View the newsletter here.
The thing I like most about Peter’s newsletter (and in fact, about his entire company) is its focus. The newsletter subtitle says it all: “Navigating the Challenges of Marketing
Software-as-a-Service Solutions to Enterprises.”
Personally, I have just the vaguest idea of what this is. And that’s fine, because I’m not the target. If, however, you face this specific challenge in the work you do, you’d be hard pressed to not at least give it a look.
In terms of improvements, I think the archive needs some work:
1. Don’t stack them one over the other. That’s really hard to work with as a reader. Give each newsletter it’s own page and simply provide a clickable table of contents on the main archive page that links to each newsletter.
2. Change the format when posting. It takes a little bit of HTML knowhow to convert the email version to something you’d post on your site. The way it’s done here — footer and all, and with the newsletter sidebar clashing with the sidebar of the web site itself — gives it a sloppy look. An easy solution for the archive is to just post the newsletter as plain text here. That’s easy to do and you don’t need to manage all the images and columns, which is really the tricky part.
Thanks Peter! That’s my take … what do you think?
Michael
We migrated these Field Trips from Facebook and didn’t want to lose the comments, so we’ve posted them below:
Peter Cohen:
Thanks Michael for advice on the newsletter, and for providing help and encouragement overall.
Michael Katz:
My pleasure Peter! Thanks for be this week’s guinea pig!
Peter Cohen:
I plan to bring in my technical guy for this HTML issue. Oh wait… that’s me.
Rhonda Alexis Dirvin:
Peter, I really like your use of stories and your “realness” that comes through in your writing. I don’t, however like your colors. The colors of your newsletter should match those of your website so you have a common look and feel. Instead of pea green and bright orange for your newsletter, I would go with the burgandy- navy- gray color combination on your website. You can easily change the color in Constant Contact’s templates. In fact you can match your website’s colors exactly using “Color Cop”, which is free. Hope that helps!
Peter Cohen:
Thanks Rhonda. As you noticed, the “graphics” genes went to other members of my family. I’ll give the Color Cop a try, though it sounds a bit authoritarian.
Michael Katz:
By the way, I’ve got a terrific (and not expensive) tech resource if you need it. He could clean that up and post to your site each time.