https://www.elevators.com/3x1ivexekqx Skip to navigation
https://getdarker.com/editorial/articles/p9b3cw7q As spring starts to turn to summer, I’ve got sun, sand and water on the brain, so it felt good to create imagery along these lines. I love the light blue colors in this one.
https://alldayelectrician.com/rsvzwljrrp
As all my friends know I am a music geek at heart and I love discovering new music and sharing it (by “new” I mean new to me).
One of my favorite past-times is digging up the sampled original tracks from old school hip hop tunes to uncover interesting jams. And one of my favorite recent discoveries was from a sample used in De La Soul’s “Change in Speak” by Cymande (from their 70s funk/soul tune “Bra”):
Below is the original tune that De La sampled.
Starting at minute 0:09, you can hear two key Cymande samples used throughout the De La tune, the first using bass, drums and guitar and the second making use of the full horn arrangement. When I first heard this original tune, it immediately triggered a memory of hearing “Change in Speak” way back in the early 90s (notably, De La’s 3 Feet High and Rising was one of my first CD purchases ever, along with A Tribe Called Quest’s first album, People’s Instinctive Paths of Funk and Rhythm…yeah, I really lucked out with those 1st two CD picks!).
At first, this just comes across as a great old-school horn-based groove with some soulful vocals. But, as you listen it’s just gets even better. One of the best parts to my ears is the instrumental break/drop-out at ~2:50 when the horns and vocals stop and the band just grooves for a while on drums and percussion (and plenty of hits to the cowbell!).
I have dug into the rest of Cymande’s catalog and while nothing hits quite like “Bra” there are definitely some other gems including “Brothers on the Slide” and “Dove.”
If you dig this type of musical discovery, you should check out a playlist I made for this kind of thing I called “hip hop who sampled” which I often update with new tracks. Also, as the title of the playlist suggests, I often use the awesome who sampled website to dig up the original tracks and artists.
If you find other gems, definitely let me know!
Lately I’ve been playing around with a lot of shapes and images that evoke energy and sound. This was originally in a black, purple and yellow (similar to “reach“) but then I found this grey color scheme with teal and red colors and just loved it. Most will know this, but just in case, the name is a nod to the “flex capacitor” from Back to the Future. heh heh.
I continue to be amazed at the fact that large emailers (brands, retailers, etc..) will spend so much money and effort on their email marketing program but not be bothered to create a decent email preference center. Given that email continues to be one of the most important messaging channels brands have, you’d think this would be worth the relatively small investment of time and money.
I know I’m probably in the minority since I used to spend a lot of time actually building and customizing these types of pages, but the default, out-of-the-box solution provided by your email marketing platforms is just get link NOT a good look.
“But wait, those people are unsubscribing, so why not just let them leave? Why worry about them at that point?”
Mmmm, “email soup.” That’s a fun term.
Ok, so if you’re liking where this “tough love” approach is going, then read on for some friendlier suggestions to provide a better email preference center experience:
There are a couple other options to consider, but I don’t think these are quite as straight-forward in terms of the direct benefits:
Tramadol To Buy Cheap a) Including a survey to capture their reasons for opting out
This type of optout form became super common as it is the default Mailchimp optout page/format. I think this can be useful for some brands if they actually do anything with the info they gather (other than ignore it, which is what most senders do)
https://purestpotential.com/c9sxpdu3d b) Sending users back to your website
Some ESPs offer the option to automatically send users back to the brand homepage after x number of seconds. I think this is better than doing nothing, but I’d probably prefer the option of showing them a way to opt back in or to make additional changes rather than sending them back to the website (that is, unless you’ve got some sophisticated way of re-engaging those users on the site)
follow url Technical Stuff
Now, for smaller brands and newsletters that are on low-cost email services, there are cases where having a full-blown preference center may not really be an option or make sense.
But, for everyone else, you really don’t have an excuse. If your ESP does not allow for some decent customizations to your optout page in order to make it a preference center, then https://geolatinas.org/lnmbpewtux it’s probably time to fine a new provider!
If you’ve got similar experiences, pet peeves or better suggestions, please add your thoughts.
Otherwise, go here happy preference centering!
p.s. I am officially open to consulting work in this space, so if you’d like some assistance with optout or preferences pages (including design, coding, implementation, etc…), please reach out to me: greyandgreendigital <at> gmail
I’ve been listening to this one a lot for the past month or so. It has become a bit of a morning meditation for me, especially on the days I wake up before anyone else in the house and have some quiet time to myself.
It’s like an audio sound bath of filtered synths that just washes over you for several minutes, then fades into this mellow outro with human and animal-like vocal sounds. If you listen to enough Four Tet, none of this is surprising, but it’s always interesting to the ears.