Patron Mail: Use and misuse

Let me first say that the mass move to Patron Mail is a good thing. I don’t think anyone wants to go back to the dark days when companies were manually editing mailing lists and either sending plain text mailings or horribly garbled rich text. But what annoys me is the misuse of this mailing software/site.

We all surf a lot of websites. Especially those of us who are dredging the web for content. You get a feel for page design and layout. Important things are near the top separated from other content, it’s nice when information is broken into chuncks and when you see what you want, you click on it. We call this design ‘keep it simple, stupid.’ (no offense to users)

Why does this breakdown when you reading a Patron mailing? Readers are still viewing an HTML page whether in a mail viewer or web browser, why does it still look like a news letter and less like a website?

Case in point: Why doesn’t DTW provide more links in their mailing? You open the message and you see a picture of their up coming show. It looks cool. There are three lines of text about it with the dates. You click for more information. Nothing. The photo is not a link; the text is not a link. There are no links to more information in the mailing. And don’t even get me started on all the broken links…

Dance/NYC is the other way around. Rather than give you any information in the mailing, they just send you the names and dates and a link to their calendar page. Wouldn’t it be nice to click on the company name and be linked to that company’s listing on the calendar page?

My real point here is this: Why aren’t these mailings following the same rules of design as the websites? Maybe they are designed by two different people. A professional designer on the site and the marketing intern on the mailing. You can use the site without thinking too much; you see what you want and click on it. A logical order that leads you to information about what you want. The mailings aren’t that simple. More like ‘read everything on this page to find the link to our broken calendar page.’ I think we need to make these mailings more seriously.

I don’t think that the Internet will revolutionize dance the same way that Doug thinks it will, but I am campaigning for better use of the technology that we already have.