Making the Basics Better

The Orlando Advertising Federation does a great job keeping in touch with local advertisers and brands. They have an opportunity to deliver communication on their website, through email and a variety of other marketing mediums.

The OAF Update February 13, 2007 message had the potential to share interesting and poignant information with its members. But the straight text and only a small logo isn’t enough to grab attention, especially from advertising professionals who expect quality.

A simple HTML template with the OAF logo integrated into the masthead and images related to each brief story, a simple look and feel, could have made an improvement.

The table of contents displayed at the top of the message is a great idea. Subscribers can see what the newsletter is about in the preview pane. While the entire table of contents may not be displayed in the preview pane, subscribers get the idea that there is a listing of what they can find in this issue.

A nice touch would have been to add links to each item in the table of contents to take readers directly to the article. This coupled with anchor tags at the end of each article to return readers to the top of the page make the experience easier for the reader to manage. Subscribers may only be interested in the sixth article, but if it requires scrolling through five other articles to find it, they may move on to something else. A click of a link to go directly to the article can ensure more time spent on the message and with the brand.

OAF did a good job of making the ADDYS the lead article and provided a link to RSVP with only a few days remaining to RSVP for the ADDYS, the deadline was highlighted in red text above the fold. Though, an additional call to action in the subject line might have helped increase attendance.

The OAF has the basics down, but there is some room to improve.