Month: August 2015

Categories
Technology

Bulletproof Email Button Roundup!

Screen Shot 2015-08-28 at 10.49.06 AM
The original situation.

Came across this thread the other day. Spot on for anyone designing emails, and a great discussion, with lots of amazing shared resources on creating “bulletproof buttons” for email design.

I thought I would take a moment to write up my thoughts, and share some of those resources as well.

Best Resources for Creating Bulletproof Buttons for Email

1) SexyButton – A Responsive, Universal, HTML Email Button

"SexyButton" from BluePrint Interactive
“SexyButton” from BluePrint Interactive

Many of the resources this list includes are home-brewed solutions created by email marketers for their own in-house marketing needs. The “SexyButton” created by BluePrint Interactive is no exception. Not only does BluePrint provide the code for “SexyButton,” they also include a writeup of it’s creation, an explanation of the coding, and examples of how the “SexyButton” renders in different email clients.

Pros: Code available for end user. Button renders correctly. in most common email clients.

Cons: Only code based. Need to know HTML to edit button.

2) Bulletproof email buttons – The Holy Grail of Bulletproof Email Button Creators, Buttons.cm.

Bulletproof email buttons from Campaign Monitor
Bulletproof email buttons from Campaign Monitor

Buttons.cm from Campaign Monitor is a very easy tool to choose what options you desire for your button. They’ve included several different examples as well, so you can start from a template and change to what your email design calls for.

Pros: Allows user to change specific parameters of button design. Gives visual example of final button design. Copy HTML code directly from creator.

Cons: If your email template is <table> designed, you’ll need to fix things a bit to make the button work correctly.

3) Cheshire Impact – “Top 5 Free Call to Action Button Generators.” 

Screen Shot 2015-08-28 at 2.13.52 PM

A great resource from one of the premiere Pardot expert organizations. Cheshire Impact goes through 5 different button generators, each with their own value-adds. Great resource to check out. Be sure to follow them on Twitter as well!

4) Litmus – A Guide to Bulletproof Buttons in Email Design. Screen Shot 2015-08-28 at 2.16.19 PM

This is more of a background on bulletproof email buttons, which is a good place to start if you’re looking into the reasons why you should include non-image CTA buttons in your email designs. We can still make our designs “pretty” without being reliant on having an image-based email design!

 

Categories
Uncategorized

How language gives your brain a break

fountain pen

Here’s a quick task: Take a look at the sentences below and decide which is the most effective.

(1) “John threw out the old trash sitting in the kitchen.”

(2) “John threw the old trash sitting in the kitchen out.”

Either sentence is grammatically acceptable, but you probably found the first one to be more natural. Why? Perhaps because of the placement of the word “out,” which seems to fit better in the middle of this word sequence than the end.

Great read for all types of writing. (Via MIT)

Categories
Technology

Salesforce Pardot – Import User Sync Issue

Came across a “bug” with Salesforce Pardot yesterday while uploading new sales Users.

I’m writing this as a warning to other Pardot customers, and as a suggestion to Pardot. 

Suggestions:

  1. Change the User Import process to automatically dedupe existing Users.
  2. Add functionality so that Salesforce Users are automatically synced to Pardot Users, including User Role.

Here’s the sitch: 

I had a .csv of all of our Full License Salesforce.com Users that I needed to import to Pardot.

Pardot Users Menu Animation
Pardot Users Menu Animation

Once I selected the .csv file in the import window, and matched the correct fields for import, I finished the process, and clicked “Confirm and Save.”

A couple minutes later, when I got the email saying the import was completed, something crazy happened.

I lost Admin access to Pardot.

Unbeknownst to me, when I imported the .csv file, I indicated that the User Role should be Sales. Because I didn’t indicate the User Role in the original .csv, Pardot used “Sales” for all imported Users.

Pardot - Users Role
Where the mistake happened.

You might ask yourself, if I saw that under User Role, I’m specifically warned, “If the Role field is not mapped, all users imported will be assigned this role.” why did I continue to import?

Because, earlier in the process, Pardot specifically notes “Any users who already exist within Pardot will be skipped during the import process.” So, I thought, this is not going to affect any current User in Pardot.

pardot-users1b

I was wrong.

It took several hours for Pardot Support to provide me access back to the account. For those several hours, our team had no Admin access to our Pardot account. Yikes!

Today, everything is resolved and back to normal.

Here’s what YOU can do to help:

If you’re a Pardot customer, click on both links below and “upvote” the two ideas for this situation (or related situations).

http://ideas.pardot.com/forums/36996-ideas/suggestions/6425788

http://ideas.pardot.com/forums/36996-ideas/suggestions/7192608

Let’s make it clear to Pardot and Salesforce that we need to see greater connectivity between the two systems at a default, and not as a higher-priced add-on.