When I talk to HighRoad clients about options for their beautiful, mobile-friendly email templates, one of the first things that comes up is font choice. Marketers want to use the typography that's in their brand guidelines. They want unique fonts & design -- something that sets them apart from the deluge of email we all get. 

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.

Our Toolkit of the Month series aims to provide association professionals with methodologies, tools & templates developed by hardcore marketers at Demand Metric.

This month's focus is on how to score your mobile and social marketing efforts. We've also added in our most popular budgeting tools & bundled into one convenient toolkit:

Don't see our amazing call-to-action graphic? Get the May Toolkit

TGIF, association marketers!

We've been developing quite a few websites lately and I'm interested in hearing what others think about this long-held model of the Primary Navigation Bar. Developed originally as an area to provide a consistent pathway across a collection of content, the primary navigation bar became a staple feature of website best practices in the late 90s and frankly, not much has changed since.