According to a recent study, over 205 billion emails are sent and received every single day (The Radicati Group, Inc.).  So here are a few ways to help you get your e-mails read.

1. Always split test your subject lines; choosing the right one will have a huge impact on the success of your mailing. 69% of email recipients will report an email as spam solely based on the subject line (Convince and Convert).

2. Turns out we’re not the only folks who believe in the power of smart email marketing. 73% of senior-level marketers believe email marketing is core to their business, as email is a critical touchpoint along the customer journey (Salesforce).

3. Designing for mobile is more important now than ever before. 80.8% of users report reading email on mobile devices (Hubspot).

4. Avoid copy-heavy messages and focus instead on high-quality, eye-catching imagery. 65% of recipients prefer emails that contain mostly images vs. 35% who prefer mostly text (Hubspot).

5. Every business needs to generate money, and email marketing is a great way to help you do just that. 59% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel for generating revenue (BtoB Magazine).

6. Make it crystal clear what you’re trying to get your recipients to do. Emails with a single call to action increase clicks 371% and sales 1617% (Toast).

7. Less isn’t always more. The average landing page form with two form fields has higher conversions than one form field (Unbounce).

I just got back from a long road trip. This was my favorite sign. Zoom in and look what’s under “to work”: a small version of the message in braille.

The visual sign is situated between the sinks and the hand dryers. The small braille type is about waist level.

I’d love to meet this sign’s designer and learn more about what (s)he and the clients were thinking, or smoking, when they designed this puppy.

I’m often asked to create a wireframe for a site before I design it because the Account Group thinks it a clever in-process sales tactic (that also reduces risk).

It made me wonder: do others have the same problem with wireframes that I do? I Goggled “web wireframes” to find out. I wondered how others approach this banal but seemingly important to others task. I found a multitude of wireframe design approaches that look and smell an awful lot like post-design-rationalization, or bull-shit for short.

The image of all those wireframes reminded me of a chat I had with one of my mentors, Hugh Dow, about 30 years ago. I had seen one of my colleagues craft an enormous deck to sell a modest $2,000,000 media plan. I felt like I’d missed a few steps because I was selling much larger plans with very “slim” decks. Hugh assured me that I was on the right track: “if you can sell it in on one page, do it. But if you’ve got a client that needs to “see all your work” – show that too.”

I’ve never forgotten that valuable lesson:

• Do all the work to ensure you know what you’re doing and keep it close at hand so that you can explain yourself if and when needed with-out any hesitation.
• Only show what’s needed to make the sale.
• Sell the benefits and excitement of sharing a great story. Don’t bore them with your stupid process.

So as to wireframes. Stupid idea, except for VERY complex sites. Likewise, it’s good to do a mock-up of key pages for a big catalog, but not for a roll-fold brochure or a banner ad.

This is a self promotion piece I put out towards the end of 2008. My thinking was that forward looking businesses would want to take advantage of the post recession growth.

It didn’t happen. They all agreed with near-sighted Chicken Little: the sky was falling, and the end was in sight.

Likewise many who claim to know of what they speak are holding their breath, wondering and predicting what Greece will do tomorrow, next week, next month.

In my lifetime Germany went from ruin and rubble to economic powerhouse. My parents lost everything in the war through no fault of their own and started over.

It didn't take days, weeks, months or years. It took decades.

That’s what might happen in Greece, Spain and other markets as well. Too much good fortune was squandered for too long by too many and now it’s time to pay the piper. Perhaps this is how economies learn to "grow up".

“Tough times never last, But tough people do.”

Here I am working on yet another web-refresh. The last time the blog was updated was the summer of 2012.

My recommendation is clear: “use it or remove it.” In most cases I advise small businesses NOT to blog because of the time commitment blogging takes. I’ve been at it for about seven years now. Some posts are longer, shorter or better than others. I do it for me and a few others that like my thought trains. I keep most posts short because “short” is the new black. And I wonder where we’ll go from here.

When I got into advertising 35 years ago, computers and Xcel didn’t exist. I wrote long hand and worked out ad related math problems with a calculator. My mentor could do the math in his head as fast as me and my peers could do it with a calculator. Then he showed us some “short-cuts”.

Those I trained considered my “short-cuts” the long way of doing things. Then came computers, spreadsheets, world processors, etc. which enabled even shorter and faster communications.

Today’s (new) media have whittled communications down to a cluster of “characters”.

What will communications look like in 5 – 10 years?

How will advertising have evolved?