A new FTS client, RetireLife, has been working with our UI team to launch a website for their start-up company.  FTS’ user interface web designers are now in the final stages of creating a comprehensive website, designed to fully support Retire Life’s business model to get the company up and running.  The young entrepreneurs behind RetireLife are a group of Babson students whose entrepreneurial objective grew out of their own personal experiences with friends and family members; they recognized the struggle their parents’ generation was experiencing as their grandparents aged.  There were very few resources available to their parents, (the Baby-Boomer Generation,) who have become the caretakers of their aging parents.  These Babson students realized that they, Generation Y, would inherit this same problem fifteen to thirty years from now, when their parents, (from the even bigger Baby Boomer Generation,) grow older and need the same type of care.  RetireLife.com helps assuage the tension and anxiety surrounding the very difficult, sensitive issue of caring for our aging loved ones. Read more

(Another reason to love Campaign Monitor)

This morning we discovered just how powerful and flexible the Campaign Monitor Template system is for enabling clients to craft and send their own Newsletter or Email Campaigns through the system. Using their proprietary Template Tags, you can customize virtually any section of an Email Campaign template you want while making higher level elements such as the overall structure, branding and footer elements locked through the system.

Here’s an example of a template that’s fully editable by a client in our system:

Everything you see from beneath the logo to the Salutation is editable, including the hyperlinked image in the right column.

Here are a few helpful tips on how we created it:

The Main Newsletter Title:

The main title is simply a Heading 1 Tag with the following inside of it:

<$title link=’true’ default=’Enter Title Here’>

Repeating Content Blocks:

In Campaign Monitor, content blocks consist of a Repeater element with other elements nested within such as headings, images and paragraphs. In this case, we have a Heading 2 tag, a Paragraph beneath it. In other templates, we’ve included the ability to float an image to the right of the paragraph. In this case, we’ve inserted a “Clearing” div above each repeated block so that every content block you add clears the right-aligned image and starts underneath it.

Here’s some sample code:

<repeater>
<h2><$title link=’true’ default=’Enter Body Content Title’$></h2>
<$description default=’Enter Body Content’$>
</repeater>

The coolest thing about these proprietary tags is that the tags that say ‘Enter Body Content Title’ or ‘Enter Body Content’ can be changed to anything you want so the more you extend the template for clients to work with, the more you can guide them by customizing the headings they see when inputting their content.

Single Images:

The most basic form of allowing a client to upload an image is simply to use this tag:

<img src=”<$imagesrc link=’true’$>”>

Now, in the event you wanted to lock the width, apply a border, align it or margin it, you can add on parameters to the image tag like so:

<img src=”<$imagesrc link=’true’$>” width=”200″ align=”right” border=”0″ style=”margin:10px;”>

Once you start playing with these tags inside of Campaign Monitor, it becomes clear that you have access to a great deal of flexibility for custom templates.

View a full list of Campaign Monitor Template Tags.

What is a landing page, you ask? Well, well, well… a landing page, simply stated, is a page your visitors arrive at after clicking on a link. The purpose of a landing page is to create a customized sales pitch for a specific targeted client and establish leads.

When you are designing a landing page it’s important to not only design a page that looks good, but is also fully optimized. Well crafted landing pages always convert more leads into sales. Landing pages are great if you can control where people are coming from and the type of transaction you want.

Typically it’s important to design a landing page that consists of only one page. One page is all you need to create dynamic content that will increase your overall traffic and lead conversions. Sticking with HTML or a static page is your best bet. This will ensure that all the content you administer on the site will be indexed. It’s also important to get right to the point. If you want people to spend money on your product/service then you need to show them then benefit and fast. Think of the landing page as a five second sales pitch to land a customer/lead.

When you are optimizing the landing page for search engine visibility (SEO), the following rules apply: Choose a URL and create title/description tags that capitalize on the keyword iterations you want to drive traffic from. Keep the most vital information in a recognizable format on the page that emphasizes the information that’s most relevant. Usually this information would appear before the body tag. Search engines will read the following information as more relevant and this content will appear higher on the page. In addition, include relevant content within the H1 tag. Try to limit the amount of images your use and focus more on content. If you plan on using an image or two, make sure you add an appropriate “alt” tag which highlights image information in a textual format.

It’s about creating an effective landing page that not only looks great, but is fully optimized for the search engines.