The Blog of Green 17 Creative
Apple have just launched their new iAds scheme in the US on the 1st July. Basically they will work by showing up in iPhone apps with video and ability to add links to do stuff without leaving the app e.g. buy something in iTunes, download a coupon etc.
The Apple audience is a big one and they like to tell people about how cool Apple is, this is a huge market for companies.
The Apple audience has:
Starting price for an ad is around $1 million dollars! But it might be worth it for those companies who can afford to do it. Some of the first companies on the list of premiere advertisers are: Chanel, Unilever, Nissan, Citigroup bank and Sears who are investing at least $1 million up to an estimated $20 million each! It sounds like a lot, but to be honest they are more than likely going to get the return for their money, as they will have the added bonus of being the first to do this and attract even more attention and more big bucks $$!!
Christophe Cauvy, digital director at the McCann Worldgroup said: “This is very powerful. It’s a no-brainer that’s going to work.” With the high engagement level of video and being able to interact with the ad they do seem to have great potential. Another great advantage is that you can target your specific market to a number of options including:
Once again though Steve Jobs seems to be creating controversy by excluding other suppliers and cornering the market, as this will most likely exclude the Google mobile advertising platform AdMob. It seems he has it all figured out, as what works in his favour is that people don’t mind who delivers the ads, he’s a clever guy! I love my iPhone along with everyone else who owns one, so that leaves us at Apple’s mercy, but we don’t seem to mind, as long as I get to play with my cool apps, check my email and occasionally use it as a phone I’ll be one of the Apple sheep no problem!
Follow us on Twitter and Facebook and I’ll keep you updated with how this is progessing in the UK and when it’s to launch etc. Maybe you want to buy an add? Get in whilst the buzz is still alive and people don’t find them annoying yet!
For more info on the Apple iAds check it out on their website http://advertising.apple.com/ and make sure to let us know your opinion on them below…
Posted in News, Online Marketing | View Comments
Posted by clare
Adobe Creative Suite 5 Belfast Launch
Yesterday Green 17 Creative attended the Adobe Creative Suite 5 launch orgainsed by EOS systems and held at W5 in the Odyssey Arena Belfast. The entertaining Jonathan Ferman talked at the Event. He discussed some of the new features available to us within the Adobe Creative Suite. So the aim of this post is to share my views on the new features for example what was good and what was not so good.
To be honest I thought when attending this event that there wouldn’t be too many changes with the likes of Photoshop and InDesign and the event would be more focused on the new software like Flash Catalyst. So here is what I thought were excellent new features available to us and makes Green 17 really consider purchasing the new software.
1. Photoshop. Watch some videos
Photoshop was the one I was really please and impressed with. They have this new feature called content aware fill. Basically you can remove any image detail or object with Content-Aware Fill. It magically fills in the space left behind. This breakthrough technology matches lighting, tone, and noise so it looks as if the removed content never existed. I was really impressed with this because before you had to spend hours cloning out the object which was very time consuming.
The puppet wrap tool was another tool that was pretty cool. This tool let you precisely warp or stretch graphics, text, or image elements to create unique new looks for your designs. The good thing about this is that it all can be done within seconds.
2. InDesign. Watch some videos
I was very impressed with Indesign. What adobe has done is they have intergrated flash a lot with Indesign when it comes to doing presentations. Instead of using Microsoft powerpoint you can now use InDesign to present slides with their new presentation mode feature. Also by importing your Photoshop files and Illustrator files you can now animate those directly within Indesign. You don’t have to use flash at all. That was something I was very impressed with.
Also Adobe have made it easy to do simple tasks that before were time consuming for example rounded corners and content layout can all be done within minutes.
Jonathan talked about some other software like Flash Catalyst that where very impressive but again it comes down to the old Adobe verus Apple debate that any web app you create using Flash Catalyst will not work on the iPhone and the iPad which are ini my opinion the future.
Overall I enjoyed my day out at the W5 and congrats to EOS systems for orgainsing a great event and hope there is more to come.
Tags: Adobe, CS5, InDesign, Photoshop
Posted in Design, News | View Comments
Posted by barry
If you are looking for inspiration on how to get more people liking your Facebook page its a good place to start with those at the top of their game. Being the 2nd most popular business on Facebook Starbucks know a thing or 2 about Facebook promotion (Facebook are 1st). By using custom designed pages, they go beyond the usual scope of Facebook wall posts and pictures, to promote things like their loyalty card, other branches etc. Below you will see their current custom built ‘Promo Pages’.
At Green17 we have a team of Facebook specialists ready to add a little something extra to your page.
Get £50 worth of Free Facebook Ads to promote your page if you are one of the first 25 orders from 4th June!
Click here to Order online now. Don’t forget to look below this big image for some Facebook page ideas…
A few Facebook custom page ideas and tips:
1. Your Facebook landing page doesnt have to be the wall. We can set you up with a link that will point directly to a customised page. Starbucks landing page promotes their loyalty card which you can link to join, it’s obviously a great benefit to promote your company immediately on entering your profile.
2. Think of the idea and get your custom page design now. With control for us to add basic HTML and CSS we can come up with a great design to send your viewers to other links. Like Starbucks 2nd promo page which has a map. Think of the extra info you want to give and we will come up with a customised, branded and professional page to go into your Facebook business page. It can be anything, a brief intro to your list of services/products. A more detailed contact page with a newsletter subscription form. An offer! A list of your branches with a map and contact details, or even links to their regional Facebook and Twitter accounts. Get thinking and contact us before the offer runs out!
3. A competition can increase your Facebook users by 50%! So if you come up with the competition we can do the promo page.
4. Don’t forget to promote your Facebook page wherever you can. Your website, Twitter, LinkedIn, your blog, email footers, email newsletters. And any printed material you have, flyers, business cards, receipts etc.
5. Start promoting your online Facebook shop now! In 2010 Facebook will be rolling out a global payments system to allow retailers to sell goods and services directly within the site itself. This will allow all business to create an online shop within Facebook. But why wait until it happens! Get some of the 400 million Facebook users liking your page today, and you will have an already established market place. You might even think of doing an offer for early joiners.
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Posted by clare
Good online image editors
It’s not often we have to use an image editor to resize pictures for websites as our content management system, Content17, has a built-in editor. However if we need to retouch an image or save a quick screenshot we find the following free online image editors the best and a lot cheaper than Photoshop:
www.picnik.com (handy for quick automatic touchups to brightness and contrast etc including red eye reduction)
www.pixlr.com (a simplified version of Photoshop that loads before you can even open photoshop, brilliant!)
www.sumopaint.com (similar to pixlr)
And of course if you cant be bothered with all this pixel malarchy ask us about Content17, you wont need to know anything about cropping or resizing images for your website it’s all built-in to our CMS.
Posted in Design, Email marketing, Web design | Comments Off
Posted by clare
Google’s search results re-design
The new design refreshes and streamlines the look, feel and functionality of Google, making it easier to pinpoint what you’re looking for. It’s powerful, yet simple. Today’s changes are the latest in our continuing efforts to evolve and improve Google. We’ve been testing these changes with users over the past few months, and what we’re launching today reflects the feedback we’ve received.. We want to ensure that the Google you use today is better than the one you used yesterday, and these latest changes open up many possibilities for future features and enhancements.
To find out what exactly what the new features are watch this video and it will explain everything
Tags: Design, Google, News, UI
Posted in News, UI Design | Comments Off
Posted by barry
Twitter is a social media platform that keeps people connected with short messages or “tweets”, but it’s not just for staying in touch with friends, it’s also a great way to publicize your business.
“Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses, too. From local shops to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter.”
We can show you how to leverage the power of Twitter for instant business benefits – like reaching new markets and increasing sales. You can build a loyal customer following, expand your brand. and generate instant buzz when you integrate Twitter into your existing marketing strategies.
We will analyze what your existing social media strategy is, if you have one and plan which tools are best for your demographic. We can then style your profiles to match your brand, integrate the feeds into your site and train and help you manage them all.
We usually suggest you do this for about 10 – 15 mins everyday depending on the size of your business, but don’t worry once we show you the ropes, it’s quite easy and fun to do!
http://business.twitter.com/twitter101
Tags: Facebook, Flickr, Linked In, Social Networking, Twitter
Posted in Social Networking | Comments Off
Posted by adrian
Top Tips for Email Marketing Campaigns
1. Think – Subject line, Subject line, Subject line!
Create a subject line of less than 50 characters that tells of the most important news/offer/content in your email. You want to grab their attention to open it but at the same time try not to make it sound like spam or advertising. People are more likely to open an e-mail that has a simple, newsy, and direct Subject line.
2. Have a system that allows you to Track your messages’ effectiveness through live reports.
Track open rates, numbers of subscribers who unsubscribe, and click-through response. Then learn and refine your message from the statistics. This will help you refine your campaigns to be more successful and also provide data on who the interested clients are and what they clicked on.
3. Don’t just send one big image, make sure your message is clear without images
Most e-mail programs won’t display them by default. Make sure your message is clear as text without the images. All of our templates are designed to look good and get the message across with or without images.
4. Test your emails in all the major email programs
They can look very different in each one! That’s why you need to know your mail shot template has been tested to look good in all major email clients, otherwise your customers will more than likely unsubscribe or blacklist you straight away.
5. Use an email system that can check your spam rating before you send so you don’t get blacklisted.
Use a spam checker to see whether your e-mail will pass through common filters or put you on a spam blacklist. Our emailing services have spam checkers built in. All our email templates are optimised to pass spam filters, we don’t want you to end up in the trash!
Contact us about using Mailer17 or getting a custom email template for your business.
Tags: email, email campaigns, Email marketing, email tips
Posted in Email marketing | View Comments
Posted by adrian
Tuesday and Wednesday best days to send email campaigns
Studies conducted by online research analysts have shown that the best days to perform a mail-out to your email list are Tuesday and Wednesday, as this is when people are more receptive to communication. This means that they are more likely to read your content and click on links, meaning more sales.
On Mondays, everyone is still recovering from a hectic weekend. On Thursday and Friday, people are already too busy looking forward to the weekend. We’ve actually experimented with this, and received the best results by sending out emails at around 2-3pm on a Wednesday.
Tags: email campaigns, Email marketing, emarketing, ezines, mail shots
Posted in Email marketing | Comments Off
Posted by clare
Tips for writing good Subject lines
Your subject line is the most important part of your email campaign, it’s what will draw the user to open it. If its good it will dramatically increase your open rates but if its bad and it looks like spam or is so vague they don’t know what it’s about, then all your hard work creating the campaign is out the window, and we don’t want that!
Your Hot Top 10 Tips for creating an effective email subject line:
- Keep it short, no longer than 50 characters – ‘This is an example of a 50 character long sentence’
- Explain clearly what is of interest inside this newsletter
- Keep the message clear and easy to understand at a glance
- Avoid using cheesy promotional phrases people will see this as SPAM straight away
- Dont give offers that are too good to be true, they will also seem like SPAM.
- Avoid using exclamation marks and CAPS.
- Avoid personalising the subject line if not necessary – a bit cheesy and that word could be used more effectively describing what’s in your email.
- Keep the information useful to the user, creating a segment is a good way to target subscribers.
- People are more interested if the content relates to a recent event, or one coming up.
- Avoid these words – Free, Help, Percent off, and Reminder. Research shows people delete emails with these in.
Tags: Email marketing, Emails, Tips
Posted in Email marketing | Comments Off
Posted by clare
Microsoft provides users with a browser choice
Following the European Commission’s ruling which argued that the US giant’s practice of pre-installing Internet Explorer on Windows PCs was anti-competitive, Microsoft now must offer you the choice of browser, if you use Internet Explorer as your default browser.
Early this week, Microsoft started offering you the choice of 12 browsers. The first on the list are the five most popular browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Apple’s Safari.
With this change, now is the perfect time to try a new browsing experience, particularly if you are using an older version of Internet Explorer such as IE6, which has long been the bane of any developers life, as its far from standards compliant.
If users choose to upgrade to IE8 from IE6, they can look forward to a more favourable browsing experience and nicer looking websites!
Tags: browsers, Microsoft, Windows
Posted in News | Comments Off
Posted by barry
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