Sending out email newsletters or other email marketing tools is a lot more affordable (and more effective) than sending out printed material. Also, it gets  you moving in the right direction, which is toward a more fully developed digital marketing program (more on that in a later post).

Getting started is easy.

Step One: Choose an online email marketing service and set up an account. Account set-up should be free, so don’t use a service that charges you to set up your account. We always recommend MailChimp because we use it and love it. Another good service is emma, and there are many others to pick from. One thing to check when you are deciding on which service to use is how they charge. Some services charge by the length of your list. Others charge per email sent. Some offer both options. It varies, so choose what’s most appropriate for you. One thing we love about MailChimp is that if your list isn’t too large, you may be able to do your sending for free… which is always affordable.

Step Two: Build email marketing into your firm’s overall content strategy. All of your marketing messaging… all of the content you are producing should be working in harmony. That’s something your content strategy will help assure. It is important to coordinate your marketing efforts, so give some thought to what you hope to accomplish by reaching out to your community.

Step Three: Once you’ve got your head around why you’re doing this and what you want to say, develop the content for your first mailing. The content people out there will understand that quite a bit of thinking should go into this. Things like knowing your audience and what they want to know, because this is about them, it’s not about you. Give them something useful, and try to structure your email content to provide a bit of value, along with the promise of even greater value if they click through to your website. And build that value into your site. Your goal is get your audience to come to your site and engage with you in some way.

Step Four: You now need your email template design. Many services provide stock template designs, but it’s much better to use a custom-designed template. Your email is making a statement about your firm’s brand, and it’s design really needs to match and support that brand. If you don’t have one on staff, you will probably want to work with a professional graphic designer who has experience creating custom email templates. And once they have the template looking the way you want, have them show you how to plug your content into your new template and get your email ready to send.

Step Five: Go over your mailing list and make sure it’s a good one. Every name on the list should be okay with receiving email from your firm. Bring your list up to snuff, because you don’t want to be accused of being a spammer. There are negative consequences to that. So, when you know you’ve got a good list, upload it to your new email marketing service. Actually, this step can happen right after you set up your account, but the point is, it has to happen before you can send anything out, so make sure you allow time to do it.

Step Six: Send out your first email, and start checking your analytics to see who all is opening it. Be happy.

Step Seven: Put an email newsletter opt-in sign-up on your website to add new names to your mailing list.

I’m not trying to make light of how much actual work goes into this process, because there’s a lot effort involved. But in relative terms, getting this particular marketing tool up and running is something you can accomplish fairly quickly and with a limited investment. In return, you will have significantly upgraded your digital marketing infrastructure, and you’ll be in a position to greatly expand the way you think about how to reach out to your online community.

Right out of the box, this presents you with several significant challenges.

First, it seems that nearly every community in America (and beyond) is trying to do the same thing, so you have the problem of being heard. Plus, there is a fairly standard set of data that your prospects use to compare their potential location sites. How do you make your data set stand out? And how do you make your case sufficiently compelling to get you on the short list and perhaps even get a request for more information?

We believe the use of interactive infographics can help you.

The use of this packaging approach will certainly make your content stand out from the crowd. It also will make your information engaging and very easy to use and understand. In short, it will help you make your story far more compelling to the people you’re trying to reach.

Here are several examples that show you what we mean.

In our work with the Kansas City Area Development Council and its partner organization Kansas City SmartPort, we have used a variety of infographics and interactivity to make the work of location advisors a little easier.

KCADC Community Profiles

On the ThinkKC.com website, the KC metro area is presented as a map showing its 18 counties and 50 communities. Clicking on a city or county automatically brings up an demographic snapshot of that location, with the option to click into a more detailed description.

» View project info

KC SmartPort Trade Corridor Network

On the KCSmartPort.com website, KC’s robust distribution and logistics infrastructure is presented as an interactive system of maps that allow the user to interactively turn on and turn off different elements of the regional transportation and logistics infrastructure so they can not only see each element, but also see how the various elements relate to one another.

» View project info

Custom Report Generator

KCADC’s ThinkKC.com website uses extensive text, graphic and numeric data to present in-depth demographic, tax and incentive profiles of the KC metro area. It’s a lot of information for a site consultant to sort through, so site visitors are able to specify the topics they wish to see, and a custom report is generated automatically, which can then be downloaded as a PDF file.

» View project info

Demographic Map System

Imagine collecting data related to your region’s industries, transportation infrastructure, demographics from both a local and national perspective. That’s what we’ve done on KCADC’s ThinkKC.com Map Center. The site visitor is able to select any of these general topics and then click through a variety of data presentations within each section.

» View project info

KC SmartPort Real Estate

Having a strong portfolio of available real estate opportunities is critical to attract new businesses to your community. For the KCSmartPort.com website, we created a an interactive real estate feature that uses graphic icons to distinguish different types of properties (intermodal, logistics, buildings). Each graphic icon provides a rollover data snapshot and a link to a more detailed property profile.

» View project info

Purchase a copy of the book on the Our Portland Story website.

Portland Bridges story

Portlandia story

In addition to getting a chance to get to know other chapter board members, the retreat is a great place to learn about AIGA’s direction and new initiatives. Here’s what AIGA is working on:

• Design for Social Change: designers are increasingly being brought into problem-solving sessions for their design thinking and facilitation skills. Example: Aspen Design Summit
• Design ProBono: AIGA is encouraging designers to give back to their communities by donating 5% of their time to pro bono projects. AIGA provides listings of pro bono projects seeking designers on its website.
• Living Principles: the inward-focused Center for Sustainable Design has been replaced with the outward-facing Living Principles and a new Living Principles website has launched. The new approach is to invite dialogue across businesses and industries instead of a focus strictly on designers.
• Documentary about AIGA: Lynda.com created a documentary video about the history of AIGA and the benefits of membership.
• AIGA Make/Think design conference videos are now online.

Interactive infographics, which are graphical depictions of data, allow you to process what would have taken hours to understand into seconds. In this session, four panelists showed examples of infographics and then talked about the current state of technologies related to creating them.

NOTES FROM THE SESSION:

• Effective visualization is not about trying to tell a story around the data. It’s about allowing the data to tell it’s story.
• Don’t start with the data or you’ll end up with something that looks like data, start with the question or the problem.
• As mobile devices become predominant devices for viewing online content, technologies will need to change. For example, Flash is the most-used tool for creating interactive infographics, yet is not supported on the iPhone or iPad. HTML 5 and Canvas open the possibility of not requiring a plug-in to view, but as I discussed in an earlier post, full cross browser support is not yet available for these newer technologies.

SAMPLE INFOGRAPHICS:

Good, which produces a website, magazine, videos and events and is “for people who give a damn”, is a rich resource for excellent infographics. Casey Caplowe, Good’s founder and creative director, showed several examples of infographics, many of which are static graphics and not interactive, and are frequently about educating people to make change for good.

Ben Fry’s example of Darwin’s Origin of Species shows all of the revisions that were made to the original document in an animated and interactive format.

Shan Carter, from the New York Times, produces highly interactive infographics that utilize user-controls to show the data based on different variables.

Eric Rodenbeck from Stamen showed an example of visualizing real time Twitter activity related to the Olympics using photos as graphic elements that scale in size based on the frequency of the words associated with the photos.

More samples of infographics:

• 40 useful and creative infographics
• Cool Infographics blog
• Reviews of infographics blog
• Infographics Magazine
• Information Aesthetics

At SXSW Interactive, all of the keynote addresses were “recorded” by artists to document the discussion in real-time. The conference also offered several sessions on visual note taking to help people learn how to solve problems and communicate through simple drawings. According to wikipedia, “visual thinking is the common phenomenon of thinking through visual processing using the part of the brain that is emotional and creative to organize information in an intuitive and simultaneous way.”

In the “Pen and Paper Tools” session, I learned why visual notes are used:

• people respond more and have better memory retention with visuals
• the tools used are easy and accessible (pens, pencils, markers, paper)
• working together to create visual notes activates a different style of working
• visual notes are used as a tool for groups to help work together towards solutions

SXSW INTERACTIVE KEYNOTE ADDRESSES

Valerie Casey's keynote address by Sunni Brown (sunnibrown.com)

Valerie Casey's keynote address by Varick Rosete (varickrosete.com)

Danah Boyd's keynote by Heather Willem (imagethink.net)

Daniel Ek's keynote by Janine Underhill (idea-360.com)

PRESENTATIONS ON SLIDESHARE

More info on visual thinking and visual note taking:

• Slides from “Pen and Paper Tools” session
• Visual Note-taking 101 w/Austin Kleon, Sunni Brown & Mike Rohde
• VizThink: a website for visual thinkers
• Visual Thinking School (offers modules to help you become a better visual thinker)
• Book: “slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations” by Nancy Duarte
• Book: “The Back of the Napkin” by Dan Roam

In his book, Brian tells us how we can find and use better materials for print projects, reducing the impact of printing by specifying recycled paper with high post-consumer content, nontoxic inks, and learning how to eliminate waste on a press sheet. Beyond materials, there is the potential to actively help influence the strategies and ideas on projects, as well as change the behaviors of your audience, clients and peers.

“This book is a must read for designers who want to stay relevant in one of the most significant design opportunities of the 21st century” Clement Mok, designer, entrepreneur, AIGA Medalist

Highlights of the conference included hearing design legend Clement Mok talk about the evolution of his career. Clement is a pioneer in New Media and got his start at Apple back in the early 80s, the same time that I was introduced to Macs in college. From there, his career paralleled what I was learning at the time, so his presentation was a great reminder of how much things have changed in the time that I’ve been a graphic designer. Additional highlights included a panel discussion on sustainability and a presentation on the “Secrets of Typographic Success”. I’m proud to be a member of a professional organization like AIGA and look forward to attending the next design conference in 2011.

For both of us, our earliest inspiration to write and to design came from the beauty and excitement we discovered in printed words and images. In the beginning, it was books. Magazines followed. Life, National Geographic, Esquire, Interview, Emigre, Rolling Stone, Wired, Ray Gun… each publication in its own way a breakthrough to a new way of looking at things – a new way of combining words and graphic design to enhance a message.

The Process Has Evolved || In the days before many contemporary communicators began their professional careers, the printing process required many different types of artists. What used to require writers, graphic designers, typesetters, keyline artists, color separators and printers, now has been reduced by the digital evolution to writer, designer and printer. But it still feels the same way when you hold the finished book.

A project we especially enjoy is the annual report for the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute. We currently are preparing their 2007 report – the fourth we will have produced. The challenge of this report is to capture the energy KCALSI and its shareholder institutions are putting in to the effort to achieve National Cancer Institute status for the Kansas University Medical Center, to translate the discoveries of basic research into healthcare solutions, and to achieve a higher standard of science education for all levels of students.

Newsletters & Brochures Still Work || Regular newsletters, whether online or print, are a good way to keep your name in front of your clients and prospects. But there’s a lot of clutter out there, so we try to design newsletters that engage your readers. In the print world, we have produced stimulating newsletters for a variety of clients across a wide range of industries.

And what company doesn’t use brochures, flyers or other types of print collateral in its marketing efforts? We worked with the Kansas City law firm, Spencer Fane Britt & Browne to design a corporate brochure which drove the branding of all of its print advertising.

Print is All Around You || In everything we do we encounter copywriting and design for print. Business cards, letterhead, menus in restaurants, signs at meetings, backdrops and handouts at exhibits, stickers, postcards, posters… the list just keeps going.

Print is here to stay.

Lisa worked for Corbin Design of Traverse City, Mich., to design the map portions of a pedestrian wayfinding system for the city of Kansas City. These maps were tough to produce. She had to combine input from GIS data, Google Earth, street maps and photographs to make sure the wayfinding maps were accurate.

Maps Show Up Everywhere || Lisa’s map design proficiency has proven itself a blessing since so many of our clients have used maps in their communications projects. Interactive maps have been employed on websites for the Kansas City Area Development Council, KC SmartPort, the KC Animal Health Corridor and the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute.

Plus, firms like New York-based SELLS, which has offices in states up and down the Atlantic Coast, use maps and directions to help clients locate all of their offices. In fact, most businesses like to provide their customers with a map to their location. And while this may seem a bit “pedestrian” to many of you, making a map that makes sense is different from simply making a map.

A History of Map Making || Lisa has been designing excellent maps for much of her career. I suppose spending a number of years working for a transportation engineering firm led to a lot of them. Transportation needs maps.

Anyway, over the years she has designed a lot of maps. When I asked her what unique techniques she had developed that help her make her maps which are easy to read and understand, she said this… “having the ability to draw the map elements (like all of the highways and streets) with a mouse, keeping the details simple, using color effectively… that’s about it.”