The new Hotmail is quickly being rolled out across the Hotmail user base.

However not without a significant issue for email marketers.

One of the first things we have noticed is the alignment of your email and some background colours are missing when using a user reads your email in Firefox, Chrome, Safari or any other browser which is not IE.

This is nearly 70% of Internet users according to w3schools.com

Here is an old versus new Hotmail example on an email: Read More

Over the last few weeks various brands have decided it’s a good idea to fill my inbox with irrelevant junk which tries to work on the back of the World Cup. The problem with this is many of the links are extremely tenuous – ‘England are out so treat yourself to something nice’ has been the constant theme this week. It’s so predictable I know the email is coming before I receive it.

No value is  added to the email by mentioning the World Cup, it just seems marketers think that this  cuts through the clutter and empathises with their customer base. It doesn’t – it just adds to the clutter of all those other brands and their tenuous World Cup links. It all just reminds me of a politician claiming to like the coolest band of the moment in case it improves their street cred.

Just like I don’t want our politicians spouting on about their hip music collection I don’t want my favourite clothing retailers talking to me about football – that’s why the BBC Sport website and talkSPORT radio exist.

Read More

Facebook Connect is a tool that allows you to login into a website using your Facebook account rather than go through a whole new registration process for each site.

This gives website developers some fantastic benefits:

Read More

toptable.com have added an extra dimension to their already fantastic emails. Not only do customers receive emails tailored to their location and usage frequency, but now they can even smell before they book!

This may seem a strange innovation to make but when you consider that “Flavor is recognized primarily by our sense of smell,” (Paul A. Kedeshian*) things starts to become more clear.

This feature is obviously just a tongue in cheek gimmick for most recipients as their computer screens cannot actually produce smells, but due to the launch of the iPad and the next version of the iPhone with their scent omitting capabilities, scratch and sniff emails may become more common place.

Stay tuned for further developments!

* (Paul A. Kedeshian MD, assistant clinical professor in the division of head and neck surgery at UCLA)

This problem has now been fixed.

Just a quick post to let everyone know that Hotmail is not receiving emails for approximately the next 8 hours. If you have any questions feel free to contact us.