Virginia Roper

Virginia Roper, Lead Developer at Market Creation Group

Likes: Long walks on the beach, Turing tests, not programming all the goddamned time, chai tea, puppies, caffeine, sleep, caffeine, more caffeine, blue motorcycles, Left Hand milk stout, Dan Quayle
Dislikes: Slow browsers, IE6, WYSIWYGs, image-only Captchas

Recent Posts

Do your users trust your emails? Some thoughts from Marketo, plus yours truly, on how to gain that trust.

Posted on November 17th, 2011 by Virginia
Tags: Email Marketing, Email Marketing Benchmark Results, Marketo, segmentation, trust, webinar

Think about your inbox. Yes, your ginormous, bloated inbox. There’s a small number of emails in there you actually want to read, and a slightly larger number of emails in there that you have to read. And then there’s the rest. Maybe you’ve got an extra 10 minutes to kill before lunch, and you decide to take on that beast of an inbox with the mighty katana that is your “delete” button. You scroll through your giant glut of emails, deleting many before even reading, but opening a select few. And, amongst those few, you find a couple worth skimming...

Are you being honest or deceptive when it comes to UI design and content?

Posted on November 2nd, 2011 by Virginia
Tags: dark patterns, form design, UI design

A List Apart put out an amazing article yesterday about deception and honesty in UI design, which I definitely recommend reading if you get a chance. When writing and laying out content and interactive elements on your site, it's important to take into account the ways that readers look at web pages. Just a little bit of knowledge of the psychology of your readers can take you a long way towards building successful content. This same knowledge of human psychology, however, is often used in deceptive ways...

Salesforce power! Add a web to lead form to your site

Posted on October 28th, 2011 by Virginia
Tags: salesforce, Web Forms, web to lead

Salesforce is a mighty beast, a veritable God of sales tracking automation. And like any good deity, it is both awe-inspiring and full of complexity, especially to anyone new to the system. You log in and are all like “Holy cow! There are so many things in there! Whatever do I do with all of these things?!” First step – take a deep breath. Second step? Hey, let’s build a form to capture leads!..

How baby steps turn your project guesstimates into project bestimates

Posted on October 12th, 2011 by Virginia
Tags: project estimates, Project Management, salesforce

When it comes to Getting Things Done, ignorance is power. A new project lands on your plate, and it reminds of past projects, ones that had their own struggles, but they were all struggles you’ve overcome. A giant web project? Been there, done that. Another email campaign? Piece of cake...

The demise of “click here” link text

Posted on September 27th, 2011 by Virginia
Tags: accessibiliy, Click Here, mobile, redundancy, SEO

The words “click” and “here”, when combined, make for one of the most superfluous phrases ever in the history of the Internet. Even Al Gore could not think of a more pointless combination of words to use on a web page. I have a vendetta against using “click here” online, and long for that phrase to die a quick and painful death. Let me tell you why...

Eloqua all about revenue success tour: MCG’s top five gighlights

Posted on August 12th, 2011 by Virginia
Tags: All About Revenue Success Tour, clickthrough rates, cloud connectors, content personalization, Eloqua, Eloqua 10, Eloqua Revenue Suite, email reminders, Marketing Automation, Readytalk

This past Wednesday (August 10th), Erin and myself had the chance to check out the Eloqua All About Revenue Success Tour up in Boulder, CO. The presenters gave a lot of great information, and it was useful to have Erin there absorbing information from an account perspective, as well as myself there to absorb information from a technical perspective. We gleaned some great tips, which we wanted to share with you here. ..

It's 9:00 pm. Do you know where your email campaign is?

Posted on August 9th, 2011 by Virginia
Tags: Eloqua, Email Campaigns, Email Marketing, Rebecca Black, Vertical Response

So first things first: When it comes to launching your email campaign, there is no Magic Hour. That "delete" button works just as well at 3 pm on a Wednesday as it does at 3 am on a Friday. However, are there days when people are more likely to read your email? Or even more likely to click though? ..

Spotify, and ownership versus access

Posted on July 31st, 2011 by Virginia
Tags: access, music sharing, ownership, Spotify, the singularity

I recently came across this great quote, made by Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify. "Ownership may be great but the future is about access." Thanks to a very alert set of twitter friends, I managed to get Spotify the day it became available in the US. I love the access to so many songs, along with the easy to create and share playlists. OK, and the chance to check out what’s hot in Finland at the moment is pretty cool as well. ..

Gorgeous HTML Emails That Generate Results

Posted on July 6th, 2011 by Virginia
Tags: 1999, Eloqua, emails, html email, Vertical Response

Your hand trembles, clenched around your mouse, as your curser gets closer to that “Launch” button. The html email that you and your team have slaved over, a pinnacle of design and message, awaits your command. You click. The email blasts out to 10,000 of what you hope are big fans of your business, and you make a mental sacrifice to the Marketing Gods, hoping that even a 10th of your recipients will open the email, much less jump on your call to action. ..

Memorable Passwords, And The Users Who Love Them

Posted on May 9th, 2011 by Virginia
Tags: hacking, passwords, security, this is fun

Password validation exists to make sure people are choosing tough to guess passwords. Along the way, enough people decided that higher complexity in a password was simply better, and soon enough this became the password standard, despite the hazy definition of what actually constituted a “secure” password...

Work

  • ArcMail Print Ad

    ArcMail needed a better way to communicate their business to prospects at tradeshows and in magazines....

  • Zayo Map

    After acquiring 360 Networks, Zayo Group needed a map depicting their increased bandwidth and national presence in the U.S. ...

  • ViaWest Twilight email invite

    Since business events often alienate family, ViaWest decided to shed this notion and embrace an event that encouraged everyone in the family to attend. ...

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