Happy March Madness!
Hopefully – wherever you're reading this from – Spring has sprung.

Now that we are becoming seasoned bloggers, we don't want to just talk about our awesome clients and the great work we do for them all the time. We want to find ways to pass on some of the knowledge we've gained as experts in our industry. We think it'll go a long way toward helping you market yourself that much more.

This month we are digging into the world of email marketing. This can be very confusing and overwhelming for anyone without a solid plan of attack. As you can see, we have finally started to nail down our own schedule. There is a lot of information out there to educate yourself. Our blog features some interesting posts about what we've done for some of our clients.

Please let us know if we've helped you or if there's anything else you'd like to see us focus on in future email blasts or blog posts. We would love to help answer your questions if possible.

See you in April!
The Fifth Room Creative Team

Email marketing is a great way to communicate with your audience. You probably already know this because you either receive lots of email blasts or you send your own. Either way, are you doing it right? Are the people who are emailing you doing it right? Here's a few really quick and easy things to think about when you're preparing an email blast.

• Teach. Don't sell. People love to learn, and the more you can teach people the more they will want to learn from you. Make your information engaging to the audience. Make your message about helping, not boasting about how great you are.
• Know your audience. Where are your subscribers? How are they viewing your email blasts? Are they sharing them? Are they clicking on the links? Are they watching the videos? Your email marketing system should be able to tell you all of this so you can customize your message and design to fit the results.
• Build your list organically. Don't buy a list of subscribers - you're wasting your money. Those people didn't ask to hear from you, and most likely you're doing more harm than good by littering their inbox with your message. Make signing up for your newsletter easy to do. Put a form on your website and on your facebook page.
• Be mobile ready. More than 20% of all emails are read on a mobile device. Is your design optimized to deliver the content in a mobile friendly way? We talk about that more here.
• Let them go. Make it easy for users to unsubscribe. One click is all it should take.

Watch our blog for more email marketing tips or stay tuned for Campaign Five's public relaunch here.

Fresh on the heels of the new Picatinny website launch, they wanted to market their new mobile banking platform to their members. We had the pleasure of designing the landing page and matching email blast. See the project here »

Performing Arts Consultants needed a series of templates that reflected the look of their new website for use in email blasts, flyers, and to highlight their programs. See the project here »

What might possibly be the longest email blast on the web today, the quarterly Panasonic PRO Email blast is sent out globally to video enthusiasts. It features news, views, and special offers for Panasonic. See the project here »

While print is far from dead, Action Graphics wanted to complement their regular print newsletter with a regular email blast. We designed this series of email templates to match the look of their printed newsletters. See the project here »

To complement their new website look and feel, we designed an email blast template that allows them to send out regular insurance savvy advice to their subscribers. See the project here »

Here are a few of our favorite resources. We thought we'd share them with you so that you can learn more about different email marketing tools and how to make your emails more effective.

» Litmus - Test your email blasts before you send them.

» Campaign Five - We're a little biased about this one.

» Email Standards Project - Learn how email clients work with your emails.

» HTML Email Pocket Guide - Learn how to design and build responsive email.

Jumping feet first into something can be a little overwhelming. Email marketing is a very large world that takes research to understand. See what we learned about successful email marketing. Read the post »

Do you know about Pods? Our developers are absolutely crazy about the Pods Framework. Mike discusses some of the more advanced internal workings of Pods. Read the post »

Our Design Intern Kyle talks about using Responsive Design works to create the landing page for Campaign Five. Responsive Design is a great solution for websites that need to be viewed on desktop, tablet and mobile with ease. Read the post »

Responsive Design from another perspective. Developers go to great lengths to construct what designers come up with. Responsive Design can be tricky when it comes to avoiding duplications and maintaining simplicity. Read the post »