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.

It’s Registration Season. What Should Be On Your Website?

Lots of Regions are in the thick of registration right now. Parents will be out there looking for places to sign their kids up for soccer. How do you make sure they sign up with your Region?

1. Make sure your homepage is up to date. Make sure that vital information such a registration times, dates and places are visible or somewhere that they can easily be located. These dates are the first thing parents are looking for when they go to your Region website right now.
    
2. Put together an FAQ for Registration. Parents will have questions about registration – what ages can you register your child at? How many registrations are left? I missed a registration, how can I still register? These are all questions that are common during registration, and if you have an FAQ page next to the registration information that contains these types of questions, you will eliminate the need for parents to physically call or email the Region. Don’t know which questions to put on the FAQ page? Ask the Regional Commissioner or the Registrar for your Region (or whoever fields those calls/emails).
    

Publicize Registration through Social Media

For many of you out there, you’re in the middle of registration for the upcoming season. Here are two easy ways to spread the word about your registration events through social media: 

Send a tweet and “mention” your local press. For example: “AYSO Region 22 in Lakewood, Fla., has a registration event this Sat! www.bitlylink.com [for more info] @LakewoodDaily @FlaPress” 

I often see local newspapers and other press tweeting about AYSO events. If this isn’t happening for you, find these publications on Twitter and mention their handles in your tweets! Hopefully, they’ll RT to their followers and help bring more families to your registration event.