Old School E-blast

Low quality HTML based eblast -
I don't love it. Too much empty space.
 But spent too much time on
technical nonsense to focus on design.

   I love designing themed e-blasts. Programs like Constant Contact and Mailchimp make it so easy to format. I figure out the theme, design individual pictures and place them into the e-blast. Then I add the text directly in the program. Depending on the intricacy of the pictures, the first draft is usually ready in a little over an hour. Since everything is separated, its extremely easy to edit.

   But this past week, I was told to follow the outdated format of designer who left in 2012. Just a couple of years ago, creating an e-blast was a lot more complicated. It meant designing a full ad in photoshop, cutting the image into slices, importing the slices into dreamweaver, adding links and saving the whole thing out as an HTML. If you wanted to make a small design edit, you needed to go back to original file and redo most of the process. It was a pain in the butt. 

   So I politely suggested the more efficient way of creating an e-blast.  This process may not be as design heavy as the old way, but it would reduce my work time significantly and wouldn't make a difference to the customers. 

In spite of the much more logical approach,  as I so often find,  people stubbornly exist in a small comfort zone. So I did as I was told and followed the old process. I worked fast and so after 3 hours the initial design was online. Didn't love the layout, but it took way to long to change it now. 

   Surprise, surprise, Constant Contact doesn't actually accept the old format. So add another 40 minutes on the phone with tech support and the file is finally up. Then sent a test email and somehow the picture quality was so pixelated that you can barely read the words. Had to go back and up the quality of the source pictures. Now it looked better but the email will take a few minutes to load. No way people will wait for it to load. Not gunna even go into each last minute edit that would normally take a few minute and now took hours. 

Next time I'm sticking with the new format.

Moral of the story: 

Don't be stubborn, take advantage of new technology. 

It will save you time and look so much better. 

If you disagree with something a client asks for, always give them 2 options, the one they want and the one you know they will pick. I have never been asked to use option #1. (Unfortunately, this time I just didn't have time to make a 2nd option)