Do's and Dont's of HTML Email Blasts.

Hey everyone, after a week off we are back with more helpful hints.

With the proliferation of email-blast software and websites all over the internet, its becoming increasingly popular for people to turn to these avenues in order to drive sign ups, direct to seasonal events, and really reach out and impress where a regular email would fall short.

One of the best aspects of these sites is their ability to let you craft a beautiful email-blast whether you have skills in HTML or not. Many people though can sometimes be a little to ambitious when diving into the HTML editors as they tend to carry their skill sets in designing websites into crafting their email blasts and they can be frustrated when the results do not match their efforts

Email clients such as Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Gmail, etc., can render your emails in different ways. What looks one way in Yahoo or Outlook 2003 may appear very different in Gmail or Entourage.
The root of this problem is the variance among email clients in the level of support for CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

There is no real standard for what an email client should support and how it should go about supporting it. Every email client takes its own approach to rendering HTML and CSS – which is why an email that looks fine in one email client can look different in another.

So how can you or your designer ensure an email design remains consistent and looks great across all these different email clients? Here's a helpful list of "Do's and Dont's" on email blasts and HTML.

Video Formats… What Works and What Doesn’t

Videos make a great addition to your Region website and can make it more entertaining and educational (and possibly educational) for your visitors. The National Office has a YouTube channel with videos available for Regions to put on their websites.

YouTube videos are easy to embed on your website. All you need to do is go to the video and click on the embed link. Copy the code and paste it where you want it on your website.

If you would like to use your own videos that are not on YouTube, you might want to follow some of these guidelines:

File Format – There are some common file formats that work universally for the most part. MOV (or Quicktime) files work in any browser and on any iPhone or iPad. FLV is a good format for the web, as it loads quickly and tends to have smaller file sizes. It, however, does not work on iPhone and iPad, so if your audience includes users on these devices, I would opt for another format. MP4 is another QuickTime format that works on all devices and browsers.