Those pop-up 'OMG PLEZ LET US EMAIL U COOL TIPZ' interstitials always let me know how much the site owner knows about marketing and branding.

The fact that you think they don't work is even more revealing...

That depends on your metric of 'work'. By the same metric, buying email lists from spammers also 'works'.

How does getting people to voluntarily sign up to receive emails about a topic that interests them compare AT ALL to buying scraped emails?

You are wrong, and I don't mean to sound insulting but it seems like you are making these comments on theory and not on experience.

I have multiple sites with pop-ups that see outstanding open and click-through rates, it's not even close to the same thing as buying an email list (which doesn't work, as you pointed out).

On what are you basing this on? I know very knowledgeable marketers use them and I can guarantee you that if they were not performing they would have removed them.

The popup that overlays the blog post in this site does not disappear when I hit the 'X'.

Fuck me, right?

Generally when this happens I just inspect it with Chrome and change/remove the css that is preventing me from reading it.

Right-click -> Inspect element -> Delete key -> Done.

This article pointed out that a red button amidst a green palette converted better in one instance, because the red button contrasted starkly. That's also my current theory on how to make an app icon.

For my App Store apps, I choose loud colors that contrast well with other apps in the category. I look at how the icon stands out in searches on iPhone, iPad, and iTunes. I still want a beautiful icon, but my primary concern is whether it pops.

Unfortunately, it's hard to test the theory.

That's interesting, I'm unfamiliar with what sort of data is available for App Store users, I'm assuming there's no way to really test the performance of different icons?

Great primer, if this stuff interests you - particularly with regard to utilizing colors to drive CRO etc please go check out http://www.colorvoodoo.com/ which is the original book that got me A/B testing >10 years back - great content -

Test after test proves there is consistency to how people respond to color in advertising. As a professional marketer, every time I stray I'm often corrected by later optimization efforts.

Optimism, sincerity, creativity, etc are great.

But what about my organization? The colors should inspire or remind the customer of fear, secrecy and power (not their power, our power).

Hm, "Women’s Favorite Colors"... 0% pink, rose etc. I must say this study IS significantly flawed.

You did not read the study I cited, because it clearly states that only 8 options were given to participants.

PhantomLobe, you are hell-banned.

Can we please not do this:

a) as a top-level comment

b) for people with a spotty comment history

c) as a matter of course for everyone who is hellbanned

I don't want to say this guy deserves it, but he does have negative karma, and his comment adds nothing to the discussion. Looking back, he's only made a few, similarly negative, short, non-constructive comments. Maybe you made a different value judgement than me, but I wanted to point out that the convention isn't to tell everyone who is hell-banned about it, only people you think were wrongly hell-banned.

Please kindly advise where I should be posting this if I can't reply to [dead] comments.

This guy hasn't said anything that deserves a hell-ban.

Honestly, I have no ideas. The site admins have said you can email them to appeal an unfair hellban, but normally that's for the hellban-ee. It would be awesome if they added a feature to upvote people back from hell. Frankly, in this case the user doesn't have any contact info or about me, and he's not that active (and he has negative karma).

My big complaint is that this pattern of habitually telling everyone they're hell-banned seems to contravene the will of the mods, and produces a bunch of low-level noise on the site. It's come up before, and the mods continue to use hell-banning as a punishment so obviously they think it's worth the risk of losing casual commenters.

If you see a case where you very strongly disagree I think it's appropriate to comment, but this doesn't seem to meet that standard.

I like how "red" means excitement youthful, bold. Reminds me of RED bull.