Marketing – Page 3 – Meta Pixel Solutions

GRAPHIC DESIGN DONATION

Stardate: February 14, 2016 by Rachel - Photography, Print Marketing

We are pleased to support the Montalvo Arts Center by donating graphic design and printing costs to the Montalvo Service Group. It’s the most local of the non-profits we support. Each time we visit, we feel good knowing we’ve contributed to the preservation of this beautiful villa and grounds.

This year, we’ve produced two designs for the mothers’ day brunch fundraising event. Wonder which they will choose?

If you would like to treat your mum to brunch this May 8th, you can call the box office at 408 961-5858 or keep an eye on their website’s calendar.

LOGO RE-DESIGN AND PRINT COLLATERAL

Stardate: January 27, 2016 by Rachel - Getting It Done, Marketing

MPS is lucky to be working with Vintage Affaire – one of the Bay Area’s premiere wine auctions which benefits Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

First project, redesign the logo and craft the save the date postcard.

A BIG DAY

Stardate: January 3, 2016 by Rachel - Getting It Done, Marketing

It’s a big day! A busy day! We launched our new website and we signed and sealed Happy New Year cards to our clients, friends and associates.

TEAR-OFF REFERRAL CARD

Stardate: January 2, 2016 by Rachel - Getting It Done, Marketing, Print Marketing

We worked with a new printer, PrintingForLess.com, to make this referral card.

Referral cards are difficult. They need to be small enough that someone would carry it around. Nice enough that people will pass them onto their friends. They need to track the giver and the receiver so that the rewards can be passed on and so you can track your ROI.

Our client has been handing these out all holiday season. We’re looking forward to finding out if they do bring in new clients – it’s a great offer for the giver and receiver, so they should.

E-MAILS WORKING FOR OUR CLIENTS

Stardate: December 28, 2015 by Rachel - Client Support, Online Marketing

There are many ways to approach e-mail campaign development and production. We’ve narrowed it down to three options to cover all our clients’ budgets and all the devices out there.

We also include enhancements to our e-mail campaign services that our competitors skip. We usually do all the graphics and copy writing. For each campaign, we also produce a web page version which our clients use as landing pages for online ads or social media posts. A week after launch, we provide a free report on the campaign’s success.

And finally, because we don’t like to just do a one-off campaign with a short lifespan of value, we add the web page version to our client’s site on a news archive page so all that work put into making the e-mail campaign continues to pay off as a boost to site search engine optimization and additional information for site visitors to enjoy. Here are a couple of news archive pages we maintain using our e-mail campaigns: http://www.gleimjewelers.com/gleim_jewelry_news.shtml and http://www.palacecafe.net/about-us-newsletter-archive.html.

Reporting shows that around 55% of all our clients’ e-mail campaigns are being viewed on smartphones. This is a higher percentage for retail businesses and a lower percentage for B2B and service businesses. Because of this, the non-responsive e-mail campaign designs we were doing just a few years ago were dropped – a business’ e-mail must be readable and actionable on a smartphone.

Here’s what is working for our clients right now:

Mobile-friendly campaigns render cleanly, but not responsively, on all devices from smartphone (landscape and portrait) to desktop computer. Mobile-friendly is a term we made up to go with the code we developed. These are the lowest priced options since they do not need complex responsive code or an e-mail campaign platform’s design interface.

They work well on all devices and on a smartphone do not require pinching or side-scrolling.

Here’s a mobile friendly e-mail campaign.

Responsive e-mail campaigns render the same code/design on any device. For these, we use a template provided by an e-mail campaign service provider, but prevent them from looking “from a box” with custom graphics.

Different e-mail campaign providers vary in quality and services. We like Vertical Response the best for its same-time-zone customer support and list management features, which we find to be the most adaptable to split-list campaigns and the way our clients wish to manage lists. However we have been recently surprised and pleased with how Constant Contact has improved – no more phone-tree nightmares when calling for support and great reporting. Of the main providers, MailChimp is our least favorite as the list management is non-flexible and there’s no phone support.

Here’s a sample of one of our responsive e-mail campaigns, produced through Constant Contact.

Custom, responsive e-mail campaigns require a lot of work. Two versions of each campaign are produced: a desktop version and a smartphone version. These are the best looking and performing types of e-mails as the design is specific to the device.

Our company campaigns are coded in this way.

We work closely with our clients to make sure we are providing the best fit for their needs, and their budgets.

Our e-mail campaign portfolio.

YOU TUBE CHANNELS AND VIDEO

Stardate: December 17, 2015 by Rachel - Client Support, Getting It Done, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

YouTube is the second largest search engine. Make sure you have a channel — optimized and hosting your optimized videos. We’ve set up a few: Halo Blow Dry Bar Channel and Palace Cafe and Catering Channel.

But keep in mind that you have to either create your own videos or have copyright permission from the owner of the video to post to your channel.

We recently came across videos hosted within Vimeo and embedded on a client’s site. But we recommend YouTube over this. Vimeo puts a link to their site in the footer of the video, so you could potentially lose a visitor to the Vimeo playlist. Plus, with YouTube being the second largest search engine in the world, going with Vimeo does not seem to make sense.

The specs for the header graphic (see above) can be tricky as it needs to render from smartphone to desktop to TV and all devices in-between.

And even better for search engine optimization and for visitor engagement, be sure you add any video to your site, as we have done with this Palace Cafe & Catering video of wine pairings, appetizers, and setting the perfect event. Once you have created and posted your own videos to your YouTube channel they can be embedded on your website which saves you money — no need for custom coding — since you can generate the code to embed right from your YouTube channel.

PHOTOSHOP FUN

Stardate: December 10, 2015 by Rachel - Online Marketing, Photography

Love it when I get to play in Photoshop and make something that works for a client. These custom bracelets by Gleim the Jeweler are perfect for the event invitation “engraving.” So pretty as header for an e-mail campaign and for a home page slide.

E-MAIL CAMPAIGN HEADER:

WEB SITE HOME PAGE SLIDE:

RESPONSIVE E-MAIL CAMPAIGN

Stardate: November 10, 2015 by Rachel - Client Support, Online Marketing

We’ve just finished our first e-mail campaign for Gleim the Jeweler. They have had a long-time account with Constant Contact – a platform we have not used for years. We’d mainly dropped CC due to their terrible customer service and horrible phone system. But they have dramatically turned that around. The interface as also the best we’ve worked with – if you are not doing custom html e-mail campaigns, this would be a good option.

Our client has traced sales back to their store and their online store from this campaign, so hopefully we’ll be doing many more of these campaigns in the future.

We’re grateful to all our clients, of course, but Rachel especially enjoys working with Gleim so she can see the photos of beautiful jewelry.

INSTAGRAM ANIMATION

Stardate: November 5, 2015 by Rachel - Online Marketing

This graphic is just an animated gif, but you can’t post a gif to Instagram. If you need an animation for Instagram, you need to render a video and post that. To see this one, you’ll need to visit our client’s feed, for which we produce content, run contests, and keep maintained, at instagram.com/haloblowdrybars. It’s pretty easy to do – this one took only a few minutes once the five photos were selected and prepped.