Re: [marketing] Moving the OO.o Newsletter to HTML
Hi Kay Hi, as you may know, I am creating the OO.o newsletter in plain text this keeps the newsletter very slime and has the disadvantage that it looks rude and out dated. Since almost every other newsletter turned to the HTML format, it is time to move it to HTML. Although I personally dislike HTML email, I do agree that it is probably better for newsletters, so I'll give a reluctant +1. Please find attached draft version of newsletter. I am tried to keep it slim, simple and easily to edit since I do not use a newsletter creation tool. If somebody has experiences with newsletter tools, I am open for any suggestion. You might like to discuss it with the folk at Sun who do the regular newsletters for the various Sun groups and networks. I know, for example, that the Sun Australia/New Zealand newsletter is at the very least done with a regular template, and quite possibly uses a specific tool. Another possibility would be to see how producing a newsletter with OO.o and then exporting it to HTML (and possibly running it through Tidy afterwards) might work. However please review my draft and send me your opinion whether it makes sense to turn the OO.o newsletter to HTML Regards Kay -- Alex Fisher Co-Lead, CD-ROM Project OpenOffice.org Marketing Community Contact Australia/New Zealand http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/ - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Moving the OO.o Newsletter to HTML
Hello Alex, Kay and all. I am new to this list (having been lurking for a week), learning to use OpenOffice (and enjoying it) and minimally conversant with OpenSource applications ideology, all of which I find very impressive. My competency is in creative development, media, marketing and communications, in light of which I offer a perspective on the OO.o newsletter: While I know that 'everyone' is going to html, I suggest that the marketplace is not yet sufficiently equipped to recieve html email. The attached screenshot shows what will most likely come up as a 'first look' in the majority of Inboxes... which in strictest promotional terms means that the space which *should* be devoted to your 'hook' (lead information that draws the reader deeper into the content) is being 'wasted' on a blank graphic. Also consider that a substantial number of the 'professional end users' (who are not employed in IT but are in many instances 'the decision makers') are minimally technology literate... which I do not say as a discredit but simply as diagnosis of facts so that the 'needs' of the marketplace are pragmatically assessed in terms of providing a legitimate service to the clients we seek to serve. In this light consider that what these professionals greatly value is 'consistency'. We (all of us) have a job to do and we want to do it efficiently, effectively and competently... and it drives us (the non-tech office worker) nutz when we have to spend half of our 'production time' learning the nuances of some new-and-improved 'upgrade' in order to do what we knew how to do perfectly last week... (smile). And finally, it might be worth considering that html formatting raises one's 'score' with the spam-gods, which can raise a newsletter's bounce-back rate considerably and cascade to blacklisting by various ISPs. Thus in terms of newsletter design I would suggest continuing to distribute in (creatively formatted) plain text but also offering a link to a nicely formatted PDF version and/or a link to a webpage where the html formatted version (optimally with photos/graphics) is posted. Anyway, all just my opinion and perhaps not of any use...??? In any event, I am enjoying using OpenOffice because (so far at least) the process of 'learning' has been highly intuitive, making for an easy transition from the closed source applications I have been using for all these many years. Thanks!!! ~Christine Beems - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Moving the OO.o Newsletter to HTML
Hi Christine, I do not consider the OO.o newsletter to be a marketplace. I am fully agree that an OO.o related market place would be valuable. For now we do have two pages which covering OO.o service and products http://bizdev.openoffice.org/consultants.html http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Solutions the design of the pages are a mess but the wiki concept has the advantage that every OO.o user can add their services to the page. due to the lack on resources there is currently no immediate plan to improve the pages. However back to the newsletter design . Creating an Text and HTML version of the newsletter would take too long due to the fact that I am creating the newsletter manually. If we decided to go with the Text format, we can discuss a new design. Regards Kay On 08/17/09 15:50, Christine Louise Beems wrote: Hello Alex, Kay and all. I am new to this list (having been lurking for a week), learning to use OpenOffice (and enjoying it) and minimally conversant with OpenSource applications ideology, all of which I find very impressive. My competency is in creative development, media, marketing and communications, in light of which I offer a perspective on the OO.o newsletter: While I know that 'everyone' is going to html, I suggest that the marketplace is not yet sufficiently equipped to recieve html email. The attached screenshot shows what will most likely come up as a 'first look' in the majority of Inboxes... which in strictest promotional terms means that the space which *should* be devoted to your 'hook' (lead information that draws the reader deeper into the content) is being 'wasted' on a blank graphic. Also consider that a substantial number of the 'professional end users' (who are not employed in IT but are in many instances 'the decision makers') are minimally technology literate... which I do not say as a discredit but simply as diagnosis of facts so that the 'needs' of the marketplace are pragmatically assessed in terms of providing a legitimate service to the clients we seek to serve. In this light consider that what these professionals greatly value is 'consistency'. We (all of us) have a job to do and we want to do it efficiently, effectively and competently... and it drives us (the non-tech office worker) nutz when we have to spend half of our 'production time' learning the nuances of some new-and-improved 'upgrade' in order to do what we knew how to do perfectly last week... (smile). And finally, it might be worth considering that html formatting raises one's 'score' with the spam-gods, which can raise a newsletter's bounce-back rate considerably and cascade to blacklisting by various ISPs. Thus in terms of newsletter design I would suggest continuing to distribute in (creatively formatted) plain text but also offering a link to a nicely formatted PDF version and/or a link to a webpage where the html formatted version (optimally with photos/graphics) is posted. Anyway, all just my opinion and perhaps not of any use...??? In any event, I am enjoying using OpenOffice because (so far at least) the process of 'learning' has been highly intuitive, making for an easy transition from the closed source applications I have been using for all these many years. Thanks!!! ~Christine Beems - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org -- Sun Microsystems GmbH Kay Koll Nagelsweg 55StarOffice/OpenOffice.org 20097 Hamburg Product Marketing Germany Phone: +49 (0)40 23 646 742 http://www.sun.de Mobile: +49 (0)172 831 45 60 mailto:kay.k...@sun.com Fax: +49 (0)40 23 646 750 Sitz der Gesellschaft: Sun Microsystems GmbH, Sonnenallee 1, D-85551 Kirchheim-Heimstetten Amtsgericht Muenchen: HRB 161028 Geschaeftsfuehrer: Thomas Schroeder, Wolfgang Engels, Wolf Frenkel Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrates: Martin Haering
Re: [marketing] Moving the OO.o Newsletter to HTML
Hi Kay (and Christine). Comments inline... Hi Christine, I do not consider the OO.o newsletter to be a marketplace. I am fully agree that an OO.o related market place would be valuable. For now we do have two pages which covering OO.o service and products http://bizdev.openoffice.org/consultants.html http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Solutions the design of the pages are a mess but the wiki concept has the advantage that every OO.o user can add their services to the page. due to the lack on resources there is currently no immediate plan to improve the pages. However back to the newsletter design . Creating an Text and HTML version of the newsletter would take too long due to the fact that I am creating the newsletter manually. If we decided to go with the Text format, we can discuss a new design. Most email programs can be set to automatically create email in mixed HTML/plain text format. I regularly get such newsletters as well as many regular emails. I know Kmail (my client) can be set to do this, and I suspect Evolution (or whatever is used under Gnome) also has that facility. Outlook most definitely does. My previous suggestion of using OO.o to create it probably has more merit than you might think initially. I notice that many of the email newsletters I receive started life as MS Word documents, as witnessed by the HTML headers. OO.o can only export to HTML 4 IIRC, but that is still sufficient for a basic newsletter. Christine mentioned a few objections to HTML. All I know is that, while I have my client set to prefer plain text, it only takes one click to display the formatted HTML, with one other click to load any external web-based graphics. I believe this would be the case with most current email clients (and yes, most of those newsletters I receive are essentially marketing efforts). Regards Kay On 08/17/09 15:50, Christine Louise Beems wrote: Hello Alex, Kay and all. I am new to this list (having been lurking for a week), learning to use OpenOffice (and enjoying it) and minimally conversant with OpenSource applications ideology, all of which I find very impressive. My competency is in creative development, media, marketing and communications, in light of which I offer a perspective on the OO.o newsletter: While I know that 'everyone' is going to html, I suggest that the marketplace is not yet sufficiently equipped to recieve html email. The attached screenshot shows what will most likely come up as a 'first look' in the majority of Inboxes... which in strictest promotional terms means that the space which *should* be devoted to your 'hook' (lead information that draws the reader deeper into the content) is being 'wasted' on a blank graphic. Also consider that a substantial number of the 'professional end users' (who are not employed in IT but are in many instances 'the decision makers') are minimally technology literate... which I do not say as a discredit but simply as diagnosis of facts so that the 'needs' of the marketplace are pragmatically assessed in terms of providing a legitimate service to the clients we seek to serve. In this light consider that what these professionals greatly value is 'consistency'. We (all of us) have a job to do and we want to do it efficiently, effectively and competently... and it drives us (the non-tech office worker) nutz when we have to spend half of our 'production time' learning the nuances of some new-and-improved 'upgrade' in order to do what we knew how to do perfectly last week... (smile). And finally, it might be worth considering that html formatting raises one's 'score' with the spam-gods, which can raise a newsletter's bounce-back rate considerably and cascade to blacklisting by various ISPs. Thus in terms of newsletter design I would suggest continuing to distribute in (creatively formatted) plain text but also offering a link to a nicely formatted PDF version and/or a link to a webpage where the html formatted version (optimally with photos/graphics) is posted. Anyway, all just my opinion and perhaps not of any use...??? In any event, I am enjoying using OpenOffice because (so far at least) the process of 'learning' has been highly intuitive, making for an easy transition from the closed source applications I have been using for all these many years. Thanks!!! ~Christine Beems - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org -- Alex Fisher Co-Lead, CD-ROM Project OpenOffice.org Marketing Community Contact Australia/New Zealand http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/ - To
Re: [marketing] Moving the OO.o Newsletter to HTML
On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:42:53 Kay Koll wrote: Hi Christine, I do not consider the OO.o newsletter to be a marketplace. I am fully agree that an OO.o related market place would be valuable. For now we do have two pages which covering OO.o service and products http://bizdev.openoffice.org/consultants.html http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Solutions the design of the pages are a mess but the wiki concept has the advantage that every OO.o user can add their services to the page. due to the lack on resources there is currently no immediate plan to improve the pages. However back to the newsletter design . Creating an Text and HTML version of the newsletter would take too long due to the fact that I am creating the newsletter manually. If we decided to go with the Text format, we can discuss a new design. Regards Kay Hi Kay, I'm with Christine, she speaks good sense. However we seem to have a slight language misunderstanding. The OOo newsletter is not a marketplace, but our means of communication to _the_ marketplace and the Non-techie business people part of that Marketplace deals with text better than HTML. A well formatted text email is much better in the eyes of those end users than something that is likely to get trashed by mail filters or frustrate the reader. Text reads consistently, whereas HTML is at the mercy of the enduser browser settings. Hi Christine, Welcome On 08/17/09 15:50, Christine Louise Beems wrote: Hello Alex, Kay and all. I am new to this list (having been lurking for a week), learning to use OpenOffice (and enjoying it) and minimally conversant with OpenSource applications ideology, all of which I find very impressive. My competency is in creative development, media, marketing and communications, in light of which I offer a perspective on the OO.o newsletter: While I know that 'everyone' is going to html, I suggest that the marketplace is not yet sufficiently equipped to recieve html email. The attached screenshot shows what will most likely come up as a 'first look' in the majority of Inboxes... which in strictest promotional terms means that the space which *should* be devoted to your 'hook' (lead information that draws the reader deeper into the content) is being 'wasted' on a blank graphic. +1 unfortunately this list strips attachments Also consider that a substantial number of the 'professional end users' (who are not employed in IT but are in many instances 'the decision makers') are minimally technology literate... which I do not say as a discredit but simply as diagnosis of facts so that the 'needs' of the marketplace are pragmatically assessed in terms of providing a legitimate service to the clients we seek to serve. It has been noted in the past that in terms our demographics, Non-techie endusers make up a significant proportion In this light consider that what these professionals greatly value is 'consistency'. We (all of us) have a job to do and we want to do it efficiently, effectively and competently... and it drives us (the non-tech office worker) nutz when we have to spend half of our 'production time' learning the nuances of some new-and-improved 'upgrade' in order to do what we knew how to do perfectly last week... (smile). And finally, it might be worth considering that html formatting raises one's 'score' with the spam-gods, which can raise a newsletter's bounce-back rate considerably and cascade to blacklisting by various ISPs. Thus in terms of newsletter design I would suggest continuing to distribute in (creatively formatted) plain text but also offering a link to a nicely formatted PDF version and/or a link to a webpage where the html formatted version (optimally with photos/graphics) is posted. Anyway, all just my opinion and perhaps not of any use...??? In any event, I am enjoying using OpenOffice because (so far at least) the process of 'learning' has been highly intuitive, making for an easy transition from the closed source applications I have been using for all these many years. Thanks!!! ~Christine Beems Many thanks for a well thought out response -- Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html INGOTs Moderator New Zealand www.theingots.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
