Adding photos to your stylish emails can now be a walk in the park with the help of Picnik, a free online service that allows you to edit, crop, & re-size your photos.

Services like Picnik can add a lot to the look and feel of your email newsletter design. Do you have any large or oddly-sized photos lying around that you’d like to include in an email campaign? With Picnik, you can easily pull those photos from your desktop, scale or crop them to the perfect size and save the new and improved image. Having a consistent image size throughout your campaign will improve the overall aesthetic and increase the readability of the content, not to mention all the positive feedback you’ll receive from your audience members! For an example, check out Ad Age’s email.

Still not convinced? Here’s another good reason to give this site a try. For those of you who simply want to pull the header from your website and resize it for use in emails, Picnik’s got you covered. In addition to editing photos from your desktop, Picnik enables you to edit them directly from any website (including sites like Photobucket or Facebook ). Type in the URL to your personal or business website and, like magic, all of the images hosted there will appear on Picnik. Just choose the header image & scale it down! We recommend keeping the width of your email header between 600 and 650 pixels.

After using a tool as fabulous as Picnik, you’ll be able to create visually stunning emails in no time. You might even have time for a real picnic…

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This week, I took a moment to ask my fellow comrades in Emma’s design department to share some web goodness with the rest of the world and share where they go to get inspired. What are some of their sites to live by (or at least design by)? Here are a few gems:

For some good design talk, Jessica never passes up a good read at Speak Up.
“There is always a hot debate about a new design or theory. Reading everyone’s feedback is not only entertaining, but very informative. There are often good tips and tricks mentioned throughout.”

Taylor keeps her homepage locked on goodmagazine.com.
“They’re always really interesting and informative, but usually more on a positive note. I love the design of both the magazine and the site. And they have a blog too.”
This is a great resource for information on topics such as creative ways to do good in the world and the extinction of bananas.

As for me, I like to get my daily dose of inspiration from Design*Sponge. With an average of 6-10 posts a day, the site covers everything that is design, from modernistic chandeliers to typography to where to find a good art gallery in Denmark. Also, the D-I-Y section can bring out the creative in anyone.

What design site keeps you coming back for more? Please leave a comment & inspire us.

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When we moved into the new Emma digs in January, we weren’t sure what to do with all the extra wall space (not to mention other amenities like “more than two restrooms” and “hey, it doesn’t smell weird”). We framed some marketing and campaign creative and put up some of those famous Hatch Show Prints, but when it came to painted stuff, we just didn’t think a corporate art rental program was our style.

Instead, we invited the kids of Emma employees who attend Children’s House Montessori School in Nashville to create the art for us, asking them to look at Emma’s logo and create an entire picture of Emma around it. Another team helped to paint a cityscape. So now we have something of an art gallery to welcome folks who visit the shop, complete with gallery-like descriptions for each work of art. Here’s one for your artistic enrichment, with four more that follow after the jump…

Emma with Tiny Chicken Arms, and Perfectly Okay About It Watercolor on Canvas A classic study in human and fowl proportion, Tiny Chicken Arms is believed by some art critics to be the first attempt to combine a human body and chicken arms in a blouse that was clearly intended for much larger, non-chicken-like appendages. At first glance, the work appears to feature legs of differing lengths, almost in an accidental way, but note how the subject’s earrings follow the same long-short pattern. Also, the subject has no nose. Patrons interested in further researching the early career of O. Smith can see also: Figure with Large, Bulbous Right Leg and Normal-Sized Left Leg, Four Fingers with Two More Sticking Out of the Wrist Area, and Boy With Unintentional Extra Neck. Artist: Owen Smith (age 5) Children’s House Montessori

Read the rest of this entry »

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For all you designers out there, here’s a friendly reminder that the folks at Create are accepting submissions for this year’s Create Awards. If there’s something stylish in your portfolio this year that you feel particularly proud of - whether it’s advertising, photography, print, interactive, or something else - you can submit it to Create for, you know, prizes and stuff. The early-bird deadline is May 31, and the final cut-off for submissions is July 7. Good luck!

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You might imagine, since I work in the email marketing industry, that I would have a little compassion on the retailers whose emails fill up my inbox every morning. But most days, I’m just a typical consumer, rolling through about ten emails from Barnes and Noble, Circuit City, etc. in under two minutes.

Included in that batch this morning was the first edition I’ve received of the Priority Rewards Club newsletter from the IC Hotels Group. It, too, got the ol’ delete button after a momentary glance, but something I noticed in that momentary glance made me drag the message out of the trash and take a closer look:

That something I noticed was just my name. So vain, I know. And sure, we all understand it’s nothing fancy with databases these days to drop in a first name or other personal information. In fact, so many emails contain the “Dear Bob” style of personalization that it can be easy to overlook. But this newsletter gives the whole idea of personalization a bit of a fresh twist - first, by making it more of an “account profile” style of personalization, and second, by devoting some prime real estate of the newsletter to it. The fact that my name was strategically placed in the upper left hand corner is probably why it’s the only thing I saw in my momentary glance. It’s certainly something to consider if you use email as a loyalty-building and retention tool - it clearly worked on me today.

Now if I can just get the Carly Simon song out of my head.

Technorati Tags: email newsletter, email marketing tips, personalization, myemma.com, IC Hotels

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Today, we got the funniest note from one of our customers, Michelle Riggen-Ransom at Batch Blue Software. She was one of 5,000 people who descended upon Austin last week for South by Southwest Interactive and had the pleasure of sporting an Emma-sponsored lanyard for the five days of the festival. Here’s how Michelle described it, in her funny, cheeky way:

“Hello Emmateers-

I just wanted to say thank you for providing such a durable and attractive lanyard from which to hang our South by Southwest badges. As a new Emma customer, I was pleasantly surprised to see Emma’s name and sexy/geeky girl logo gracing the necks of thousands of sexy/geeky conference attendees. Then I thought, of course! Emma is the perfect company to be usefully, tastefully embracing the SXSW masses.

I’m pleased to report that the lanyard held up very well. Its bright green color looked so smart with conference attendees’ spring wardrobes in a way that was both fresh and modern. And what craftsmanship! Even in a sudden downpour, the lanyard steadfastly displayed my badge, serving the all-important job of providing me access to conference panels, parties, unlimited events and opportunities. The magnetic release clasp was like a love letter from home - if you get in trouble dears, it seemed to say, I will sacrifice myself so that you may be safe.

It was very bittersweet when, on the last day of SXSWi, the cheery green Emma lanyards began to be overtaken in number by the gothy, navel-gazing black of the music lanyards. I took a look around, packed my badge and Emma lanyard in a special spot in my suitcase and cleared out.

SXSWi2008 may be over, but thanks to the lanyard, I will always have my memories. Thanks again for being part of the magic.”

Thanks for the note, Michelle, and for coining the term “Emmateers.” Like a well constructed lanyard, it’s a keeper.

Technorati Tags: sxsw, sxswi, sxsw2008, batch blue software, myemma.com

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We’re downright flattered to be mentioned in this month’s edition of Inc. Magazine as a part of their profile of several email service providers out there. The kind folks at Inc. featured Emma as the best email marketing service for design help, and to celebrate, we turned the article into a handy-to-read PDF, which you can download here. Also, our office celebrations typically don’t involve creating and distributing PDFs. Just so you know.

Technorati Tags: Inc. Magazine, email marketing, design, myemma.com

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Here’s your chance to do some good without doing too much. Every month, we’re planting 5 trees for every new customer that signs on with Emma, and it’s up to you to tell us where they should go. In January, Emma customers voted to plant 1,715 trees in California. Where February’s trees go is your choice, dear blog reader. Cast your vote!

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Speaking of lazy environmentalism, we met the self-proclaimed Lazy Environmentalist Josh Dorfman at the Opportunity Green Conference last year (which we proudly helped to sponsor). His pitch is that you can add some green to your lifestyle with no mess and no sacrifice. He focuses on the little things, like telling you about the company that’ll fix that old, broken second generation iPod, so it stays out of the landfill. Or letting you know how to reduce the junk mail you get. The tips from his blog and radio show are designed to help you learn how to live green without disrupting the way you live, and we really like what he’s up to.

Technorati Tags: environment, lazy environmentalist, myemma.com, opportunity green, planting trees

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Go on, admit it. We can tell by your hipster shoes and your artfully tousled hair that you’re trendy. So if you’re wondering how to add a bit of style to your html email campaigns this year, check out the latest edition of our Ask Emma Q&A newsletter. We offer up 5 email design trends to watch for this year, and there’ll be another 5 trends coming your way in the next edition. Sadly, none of them involve pomade.

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Here at Emma, we’re big fans of trees. From the noblest Redwood to the teeniest Dwarf Willow, we love them all, and we suspect that you, dear reader, do too. With that in mind, we recently forged an exciting partnership with Plant-It 2020 to give our Emma community an easy way to participate in non-harvest reforestation efforts across the globe. The idea is simple - for every new account we open, we’ll plant five trees with the help of Plant-It 2020. Already in the first month of the initiative, we’ve donated the money to plant nearly 1,000 trees in the lovely state of Oregon. And with nearly 300 fabulous organizations joining us each month, we hope to donate more than 15,000 trees this year.

Founded by John Denver in 1992, Plant-It 2020 plants an indigenous tree for every dollar they receive. Their savvy approach to reforestation ensures that the trees they plant will live a long and happy life. They’ll be nurtured in their natural environment with ample light and water, and they will never be harvested. Perhaps they are also lulled to sleep at night by “Rocky Mountain High.” Okay, we can’t guarantee the lullaby, but it’s a nice thought. If you’re curious to learn more about Plant-It 2020, visit their website and subscribe to their email newsletter (powered by Emma, of course).

As we grow as a company, we look forward to forging more partnerships with cool companies dedicated to positive change. We invite you to be directly involved in making our world a more sustainable place. So, go forth and plant some trees, do-gooders! We salute you.

Technorati Tags: plant-it 2020, reforestation, trees, myemma.com, environment

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