Looking for an affordable email campaign service? The free version of this one is better than paid versions of most.

Talking eblasts: If it comes down to MyEmma or Mail Chimp, go with the monkey.  I've used both systems pretty extensively for different clients/employers in the past.  I know there are others, but I'm only reviewing what I know.  Constant Contact I hear is good, I know MyEmma is acceptable, Campaigner's a bit clunky, but when it comes to simple, fast, easy to use, yet very powerful, on top of performing best, being more reliable, and has by far the best interface, dashboard, campaign list manager, flexible ways to import your email addresses and other business contacts, it's no contest.

MyEmma?  Yo Emma

MyEmma claims it is designed by designers for designers.  I believe it, there's just something behind the scenes and under the hood that feels like the website was written by designers instead of industry-leading web developers.  Don't get people who mostly write code for a living to design websites, that's a good rule of thumb, but it also goes the other way.  Designers, leave the coding to the coders!

MyEmma's import functions are often clunky and I found them downright unreliable.  In the past, our graphic designer had to upload an Excel spreadsheet sometimes over the course of a couple days.  I found their customer support was slow and unresponsive, but I'll give them credit for following up and correcting the issues... eventually.  It came down to a few services and MyEmma came highly recommended.  They changed their pricing, yet for almost a year, a client of mine was not notified so they kept paying per email sent instead of the unlimited emails sent and pricing structure based on the total list of email recipients.  Not too happy with the fact they were not forthcoming and proactive with their customers.  One client was paying over $400 more each month than if they knew they qualified for the other plan!

Mail Chimp doesn't monkey around

Mail Chimp, on the other hand, I find is not only much easier to use, but for very small businesses with less than a thousand email addresses, you can run email campaigns at absolutely no cost as of this post.  Not only that, I found Mail Chimp's website to be the best in reliability, speed, performance, and interface design.  If you don't know HTML, there are plenty of great templates and a very easy and intuitive editor that will help you compose an email campaign that is fully scalable to mobile devices.  It's also very easy to clone and existing campaign so you don't have to start from scratch.  Before you send the email, or schedule it to be emailed, you can preview it on different devices.  Having tested it on my phone and other devices, it is a very reliable WYSIWYG.

Don't let their playful, goofy name fool you.  Mail Chimp's free service is pretty robust, going pro will unlock many other useful features that will allow you to optimize your campaigns.  As popular and powerful as email is becoming as the premier digital marketing medium, increasing your click through and conversion ratse by a half a percent could yield an amazing increase in profitable results.  Like many of the other email campaigner services, Mail Chimp has all the major features including merging certain data to customize each outgoing email, say, with the recipient's actual name or other useful data that will enable you to optimize your messaging and increase your email marketing effectiveness.

Split A/B Testing and more

Mail Chimp offers an easy way to manage split testing of your emails, it's amazing how small variances to your email design can often yield a 20% improvement.  This is an invaluable research tool that will allow you to increase your email campaigns while also providing you data that can help you determine the most effective marketing calls to action.  What appeals more?  What words inspire action in the market place?  The web is a great source of marketing research that will give you data to help make better and more informed marketing decisions later in other mediums and advertising, such as long form videos, TV commercials, radio ads, print ads, and even billboards.  Regional analytics, if your company has a wide service area, can help you rebalance your store inventory based on regional preferences and what is trending up and down in certain areas.  The web is your front line to experiment and run surveys and test sample your products and services.

A great free introduction

Mail Chimp has a great introductory program so if you have a small business and you don't know where to start, or you don't have much of a budget, you will thank me later by having learned about Mail Chimp here.  It's free to sign up, the website is excellent, its services are extremely powerful, I could go on with my praise.  I've been very impressed.  It's the easiest service to upload or import your client contact data.  They have a great feature where you can select a table from a customer list and copy it to your computer clipboard with Ctrl-C, then just paste it into the import text box.  No clicking "Browse" and having to find the Excel file to only find out it's not formatted right.  That was the problem Riddle's Jewelry was having with MyEmma, it plagued our Advertising Department for over a year.

I've saved a lot of time and also money using Mail Chimp.  It's also a great service for you to learn how to leverage your emails, they make it really easy, but it also has a lot of more powerful features I hope your company will grow and need to take advantage of.


Aaron Belchamber is the former GM of Random Art House advertising agency, former Advertising Director and Lead Web Developer for Riddle's Jewelry, and is currently a Business Consultant and Web Developer in Jacksonville, Florida.

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- Aaron Belchamber

NBC's 'Hannibal' Returns for Another Season. Mads Mikkelson & Hugh Dancy Outstanding, If You Can Stomach the Weekly Gore Fest

I'll admit that I enjoy horror movies, they're fun.  NBC's "Hannibal" is a one hour horror movie each week.  It's more like a blend of horror, suspense and crime.  What does that say about our society and myself for that matter that we enjoy watching shows that are so careless with human life?  Well, I don't speak for everyone, but if the ratings of the show were good enough to get picked up another season, the data speaks for itself.  Such disparagement and degradation of humanity unfolding visually in such a civilized and creepy way.  Is it a sign our society is crumbling or has horror like "The Walking Dead" and "Hannibal" become more accessible and mainstream since they're weekly shows and not bundled up in two hour Hollywood vehicles?  After all, horror movies have always been popular since the advent of movies, right?

"Hannibal" is riddled with many ironic gems, combined with the excellent psychotic symbiotic team of Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelson, all mixed together the ingredients really makes this show work.  I used "ingredients" kind of as a pun for what the show is centered around and that's food.  Human food.  Just kidding, but really, if this show is popular enough and it portrays such evil in such a civilized manner on prime time national television, what is the world coming to?

It's entertainment.

I mean, there are real sickos out there but yet, as entertainment, Hannibal features the worst mutilations, murders, sick, psychotic, grotesque, disfigurement and abuse of other humans and twists the souls of the victims and to some extent, the souls of viewers. There's a mild tone and always hints of cannibalism in each episode.  The audience knows Hannibal Lector is a sick man.  We know the gourmet meals he is preparing for himself and guests during an episode are actually human flesh.  We're kind of bystanders to his sick joke of introducing human flesh to the unsuspecting, violating their trust and friendship -- perhaps this is the most sinister actions after the actual murders of his victims?!  Yet, Mads Mikkelson is such a sympathetic character, despite his slightly porcelain rigidity and social awkwardness.  He is sometimes childlike -- perhaps he knows not what he's actually doing.  Yes, he is a brilliant doctor.  Yes, he likes to eat parts of people that he keeps in his freezer.  He's still a likable cannibal who has managed to live fairly normally in modern society and became a renowned psychologist.  He's adjusted much like vampires have adapted to blend into our society in other fictional stories.

Are we all really that desensitized?!  Okay, some may argue, it parallels the moral decay of our society.  Blah blah blah.  Lighten up, when Anthony Hopkins jumped off the screen as Hannibal and slowly sauteed Ray Liotta's brains in the second Hannibal, sure we cringed, but unlike vampires, sophisticated cannibals could be real and that's what makes cannibals like Lector really scary.  It makes you think if you meet someone too refined that perhaps they are a cannibal.  I mean, there must be something wrong with them, right?  No one's perfect.  You might even question the roast beef the next time you're over a "friend's" house.  Ask yourself -- do you really know them?!  :-)

"Hannibal" is not perfect, but it's a good dish... if you have the stomach for it.  I better end this review because I can just write until my hand literally falls off with bad puns about "Hannibal".  I'll put you out your misery by ending it now.

Where do YOU stand politically? Take "The World's Smallest Political Quiz" to find out!

This is a very interesting and probably pretty accurate test that also helps explain where you stand on personal and fiscal political issues.  Are you more of a freedom-loving Libertarian or do you think Socialism or Communism is the way to go?  Personally, no personal issues belong in politics, but unfortunately many people in the U.S. think politics should command every aspect of our lives.  Often, people are all for a centralized big brother but are for making exceptions for themselves, their companies, families, and peers.

Are you a political hypocrite?  Maybe you are and just don't know it, maybe you know someone who would refuse to take this quiz because they're so opinionated they will never have an open mind.  Well, how about challenging them to take it?!  Or better yet, share this link with your family and friends, if nothing else, it's a great conversation starter.  Who else doesn't want to get into a political argument with friends and family?!  It could be better than board game night, at least after the kids go to bed...

http://theadvocates.org/quiz/quiz.php

Incidentally, I scored heavy on both personal and financial freedom.  I'm a Libertarian and proud of it.  So where are you on the political map?!  Find out now!

“ The Quiz has gained respect as a valid measure of a person’s political leanings. ” - The Washington Post “ The World’s Smallest Political Quiz stands ready to help you determine your political identity. Quick and relatively painless. ” - USA Today

“ The World’s Smallest Political Quiz is savvy and willing to tell you the truth. ” - YAHOO! Magazine “ Give this quiz a try. It’s fun, and who knows, you may be surprised at what you find. ” - Politics on the Net by Bill Mann

Show Review: "House of Cards" on Netflix a "Must See" If You Can Tolererate Headline-Paralleling Government Corruption Dramas (HPGCD)

That's right, we're starting a new genre with Netflix introducing Kevin Spacey in "House of Cards".    Headline-Paralleling Government Corruption Dramas (HPGCD).  He and Robin Wright are excellent as the calculating and ruthless politically ambitious couple a la Clintons.  The only difference is their names are Frank and Claire Underwood.  As a matter of fact, I believe after looking back to season two that there are more similarities of "House of Cards" to the Clintons than many who put the Clintons on a pedestal believe, but that's for the political pundits and not a reviewer of things.

Headline Paralleling

Indeed, looking back through headlines and political theater of the Clintons and other politicians, I wonder if the Underwoods aren't a composite of the Clintons and the Kennedys -- both left a destruction of lives and sometimes even murder (Ted Kennedy) and rape (Clinton), behind them in their wake of rising to the top.  "House of Cards" captures this effect very evenhandedly and present it almost as a natural reality and reaction as the political exploit, use, then discard people and whole organizations for the expediency of accomplishing their own ends. Ingredients to political success like barley, hops and water is to making beer -- it just can't be made any other way and work.

Lies, broken promises, set ups, blackmail, pushing people to suicide, murders, extortion.  Just another day in Washington (Democrat or Republican).  It's all happened and these stories are lurking in the shadows of some very prominent politicians from Kennedy, through Bush, and all the way to Obama.  Way before our modern day politicians, political intrigue almost seems as commonplace as the very corruption of government on display everyday.  It's just a part of our history.  The men in power get there almost by very questionable means.  It's funny and scary how we public have tolerated this.  We hear a lot of, let's say BS coming out of the mouths of politicians everyday and we, the public, know and can hear the disingenuous politicians preach values and morality when we all know many of them are the worst offenders.  As if hypocrisy and a large helping of condescension along with a superiority complex are the other ingredients to political success.  Without these ingredients, we don't get those effective bubbles in our beer.

I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say that every major event that unfolds (or one would argue Kevin Spacey's character forces through his own acts and ability to manipulate people) in House of Cards parallel past headlines related to the politically elite.  Someone's chief of staff was probably found dead with his head battered in and another rape victim who was propped up for media points probably turned into a drug-induced zombie.

The Truth is Sometimes Hard to Swallow 

Besides the disturbing realities that happen behind closed doors, the sets that portray the White House are very convincing.  The actor who plays the incumbent President seems to grow in power and being a convincing president as Season Two unfolds.  Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood is so good, though.  At times, he breaks the scene and deadpans into the camera and speaks his deepest thoughts to us, the audience.  A la "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", which also used this device to engage the audience, Kevin Spacey takes his darkness and includes the audience in on sharing his philosophy of life, which is often logical but as warped as many of the politicians who unfortunately have been, and will continue to get elected.  Sometimes, he's self critical and there's a glint of shame in his actions, but it takes strength to overlook ones' weaknesses and vices as long as the ends are justified.

As a political soap opera,  House of Cards is excellent, there are some shifting-in-time moments where what would take years of bureaucratic red tape typical of the federal leviathan only takes an episode.  I am so thankful our beloved potential felons in Washington can't move as swiftly, usually, it's a reminder why we need a limited government.  No matter how you feel politically, no one can dispute the fact our government is probably even more corrupt and morally bankrupt than this show portrays Washington.  It's a reminder to us all that we need a limited government if for nothing else to limit the cancerous corruption that will probably always be part of the federal government.

The fact that Frank Underwood is a Democrat and Hollywood is so liberal makes me wonder, even hope, that even liberals see this reality.  After watching this show, I'm not more cynical than I was towards government, and I know it's just "fiction" -- you decide if many episodes don't parallel our reality.  Some episodes are a bit unbelievable and contrived, but Kevin Spacey makes this show work so well.

"House of Cards" is different, it's unapologetically honest, it's brutal in its portrayal of mostly Democrats in office, and it's creepy because you know it happens, that people are this calculating and ruthless, and the worst part -- a majority are morally corrupt and are beholden to granting favors at us tax payers' expense. They are in Washington to stay in power, to ensure we the people serve their self interests.  It's their job to spin this reality to make it look like they're there "working hard for the people."

We're simply pawns in their game of leverage, manipulation, and sometimes just a game to show off their power out of pride.  It's only just a $500 million bridge project, who cares where the money has to come from, I want a Casino in my state.  It's a great country we live in, I recommend watching House of Cards if nothing else to scare you into wanting what's best for our country -- limit government, you limit its stench of corruption.  It's the only way our country will survive in the end else they will take us down to stay on top.  These are people who will turn on themselves, they would eat others' young to stay in power.  Like the audience that knows this is really the way of the political world, we also know this is true.