Clerys Bed Store

Buy beds online from Clerys department store. Learn about beds or consult the bed advisor for help choosing the perfect bed for your needs. More...

 

Clerys Apartment Fit-Outs

Maximise returns from buy-to-let apartments using Clerys interior design service. Use the online tool to get a quote.

 

Smart Telecom

Ever gone to buy broadband and got put off by the jargon? Not on this site you won’t! Content and design for broadband provider.

 

NAYD

Stunning new site for Irish Youth Theatre. Design, development, blog, content, bespoke CMS, and email marketing. Check it out here.

Blog Sites

Small businesses take note! Blog sites are the way to go. Look and feel the same, but with bonus free content management system. Clients include Kinkhao Thai, Jennifer Rothwell, Ryans Event Clean.

Excellence Forum

Want to publish and sell your book? Visit the Excellence Forum site designed, developed by us.

 

Kronstadt-Estate

Logo design, site design, and most importantly a climbing search engine ranking for this residential Romanian property site.

 

Email Marketing

New email clients this season include BSS Software, NAYD and Ryans Event Clean

 

SEO & More

Search engine continues to be busy. Achieving strong results in shorter time spans than our 6 month watershed. Successful pay per click campaigns for clients - ‘wow an increase in our site traffic by 124% for €64’.

 

 

Happy Christmas from Brightspark!

Ho Ho Ho and happy new year to you! We're delighted to be sending the final edition of Walking the Talk for 2007. In this issue we take a look back on the biggest high and low of 2007, and we include a review of the best emails of 2007. This is a popular feature every year, if you're involved in email marketing - it's a must read.

Maryrose with a Santa hat

Rather than sending Christmas cards this year, we've decided once agan to put the money to much better use! €300 has been donated to St Vincent de Paul in the Dublin region. And we've also been giving some assistance to Daisyhouse, a charity that provides housing for homeless people and helps them get off the streets in the long term. They helped 7 people get off the streets last year and they have a 100% success rate from those who have completed their transition programme.

Wishing you a peaceful and happy Christmas and a prosperous new year.

2007 - The Year That Was

Santa List

Microblogging

Why I love Twitter and how it has changed the way I work. If you don't yet know about the micro-blogging phenomenon, you can read more about it here. For you may well find yourself using microblogging tools next year. Read more about Twitter...

 

Adland Disappointment

This time last year I read an article in the IMJ about ‘ad-land’s vision for 2007’. I was interested to read MD after MD say that this was to be the year of Digital. Digital is the term used in agency land for the web, mobile, interactive advertising, indeed anything that is not TV, radio or billboards. This was not to be....

 

 

 

 

Two sites of a Google related nature

Google Local Business has launched for Ireland. You can get a free listing for your business using the Local Business centre. When people search Google maps for information, your business will be listed. Includes opening hours, pricing, even photos...If you sell product, get yourself on here.

And if you want, you can even say you're working for Google. Become a local business representative, earn $10 (about 83 cent) for visiting local businesses in your area and validating them. Perfect for you if you're nosy and broke. More...

Google Fight - compare the number of search results on Google for any 2 queries. Perfect for finding out if you're more popular than your competitors! It's fun, it's nifty, and it gives egos a boost!

And if you still haven't bought all your Christmas presents..

The very best site for gifts for the Man or Woman who has everything. Net Granny - a collection of Swiss grannys who will knit your loved one a pair of socks. I love it! First, choose your granny, then choose the sock style you desire, pay, and a pair of hand-knit stylish socks will be winging their way to your loved one. More...

 

Loan money to entrepreneurs in developing countries through Kiva. Browse the projects, check the repayment terms, and donate. Manage your overseas aid portfolio. Network with others who have invested and share stories about what projects have worked and generated a return on the investment. You can take your money back out, or, leave it there, grow it and keep reinvesting.

 

Best Emails of 2007

Just took a look at the Marketing Sherpa Email Marketing Award Winners for this year. It always makes interesting reading and for anyone involved in email marketing, it's essential and indeed, voyeuristic reading. Clever copy and easy to skim design always makes a good email. But smart planning of your email activity is also key.

Below is a summary of the most compelling category winners - I've put them down in the order that I think are best, not necessarily the order the judges went for:

Best Email For Marketing Purposes

  • ISITE Insight - differentiated themselves by delivery (on a full moon!). It's got short snippets on the right that share info at a glance. No more than 3 stories on the left, catchy headlines make me want to read more. Plus they introduce their team in a compelling way. I've been complaining about the busy-ness of the Brightspark newsletter for oh, a full year now! Seeing this email has inspired me to put a redesign of Walking The Talk top of the list for 2008. There. I've now committed.
  • Ariad - take note financial people - bright and colourful design, content is real, my only complaint is that they over-use the arrows >>>
  • Olympus - it scored with the judges because it's well chunked for the preview panel, but it looks a little too much like a web page for my taste. I like the fact that a high proportion of the content is user generated.

Check out the rest of my top picks here...

 

 

Changing The World (of Email)

The Email Standards Project was launched recently with the goal of working with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email. The project was formed out of frustration with the inconsistent rendering of HTML emails in major email clients.

This is a fantastic idea. Click here to find out why...

 


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