Photo of Creating Email Subject Lines that Actually get Opened

Creating Email Subject Lines that Actually get Opened

Most people quickly scan the subject lines in their inbox before deciding which messages are worth their time and attention.

Did you know that emails with subject lines with both a persons first and last name have a higher chance of getting read? Or using “thank you” vs “sign up” makes a giant impact on open rates?

Let’s face it, even in the age of Social Media and interactive websites, old school email is still our most powerful client communication tool. However, most email subject lines are not given much thought. Sure we like to add works like “Urgent” or “Sale!” or “Last Chance!”, but what if some of those words are actually deterring people from opening the email? Words that make an email look like metallic cans of virtual ham are simply getting deleted. (Spam anyone?)

Good news is some of the most respected names in the email biz have put together some research to help:

Subject Line Data: Choose Your Words Wisely (MailChimp)

Symbols in Subject Lines (Campaign Monitor)

Are you crafting the best subject lines?

– Chris

Where’s my Twitter Feed?

twitter-logoOn June 11th Twitter changed the way their feeds work on webpages.  This change has rendered most twitter feeds using the old method inoperable.

We’ve added our feed using the new method to this blog and it looks pretty snazzy.

If you’re a client of ours and you have Twitter featured on your site we will be contacting you shortly with some options for making a fix.

#thankstwitter

Photo of Drive online traffic, increase store sales, build your brand; all with Google Adwords.

Drive online traffic, increase store sales, build your brand; all with Google Adwords.

Control when you show up on Google with Adwords; Your first $100 is on us. We do all the work for you; optimizing your ads and keywords, and send you reports once per month.

Sign Up for a Managed Adwords account and we’ll throw in $100 worth of free ads! Fully managed for $35/mth + $100 setup Signup: advertise@vxfusion.com or call us.

WordPress Security

There has been a huge increase in WordPress website hacker attacks lately (Something that happens when your as big as WordPress).

Although it is not time to panic, here are some top WordPress security tips:

  1. Update, update, update! Both the core and the plugins!
  2. Change the “admin” username to something unique
  3. Long, secure passwords
  4. Make only one account the administrator
  5. Remove the “Proudly powered by WordPress” or any “WordPress” mentions on the website

4 of our Favorite Websites for Designers

Niice.

Completely awesome, Pinterest-istic, designers search engine that grabs it’s awesome from Behance, Dribbble and Designspiration.

Cloud Comp

The CloudApp powered “designers a way to present comps to their clients inside of a realistic device shell“. (Example)

Color.Hailpixel

Pick me some colours (Color’s for the America folk) already! Fantastic tool to find a colour or two ten for your next project.

PLTTS

A fantastic colour palette picker with a little more guidance than ^ one. Type in a hex-code in the field above and search for a palette with a specific color.” Oh and save em for later reference and to share!

Favorites referenced from:

20 Incredibly Useful Tools and Resources for Web Designers

 

WordPress Tips

WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management Systems in the world. Since a  lot of our clients (and other people around the world) use it to update their blog or websites, we a put together a quick list of tips. Read more

Photo of What is WordPress?

What is WordPress?

WordPress, one of the worlds most popular Content Management Systems, is built by hundreds of community volunteers, features thousands of plugins and can power a website to do almost anything you can imagine. Over 25 million people have chosen WordPress to power their website.

A Content Management System (CMS) allows website owners to update their own content – add/edit/delete pages, news, images and much more – easily and with little training. The WordPress CMS can even be extended to power online shopping carts (eCommerce), community portals and even social media platforms similar to Facebook.

We love WordPress and have tons of experience designing and developing custom hand-coded websites powered by it. If you are looking for a WordPress expert, you’ve come to the right place! Contact us for pricing details.

Google's (Hard to Find) Website Tools

Every website owner should understand and use Google’s webmaster tools. The problem is they aren”t easy to find. Google Analytics is well heard of, but have you ever heard of Google”s Webmaster Central, or Google Places? We have done some of the hard work for you; compiled a list of their most useful tools for website owners: Read more