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GraphicMail South Africa - Digital marketing for everyone. Email, mobile, social marketing made easy and affordable! Email marketing tips, mobile and SMS marketing innovations, best practice digital marketing, email case studies and more!
Friday 13 January 2012
Thursday 12 January 2012
Exclusive! 2012 Outlook by GraphicMail CEO Nick Eckert
As GraphicMail marks its 10th year, CEO Nick Eckert shares his expert opinion on the convergence of email, social media and mobile marketing and how to ramp up subscriber engagement in 2012:
There were a couple of trends that crystalised in 2011 which will be the major drivers in our industry over the next four business quarters.
I would like to share my comments on each of them and then take a step back and call out what I view as a dependency to all of these that most digital marketers, in their excitement of ‘the new’, often forget.
1) Social and Email
The lines have begun to blur, but let’s face it; email was in fact the world’s first social application. On top of that some people, myself included, might even argue that despite more recent innovations, it also remains the best performing of all social apps.
So instead, the real issue we should be thinking about is what this means to today’s digital marketer and/or small business owner.
Social and email strategies need to be created in conjunction, and not in separate silos. In the social-email mix, it’s important to think about which newsletters warrant sharing and which articles get called out to your social media audience; and the reverse is also true in that you’ll have to carefully consider when and how to call out what you're doing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ in your email newsletters.
The cross-pollination of these channels will continue this year and digital marketers will be looking for ways to monitor and manipulate this process to better leverage their client relationships.
This mashing up of email and social strategies requires good client data. But we will discuss this further at a later stage. For now, GraphicMail is committed to continue with deeper integration of social data and product features this year.
2) Mobile Marketing
Mobile will go from buzz to biz in 2012. Smart phones came of age in 2011 and this has changed forever our relationship with the Internet and, more importantly, our inboxes.
It's now common for people to check their email, on the go, at every hour of the day. The increased frequency of mobile-email use means rethinking some basic principles like email design - to make sure it's simple enough to read well and look good on a smart phone.
The 160 characters of SMS/text is a powerful slate for driving customers directly to optimised mobile sites with timely information. Make sure that landing pages linked from newsletters are mobile optimised. Going deeper, marketers also need to consider when best to use SMS/text as a messaging tool because of the immediacy of the channel and its excellent open rates (on average, roughly 99% for SMS/Text vs. 30% for email).
GraphicMail already offers leading bulk mobile marketing tools and we have great plans to improve on these features over the coming year.
3) Engagement and Relevance
This is more strategy than substance, but email marketing services will need to offer tools that make it possible.
Some of these are tools to facilitate the blending of social and email while others are there to help businesses become more dominant on the mobile internet.
Being more engaged means using email autoresponders and triggers effectively to on-board clients and personalise communications. It means humanising email - adding more personality into your newsletters and communications. It means not focusing on features, but focusing on who's using your product or service and how.
This brings me to my final point:
Engagement and relevance are great concepts, but it means digging deep into your data to find out who's helping you promote your brand through social channels. This is where Email Service Providers (ESPs) really need to help their clients; which is why GraphicMail will be offering some new features to help you enhance the producing of relevant and engaging communications in 2012.
We want to give you improved reports that allow you to understand who's looking at what and help you set-up future email campaigns to easily engage with your client's based on their interests. We want to provide tools that help you collect the information that YOU decide is the most relevant, so you can collect preferences about your clients and combine this with intelligence we help you uncover; such as what channels they are using - so you can push the right message to them via the right pipeline.
Trying to achieve engagement and relevance is meaningless without the client data that allows you to do so. This is where most ESPs fall short. Rather than help clients collect and unpack this data they give them tools to manipulate the information - assuming they already have it.
Unfortunately, most small businesses don't, so ESPs need to be active in helping their clients build this foundation.
I'm looking forward to announcing a number of new features in all these areas as the year progresses.
I wish you all great success in 2012.
Nick Eckert
GraphicMail CEO
There were a couple of trends that crystalised in 2011 which will be the major drivers in our industry over the next four business quarters.
I would like to share my comments on each of them and then take a step back and call out what I view as a dependency to all of these that most digital marketers, in their excitement of ‘the new’, often forget.
1) Social and Email
The lines have begun to blur, but let’s face it; email was in fact the world’s first social application. On top of that some people, myself included, might even argue that despite more recent innovations, it also remains the best performing of all social apps.
So instead, the real issue we should be thinking about is what this means to today’s digital marketer and/or small business owner.
Social and email strategies need to be created in conjunction, and not in separate silos. In the social-email mix, it’s important to think about which newsletters warrant sharing and which articles get called out to your social media audience; and the reverse is also true in that you’ll have to carefully consider when and how to call out what you're doing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ in your email newsletters.
The cross-pollination of these channels will continue this year and digital marketers will be looking for ways to monitor and manipulate this process to better leverage their client relationships.
This mashing up of email and social strategies requires good client data. But we will discuss this further at a later stage. For now, GraphicMail is committed to continue with deeper integration of social data and product features this year.
2) Mobile Marketing
Mobile will go from buzz to biz in 2012. Smart phones came of age in 2011 and this has changed forever our relationship with the Internet and, more importantly, our inboxes.
It's now common for people to check their email, on the go, at every hour of the day. The increased frequency of mobile-email use means rethinking some basic principles like email design - to make sure it's simple enough to read well and look good on a smart phone.
The 160 characters of SMS/text is a powerful slate for driving customers directly to optimised mobile sites with timely information. Make sure that landing pages linked from newsletters are mobile optimised. Going deeper, marketers also need to consider when best to use SMS/text as a messaging tool because of the immediacy of the channel and its excellent open rates (on average, roughly 99% for SMS/Text vs. 30% for email).
GraphicMail already offers leading bulk mobile marketing tools and we have great plans to improve on these features over the coming year.
3) Engagement and Relevance
This is more strategy than substance, but email marketing services will need to offer tools that make it possible.
Some of these are tools to facilitate the blending of social and email while others are there to help businesses become more dominant on the mobile internet.
Being more engaged means using email autoresponders and triggers effectively to on-board clients and personalise communications. It means humanising email - adding more personality into your newsletters and communications. It means not focusing on features, but focusing on who's using your product or service and how.
This brings me to my final point:
Engagement and relevance are great concepts, but it means digging deep into your data to find out who's helping you promote your brand through social channels. This is where Email Service Providers (ESPs) really need to help their clients; which is why GraphicMail will be offering some new features to help you enhance the producing of relevant and engaging communications in 2012.
We want to give you improved reports that allow you to understand who's looking at what and help you set-up future email campaigns to easily engage with your client's based on their interests. We want to provide tools that help you collect the information that YOU decide is the most relevant, so you can collect preferences about your clients and combine this with intelligence we help you uncover; such as what channels they are using - so you can push the right message to them via the right pipeline.
Trying to achieve engagement and relevance is meaningless without the client data that allows you to do so. This is where most ESPs fall short. Rather than help clients collect and unpack this data they give them tools to manipulate the information - assuming they already have it.
Unfortunately, most small businesses don't, so ESPs need to be active in helping their clients build this foundation.
I'm looking forward to announcing a number of new features in all these areas as the year progresses.
I wish you all great success in 2012.
Nick Eckert
GraphicMail CEO
Wednesday 11 January 2012
GraphicMail Christmas Competition Winner
This festive season we gave our clients a chance to win their money back for their GraphicMail monthly account between the date of sign up from a free account and 31 December.
We received a great response, and today at last our South African winner has been drawn randomly from all qualifying entrants.
And the winner is....
(*drum roll*)
Mr. Tony Seifart from takahashi.co.za!
Congratulations! Our representative will be in touch soon to arrange your refund.
All the best and we hope you continue being one of our happy GraphicMail clients.
We received a great response, and today at last our South African winner has been drawn randomly from all qualifying entrants.
And the winner is....
(*drum roll*)
Mr. Tony Seifart from takahashi.co.za!
Congratulations! Our representative will be in touch soon to arrange your refund.
All the best and we hope you continue being one of our happy GraphicMail clients.
Tuesday 10 January 2012
5 Ways to Freshen up your Email Template for the New Year
Clever email marketers are not afraid to try new things and analyse their campaigns to look for ways to improve.
The turn of the calendar is a good time to toss that tired old email template and begin the new year with a refreshed look for your communications. If you start 2012 by giving your emails a good pruning this January, your business will reap the rewards.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just a few tweaks to your email template can go a long way toward making sure your customers and prospects pay more attention to your messages.
1) Polish your Design
Is your email newsletter professional and inviting? It’s time to put a critical eye on it.
Just ask yourself: is it easy for readers to scan the newsletter to find what they want? Do your newsletter colours and fonts match your website? Are you using fonts that are easy to read and that will display in any email client? Does your email newsletter contain calls to action with functional links that redirect to your website?
If not, then it might be time for an overhaul. Examine your template and, using these criteria, consider how you can improve on its looks.
2) Try a different Layout
One of the easiest ways to refresh your template is to try a different layout. You might want to consider cutting back on elements before you think about adding more, as simpler layouts give you the opportunity to cut back on content and focus on a single, compelling message.
On the other hand you can also try a multi-column layout if you do have a lot of information to fill your newsletter with that you want to organise into more easily readable blocks. But remember - single column layouts have the best readability on mobile devices.
3) Revitalise your Content
The new year is a great time to re-think your writing and to start focusing on what your customers want to read more about. If you’re not sure how to do this, but really want to work to keep your finger on the pulse of your industry; conduct surveys asking readers what they want to learn more about in future issues or provide a list of potential topics from which they can choose.
You can also invite subscribers to contribute content (such as testimonials or success stories) submit questions about your business or ask industry experts for permission to feature some of their content in your newsletters.
4) Change the Scenery
Images are a powerful way to grab your readers’ attention, but not if they’ve been seen over and over and over again. One of the most important things you can do to give your email template a fresh look is to opt for new images. Would different photos or graphics make your newsletter more visually appealing? For sure!
As long as you keep your messages’ branding consistent with your website and other marketing materials, you can freely experiment with adding new images or replacing old ones. If you like to create your own graphics, take the time to put together a library of new images in January that you can draw from throughout the year. If you’re using photographs from an online stock, keep an eye out for new uploads or search for new resources.
5) Try GraphicMail’s 2011 Editor
If you haven’t used it yet, GraphicMail’s 2011 email editor makes it easy to breeze through creating design studio-quality newsletters. Templates in the drag-and-drop editor are designed in blocks. Simply select the block you wish to edit, and insert your content.
Each block can be moved, deleted and duplicated, or you can insert new elements into the selected block. We provide you with free layout options and many style and colour combinations that you can modify to match your look and feel.
We also give you about 300 email marketing templates to create customised campaigns that reflect your business profile or brand perfectly - just pick yours from a list of industry relevant categories.
The turn of the calendar is a good time to toss that tired old email template and begin the new year with a refreshed look for your communications. If you start 2012 by giving your emails a good pruning this January, your business will reap the rewards.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just a few tweaks to your email template can go a long way toward making sure your customers and prospects pay more attention to your messages.
1) Polish your Design
Is your email newsletter professional and inviting? It’s time to put a critical eye on it.
Just ask yourself: is it easy for readers to scan the newsletter to find what they want? Do your newsletter colours and fonts match your website? Are you using fonts that are easy to read and that will display in any email client? Does your email newsletter contain calls to action with functional links that redirect to your website?
If not, then it might be time for an overhaul. Examine your template and, using these criteria, consider how you can improve on its looks.
2) Try a different Layout
One of the easiest ways to refresh your template is to try a different layout. You might want to consider cutting back on elements before you think about adding more, as simpler layouts give you the opportunity to cut back on content and focus on a single, compelling message.
On the other hand you can also try a multi-column layout if you do have a lot of information to fill your newsletter with that you want to organise into more easily readable blocks. But remember - single column layouts have the best readability on mobile devices.
3) Revitalise your Content
The new year is a great time to re-think your writing and to start focusing on what your customers want to read more about. If you’re not sure how to do this, but really want to work to keep your finger on the pulse of your industry; conduct surveys asking readers what they want to learn more about in future issues or provide a list of potential topics from which they can choose.
You can also invite subscribers to contribute content (such as testimonials or success stories) submit questions about your business or ask industry experts for permission to feature some of their content in your newsletters.
4) Change the Scenery
Images are a powerful way to grab your readers’ attention, but not if they’ve been seen over and over and over again. One of the most important things you can do to give your email template a fresh look is to opt for new images. Would different photos or graphics make your newsletter more visually appealing? For sure!
As long as you keep your messages’ branding consistent with your website and other marketing materials, you can freely experiment with adding new images or replacing old ones. If you like to create your own graphics, take the time to put together a library of new images in January that you can draw from throughout the year. If you’re using photographs from an online stock, keep an eye out for new uploads or search for new resources.
5) Try GraphicMail’s 2011 Editor
If you haven’t used it yet, GraphicMail’s 2011 email editor makes it easy to breeze through creating design studio-quality newsletters. Templates in the drag-and-drop editor are designed in blocks. Simply select the block you wish to edit, and insert your content.
Each block can be moved, deleted and duplicated, or you can insert new elements into the selected block. We provide you with free layout options and many style and colour combinations that you can modify to match your look and feel.
We also give you about 300 email marketing templates to create customised campaigns that reflect your business profile or brand perfectly - just pick yours from a list of industry relevant categories.
Monday 09 January 2012
GraphicMail welcomes 2012
Now that we’ve sung our ‘auld lang syne’ for 2011, our team is back in action for the new year, filled with vim, vigour and pleasant reminders of the year past.
From today it’s all systems go at GraphicMail South Africa, with full product support available to our clients as normal.
The new year brings new challenges and frontiers. Even if you’ve got a shoe-string post festive-season budget, you can still make effective use of your resources and start your email marketing year off with a bang:
1) Begin 2012 with an email marketing plan
Don’t spend the whole month of January floundering about without any concrete campaign or plans. Do yourself a favour and start setting specific goals.
Why not set one big email marketing objective for the year? Or at least one for each quarter or month. You could, for example, consider goals for the amount of subscribers you want to add to your list in 2012 (see how to add email newsletter subscription forms to your web or social media pages) , or get brainstorming in advance for specific promotions such as Valentine’s Day - which is just around the corner.
Keep your plans simple and make sure they're realistic and reachable. Don’t waste time on things that won’t help you. After all it’s a lot more fun, and rewarding, when you know your goals are within your grasp.
2) Make it a year of Measurement
If you haven't yet, there's no better time than the present to become interested in your stats. Record all your benchmarks and measure your successes this year. With GraphicMail’s powerful email marketing tracking and analytics tools, there’s no reason to practice best-guess-marketing and send emails blindly.
Be sure to focus on what’s important to your business or organisation as you set your goals — whether that’s new sign-ups, number of fans or followers, campaign ROI or any other key metric. Comparing your figures against last year’s numbers, if you have them, will give you a better idea of what to expect and let you anticipate high and low business periods before they even happen - making it easier to budget.
3) Become mobile friendly
The web is rife with opinions and predictions about mobile technology and what it will mean for marketers in 2012. What we've kept saying is that with the growing popularity of smartphones and the increasing dependence on mobile devices, everyone will want to take their mobile marketing strategies to the next level.
So this will be the year to catch consumers where they are, wherever they are - on mobile.
It’s time to give serious consideration to making your digital communications mobile friendly. Make sure your website and your emails are optimised to work with mobile devices and use mobile subscription tools to grow your email list. Read our Mobile Marketing white paper to learn how to take your marketing mobile like a pro.
GraphicMail hopes you’ll have a prosperous beginning to the new year.
Let the 2012 emailing begin!
From today it’s all systems go at GraphicMail South Africa, with full product support available to our clients as normal.
The new year brings new challenges and frontiers. Even if you’ve got a shoe-string post festive-season budget, you can still make effective use of your resources and start your email marketing year off with a bang:
1) Begin 2012 with an email marketing plan
Don’t spend the whole month of January floundering about without any concrete campaign or plans. Do yourself a favour and start setting specific goals.
Why not set one big email marketing objective for the year? Or at least one for each quarter or month. You could, for example, consider goals for the amount of subscribers you want to add to your list in 2012 (see how to add email newsletter subscription forms to your web or social media pages) , or get brainstorming in advance for specific promotions such as Valentine’s Day - which is just around the corner.
Keep your plans simple and make sure they're realistic and reachable. Don’t waste time on things that won’t help you. After all it’s a lot more fun, and rewarding, when you know your goals are within your grasp.
2) Make it a year of Measurement
If you haven't yet, there's no better time than the present to become interested in your stats. Record all your benchmarks and measure your successes this year. With GraphicMail’s powerful email marketing tracking and analytics tools, there’s no reason to practice best-guess-marketing and send emails blindly.
Be sure to focus on what’s important to your business or organisation as you set your goals — whether that’s new sign-ups, number of fans or followers, campaign ROI or any other key metric. Comparing your figures against last year’s numbers, if you have them, will give you a better idea of what to expect and let you anticipate high and low business periods before they even happen - making it easier to budget.
3) Become mobile friendly
The web is rife with opinions and predictions about mobile technology and what it will mean for marketers in 2012. What we've kept saying is that with the growing popularity of smartphones and the increasing dependence on mobile devices, everyone will want to take their mobile marketing strategies to the next level.
So this will be the year to catch consumers where they are, wherever they are - on mobile.
It’s time to give serious consideration to making your digital communications mobile friendly. Make sure your website and your emails are optimised to work with mobile devices and use mobile subscription tools to grow your email list. Read our Mobile Marketing white paper to learn how to take your marketing mobile like a pro.
GraphicMail hopes you’ll have a prosperous beginning to the new year.
Let the 2012 emailing begin!
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