails and watch the interview for an inside perspective on the changes in the newspaper and publishing industry.

Bonus Tip: check out this ComScore report on audience segmentation between online readers and offline readers

We have a secret.

Okay, maybe it’s not a secret but I bet most of you don’t know that Bailey Gardiner has a dedicated digital team.

Our mission? To research and share the latest technology, creative innovations and best practices in the online and mobile world. Each team member is assigned a different discipline that they research. We meet regularly to share our respective findings, listen to inspiring digital speakers and uncover the latest digital innovations that we can put to use for our clients.

It dawned on us that we were all really learning a lot and that it just wasn’t fair to keep all this great info to ourselves. This will serve as the first in a series of periodical blog posts designed to share our learning with a broader audience.

Online Advertising
Google’s is now beginning to test display advertisements highly targeted to the content of our emails and only for those already heavy in image content. Couple this with mandatory video advertising in YouTube and it’s clear that Google is getting more comfortable getting into the faces of its users.

Creative Innovations
Artist Alexandre Oudi has sparked a phenomenon on Facebook. Using the new format he has figured out how to display images in a conceptual way.

The Martin Agency and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts introduce a campaign to promote their new Picasso exhibition which uses QR codes and augmented reality in a unique way.

SEO
Local search is gaining in popularity. Google has listed how to optimize your Google Place Page and there is much content on the Internet about how to maximize review sites.  You can list your business on three major sites that will share your listing with many of the smaller ones.

A presentation from Benu Aggerwal gives great tips for making the most of Google Places and local search. Learn how to get traffic to your site as well as ideas for generating content. And last, get help with SEO competitive analysis.

Privacy
Google Chrome now offers an opt out feature as an app. This will allow users to prevent certain advertisers and data companies from tracking them online.  FTC has extended its deadline for the public to submit comments on its report about online privacy from Jan 31 to Feb 18.

Video
Breaking convention–altering the expected viewing experience–is still a popular technique for videos. Here are two examples for youtube. Sylvester Stallone’s Interview for The Expendables and Google’s Nexus X Unboxed by Ninjas.

Social
This is big stuff in the world of LBS. I know not all of you are fans of Foursquare, but these latest changes further prove that its developers know what they are doing. The platform is really getting quite sophisticated and has grown so much from its humble beginnings as a game. Just a few days ago it launched a whole slew of changes, but the explore tab and the algorithm for recommendations is particularly intriguing.

We’re a fast-paced shop with great clients and we’re looking for another piece to fit our growing puzzle. Specifically, a Front End Web Developer with programming skills and good design sensibilities. (That’s right, we know you exist.)

If the following list sums up what you bring to the table, then clearly you’re awesome and we’d love to talk to you.

Requirements:

• BS in graphic design, web design, computer science or related field, or equivalent experience
• Experience writing technical and functional specifications and driving them through development
• Effective verbal and written communication skills with both technical and non-technical audiences 
• Ability to work well within a team environment and laugh in the face of doom.
• Working knowledge in Flash with ActionScript 2 & 3
• 2-3+yrs experience with advanced knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP
• Understanding of best practices for web according W3C standards, email and mobile with solid typography, layout and color skills.
• Experience with hand-coding HTML, CSS and jQuery
• Experience working with CMS – Wordpress 3x+, Drupal 6x+
• Basic knowledge of MySQL
• Basic understanding of Information Architecture, UI/UX principles
• Ability to translate design pixel to pixel
• Documentation of web development projects
• Comfortable working on a Mac platform
• Proficient in Adobe Flash, Illustrator, and Photoshop
• Should have familiarity with Coda and/or Transmit

Responsibilities

• See web projects through from start to completion including wire frames, comps and programming
• Manage your own projects, respect deadlines and use good judgment in time management to ensure your jobs are delivered on time and on budget.
• Build web development projects to spec
• Keep up with web standards, follow web trends (HTML5) and foster forward-looking development for alternate digital channels
• Collaborate with and take direction from senior creative team to create successful campaigns.

Salary will be commensurate with experience and competitive. We offer medical, dental, paid vacation, holidays, sick/PT, 401k and profit sharing, not to mention great weather.

No calls or emails. Really.

Send resume to resume@baileygardiner.com.

I can’t keep track of how many times I’ve heard people predict the demise of Facebook. Everytime there is a hiccup in the service, or a major news outlet comes out with a story about Facebook and privacy, it stirs the pot all over again. And as a marketer, these uproars always come with the concern from clients and colleagues that maybe we shouldn’t be investing so much in Facebook. What if Facebook goes the way of Myspace and all this time, money and strategy we’ve put into it is useless?

Although I understand the concern, I think it is wasted energy. Here’s why:

Facebook isn’t going anywhere.

Now before you all jump down my throat about Diaspora and all of Facebook’s privacy flubs, or all the people you know who have quit their profiles, let’s put things into perspective. Facebook has 600 million users. 600 million. And each of those users has spent time and energy building their network – whether it be 100 people or 1,000. As a whole, the public is invested and has come to rely on using the social network for everything from making plans and sharing photos to dating and networking. Because of this, even Facebok haters would have to agree that the only way Facebook would ever lose its ground is if some other miracle network blew it out of the water (eg. the way Facebook did to Myspace). “Exactly!” you say to me, “It has happened before, it could happen again.”

Well, I am going to have to respectfully disagree. Even if there was some amazing network that had no privacy problems or service hiccups, how likely is it that all 600 million people are going to want to start from scratch on building their networks again? Not only would that be a huge pain in the arse, it would also mean much smaller networks. You see, everyone has connections that they friended at one point, that they would never be able to friend again. These are the people that you would never admit to paying attention to, but whom you thoroughly enjoy checking up on. People like friends from high school, ex-boyfriends, frenemies from college, co-workers from your first jobs, etc… The idea of giving up all of these connections is insanity. And while those of us who have been on Facebook since the beginning may have more of these “friend relics” than the ever growing 50+ demo on Facebook, I’d be willing to bet that almost everyone has at least one.

I also think it is telling to see who is all up in arms about the privacy concerns on Facebook. I’m making generalizations here, but it is most usually the crowd that has only been on the platform for a year or two and is much less invested. It is also the crowd that doesn’t have a history with mass Facebook protest. If you fall into that group, I don’t blame you for your reaction. In fact, when my relationship with Facebook was just beginning there were all sorts of times when my friends and I were outraged about Facebook changes. First there was the newsfeed, “UM, a Newsfeed?? So now I can’t see birthdays prominently displayed?? AND I can see when people break up? Oh this is horrible. I will sign a million petitions about it and complain endlessly.” And then they introduced photo tagging – “WHAT? You are telling me other people can just tag things and they will appear on my profile without me approving them first? This is crazy. Crazy!” Oh and don’t even get me started on when they started letting companies on Facebook… And guess what. Despite how outraged I was over these changes, it didn’t take me too long to realize that ol’ Mark there knew what he was doing. And that he’s really smart. Sure there have been awkward times along the way where Mark has gotten over-zealous and made changes without properly explaining them or giving you an opt-out option, but he always remedies that. So for those of you who haven’t yet had the long relationship with Facebook, you’ll find yourself trusting Mark after a while. And then you can laugh with us when the next generation gets all out of whack about Facebook and starts predicting the network’s demise.

In the end, it really comes down to why people are on Facebook. They are there to connect with their friends, sure, but you can connect with your present friends easily enough via phone and email. The real power of Facebook is that it allows you to essentially keep a scrapbook of friends. It lets you to “creep” on people and build relationships you wouldn’t have had otherwise. It has a low enough barrier of entry that it makes it possible to connect with people in a way that no other medium can. And that is why, for the forseeable future, Facebook is here to stay.

Now, I will never be one to tell you to put all your marketing eggs into one basket, nor do I think Facebook is the end all be all for social media marketing. Far from it. I am simply saying for those marketers who are crossing their fingers and hoping this whole Facebook craze will blow over, you may be waiting for awhile. And while I respect that many may dislike the platform for personal reasons, it is undoubtedly a successful marketing tool and will likely be so for years to come. So if you are wondering what the next steps for your company’s Facebook page should be, I say invest. If you don’t have the skills to develop a business strategy on your own, find a social media agency to help you with long-term goals and who can advise you on how to handle the daily changes. Ultimately, how much you spend and to what extent you use the network will vary for every company, but if you were planning on sitting around waiting for the next Facebook to arrive, that may not be your best bet.

By now, most people know how to set up a YouTube accounts and upload some videos. If you read Anne’s post on using YouTube for brand promotion, you even know the general overview – keep videos interesting, creative, compelling and short. But what happens after you have great videos up?

As the newly appointed co-manager of the BG YouTube channel, it has been an interesting challenge learning how to refresh, reorganize and revamp our company videos. My main focus in Phase One of our YouTube Refresh Project has been organization and presentation, and below are some tips on the kinds of things we’ve been doing to improve.

1. Analyze your content by number of views

This may not seem like a plan of attack for organization or presentation, but looking at what gets views and what doesn’t will give you clues for organization. For example- our BG YouTube Channel receives the most views for videos about office shenanigans, so we knew to place those in the most prominent spots.

2. Organize Your Videos Into Playlists

Playlists will act as folders for housing your videos and keeping the page neat. Rather than being bombarded with every uploaded video on record, a visitor can find a playlist that interests them and browse videos accordingly. I recommend no more than six playlists maximum.

3. Keep content fresh and relevant

Change out your featured video at least every month (preferably twice) to show visitors to your channel that there might be new content and they should take a look around. As the number of videos increases, it’s also important to replace outdated videos. It’s advisable to keep less than ten videos per playlist- this will keep things organized and prevent visitors to your channel from being overwhelmed by content.

4. It’s all in a name

Make sure that everything on your channel grabs attention- make the names of your playlists and videos clever and intriguing. And also be sure to never have names of videos like “AlexsFirstVideo.mp4″… if you were too lazy to give it a real name and get rid of the format, people will likely conclude that it is not worth watching.

5. Put your best image forward

You would never put a horrible photo of yourself as your own profile picture, so don’t put a boring thumbnail for your uploaded videos. YouTube gives you three options for a video thumbnail and you definitely want to pick the best one to intrigue your audience. Try to find something that fills the screen, is flattering (if it’s a person) and accurately represents the content of the video.

A YouTube Channel is not just a page that holds videos- think of it as a functioning website. It should be organized, easy to navigate, and interesting to visitors. Next up on the list for BG’s YouTube Channel? A jazzy background, some exciting new content, and promoting!

Quora: in a nutshell, allows you to ask and answer questions that are of personal interest.

It does what social networkers are already doing: asking questions of your network and followers. However, it conveniently groups all of the responses together.  It’s kind of like if Twitter, Digg, Google Wave and Yahoo Answers had a baby.

It was just made public the summer of 2010 and has been growing (in hype) ever since. Launched by a former CTO of Facebook, the site and concept at least have street cred.

Here’s the breakdown:

Pros:

• Helps consolidate topics. If the question has been asked in another format, it points you in that direction and/or adds your query to the topic.
• Helps promote your question through other social platforms.
• The best answers will rise to the top of the question/topic by a voting platform similar to digg
• Helps you spot trends – what people are talking about and what they want to know more about
• Responses are real time
• Questions and answers come up in Google

Con:

• It’s another platform to keep up with
• It takes time to position yourself as an expert
• It is getting a lot of knocks. Have you visited Cwora?!
• If you are looking for an answer to a one-time question, this isn’t the platform for you. It’s more for people seeking an ongoing way of sharing their expertise.
• Beware of privacy settings and auto-follows
• It’s kind of been done before

How company’s can use Quora right now:

• Listen to what people have to say
• Observe potential candidates and their real life knowledge on a subject
• Don’t go crazy building a profile and answering a million questions just yet. Brands should wait it out and see what really starts to happen. After all, look what happened to Chatroulette.

Don’t write off this fairly new platform just yet. If Quora positions itself and monitors itself for spam correctly, it just may have a place in the social sphere.