Never during my job search did I imagine I would be employed to build HTML email templates, my HTML skills till this point so far had been 2-3 websites for university and personal attempts to design my own website which had failed due to my for lack of better words.. “rubbish” design skills.

Code like it’s 1999

I wish I done more research into how to code for emails before I embarked on this challenge, I wasted a lot of time.

My initial templates I coded as if they were a website, using CSS and styling using DIV tags. One mistake I didn’t make was using external style sheets (Even I figured out that there would be no way to link them).

Then came judgement time, I sent my first test send and every email client ripped it to shreds, it was at this point I asked uncle Google for help.

Tables Tables Tables!

This image sums up how I feel about HTML emails.

Who would’ve thought that in 2013 you would coding in tables? Not me..

Having started university in 2008 they never really covered the existence of tables in web design, they clearly never expected any of us to become involved in email marketing.

I found nesting tables inside tables became very confusing very fast, as time went on I managed to cut down the amount of tables I was using.

Outlook 2007

I have always been a Micro$oft “fan boi”, that was until I met Outlook 2007. When a powerful empire such as Micro$oft is able to roll out a platform which is below standard to millions of companies worldwide it really bytes (ha!) the small intern in the behind.

Industry Report Store mainly deals with B2B clients, simple logical deduction tells us their customers use Micro$oft technology, so there is a very high chance of Outlook 2007 being their email client.

Outlook 2007 breaks everything, and when I say everything I literally mean everything. I remember building HTML pages and having to optimise them for IE7 and thinking that was a pain, however now having this current experience I would take IE7 any day.

In my next post I will talking about the next step in my “Mel Reid” digital campaign which is sending out HTML email CVs to potential employers.

During my job hunt I realised many things; looking for a job is boring.

Sending emails is boring, making phone calls is boring. Interviews however are exciting.

But how does one land the interviews? I have an idea, and the idea is “Mel Reid” the brand.

What better way to get a job in marketing than by marketing yourself?

I am currently in the process of running a digital campaign for Mel Reid. The campaign currently consists of a mixture of email marketing and paid social advertisements.

Social adverts:

For the last week I have been running ads advertising “Mel Reid” to fellow digital marketers. A/B testing my adverts by changing copy, images and target audience.

Courtesy of GoDaddy I had £33 of Facebook credits to play around with.

My initial Facebook Ads were micro-targeted towards specific employers, you can read about micro targeting on Facebook here.

I started off with a sample of 4 PPC agencies based in London, researching their directors/managers of digital marketing and then the fun began.

What does your digital footprint say about you?

Due to the nature of the industry I want to enter the managers and directors were easy to find by doing a Google search.

With information pulled from Google, their LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and G+ accounts I was able to create semi-detailed lists of interests and backgrounds (note all of this information is publically available). I used this information to target my audience.

I ran the ad for the few days and to my surprise..

Sadly at this point the lead went dead, that was until this week when I started the “Mel Reid” digital campaign back up.

This time around I went for the macro approach and funny enough “FOUND” found me, I will be meeting with Greg tomorrow, wish me luck!

I am currently completing an internship for Industry Report Store (They sell market research reports to B2B clients).

My tasks here are to design and develop new HTML email templates, since starting here I can see a huge change in my design and HTML skills which I will demonstrate below.

First Email template:

Latest Email template:

As always these new experiences generate new ideas, I am currently in the process of developing my own Email CV to send out to potential employers.

Why I hear you ask? Text emails are just too boring for me.