Product Update: Deep Links, Content Meta Tags & 20 Ways To Make Your Email Blasts More Effective

Before beginning this product update, we wanted to check in and make sure that no one had any questions about deep links.

First and foremost you should only use deep links alongside a clear invitation to download the app (or to download the app to view content). The most important point being that it's clear you are sending your audience to a link that will prompt them to download the app whenever using a deep link.

The release of iOS 9.2 also introduced a new complexity: Now, iOS users who click deep links on various apps such as Facebook and Twitter will be brought to the App Store and invited to download or open the app in order to view the content - as opposed to having the link open the content directly in the app.

This new complexity does not affect desktop users, for whom deep links will still open the destination URLs as expected.

We invite you to review our how-to documentation - and please reach out if you have any questions.

We're removing the 'Beta' from our Radmin type-ahead search for events, venues, artists and people. From the next deployment forth, it will just be called 'Search'.

We'll also be removing the older, more inaccurate method of filtering in Radmin for venues, artists, people and events - except from within the pending and dupes queues (those filters will remain unchanged).

Updates To Content Meta Tags

We've historically appended ", (city) on (metro)" to the titles of all user and /p pages when they're shared and/or searched. Since the content looks a look cleaner without those tags, we're going to remove them:

We've added 'Pick Winners' buttons to the COG wheels in Radmin -> Events -> Search (formerly Beta Search).

We've ensured that all of a venue's scrapers will be displayed in Radmin -> Venues -> Search.

We've added more Spanish-language translations on our platform to better serve HazDF and to prepare for HazTJ.

What Big Projects Are Our Developers Working On?

20 Ways To Make Your Email Blasts More Effective

This week's Tip of the Week is actually 20 tips - to better improve the deliverability and engagement of your weekly email. Do you follow all of these best practices?

1. Test your send times. 
2. Test your subject lines. 
3. Test your email content. 
4. Check out your MailChimp Reports after each campaign. Where are people clicking? Where aren’t they clicking? 
5. Include a mailing address in your footer (it’s the law). 
6. Send a test of the final draft to yourself - and check every link.
7. Send tests to close friends and colleagues. Make sure they have a variety of mobile devices. Note that 53% of email marketing opens occur on mobile devices. 
8. Run MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector on your campaigns. 
9. Make sure your email isn’t clipping. 
10. Add Alt Tags to all of your images. 
11. Keep your calls to action clear and concise. Don't vanish them inside a long paragraph of text. 
12. Keep a balanced image-to-text ratio and avoid using large images whenever possible. 
13. Keep your most important call(s) to action above the fold.
14. Make sure your email’s font and color scheme clearly indicate where the links are. 
15. Avoid saying ‘click’ whenever possible and let your design do the talking. 
16. Keep in mind that, in general, the shorter your email is, the more deliverable it will be. 
17. Avoid using ALL CAPS and multiple exclamation points whenever possible.
18. Include an invitation for users to whitelist your sending address. 
19. Make use of email preheaders. They'e given more real estate on most email clients than subject lines. 
20. Lean on us for graphic designs! We hired a new designer, Silke Kilian, near the end of 2015 and she is an absolute ace at email graphics. We invite you to email Support whenever you need a design for one of your emails (or just want us to make you a new set of header banners) - and try to give us as close to a one-week lead time, if possible.