Do you have talented marketing and communications teams who struggle with creating infographics or other graphic design elements? Do you have one graphic designer who's always overloaded with work? Are you baffled by Photoshop, Illustrator or other design programs ... or do you just not have the budget to really focus on design?

You've strategized. You've planned. You've got the budget. You think your association's ready to invest in a new website design. But then you see that you have two design options -- responsive and adaptive -- and now you aren't sure what to do.

Adam and I are at Litmus' Email Design Conference in Boston today and, as always, the conference always succeeds in delighting the audience. We just sat through a preso by RebelMail who did amazing things through embedding CSS in email that included complicated price calculations, 3-D image rotation and playing a slideshow (or at least giving you that experience). 

Our Toolkit of the Month for August is now available. We have brought you a piece originally created by HubSpot that looks at common SEO myths and breaks it down for what you need to care about today in order to keep your website fresh. SEO companies were all over our voice mails, emails and phones several years ago telling us that we need to rewrite our homepages for thousands of dollars. Then, seems that SEO/SEM has kind of faded into the background without a lot of coverage anymore in the association world.

Most everyone knows at least one family that is one of those close-knit, ultra-supportive units that shares its love with the community.  Sure, there’s probably some dysfunction beneath the surface just like any other family, but in this one every member has an integral and irreplaceable role, and there is strength and loyalty in the family bond.  Mother, father, brothers, sisters… they’re always there to support each other, and they’re loathe to let each other down.  Working together, they accomplish great things, even in difficult times.  Being a part of this family is unique and special, and the thought of it breaking apart is almost unfathomable. 

You've got your association's email marketing strategy down. Your email design is gorgeous, and it renders well with almost all email clients. Your copy is creative and engaging. Unfortunately, the chances that this email will be read are low. It may be deleted or left to pine in someone's inbox.

While the first thing your members see is the email inbox, it can be the most neglected area when an email is created (or even an afterthought). Every inbox out there shows the subject line and the sender's name for any particular email. Some, however, show some amount of preview text.

One of the most effective ways to enhance open rates of emails (sometimes by as much as 45 percent) is by optimizing preview text.