GraphicMail Blog

Email Newsletter complaints: Why do I get them and what can I do about them?

2012-03-02T02:49:00.000-08:00

It doesn’t matter what business you are in, there will always be a few customer complaints coming your way at some point or another.

The same is true in email marketing, but while it may be baffling how someone who signed up to your communications could suddenly be complaining about it, it’s also a good opportunity to learn from subscribers, figure out what went wrong and come up with ideas about how to take action and resolve the issue.

Why people complain

1) Permission

Spam email is any email which the recipient never asked for. However, even where people have signed up for an email, they may still use the "report spam" button if:

1) The emails they get are not what they expected. For example, if you send your newsletter subscribers another newsletter from a sister organization.

2) They forgot about the original opt-in.

There are a few steps you can take to avoid permission problems, such as:

1) Only send email marketing messages to people who explicitly requested it.

2) Don't buy email addresses, as these people are not expecting email from you.

3) Ensure your sign-up forms and pages let subscribers make an informed and a clear choice to join a list and explain what kind of emails they can expect.

Did you send to a new group of recipients or a group that hasn’t been mailed to in a long time – and were they surprised to be hearing from you?

1) Don't leave too big a gap between sign up and sending out the first email (no more than 2 weeks) and make sure new subscribers always get an immediate welcome message.

2) Don't leave more than a few weeks between any sends thereafter.

2) Value and Annoyance

People may also mark messages as spam simply because they are no longer interested or because the emails come too frequently.

Have you started sending more or less emails recently?

1) Monitor spam complaints and response rates if you increase your frequency significantly.

Did you begin sending a new type of content?

1) Identify what your subscribers want to read about and work to increase the relevancy of your emails.

2 )Look at which subscribers who no longer respond to your bulk emails and consider a special campaign to win back their interest.

3) Lazy unsubscribes

Some people use the spam report button, instead of going through the proper unsubscribe process, since they both ensure that no more emails from that sender appear in the inbox. But this damages your sender reputation and endangers your deliverability, so it’s much better to make sure it’s as easy as possible for people to opt out of your campaigns.

1 )Make the unsubscribe link in your footer obvious and ensure the unsubscribe process is clear and efficient. Also monitor email replies to your messages in case these include unsubscribe requests.

2) If you are concerned about spam complaints, consider placing the unsubscribe link in a more prominent position…such as at the very top of your email newsletter.

3) Try opting out of your own emails first-hand and make sure your email address is removed from the list within a few days.

Anything that makes the unsubscribe process difficult or seem untrustworthy could be another reason for subscriber complaints.

GraphicMail makes it easy to create emails that won’t easily cause these lazy unsubscribes.

Users can access the report spam and unsubscribe features in the “Header / Footer Settings” under the “Setup & Options” menu in the application. Here you can customize these links to be as plain and accessible as possible, along with many other tools that help you build and manage opt-in mailing lists.

Always remember, there’s nothing you can do to completely prevent complaints, so the most important thing is how you react to them and what action you take to reduce your complaint rate moving forward.

Friday Corner: Alice's Wonderful Email Inbox

2012-03-02T00:12:00.000-08:00

Another great addition to Famous Inboxes...

Check out other fantastic Famous Inboxes

GraphicMail Valentine’s Competition Winner

2012-03-01T05:18:00.000-08:00

This month, we gave our clients the chance to win their choice of a Kindle Fire, a R1400 online gift voucher or a R119.95 GraphicMail monthly account for a year; by submitting their February newsletter to us and having their friends and fans vote for it on either our blog or our Facebook page.

Entrants could either use one of the beautiful Valentine's newsletter templates found in our 2011 Editor, create their own or just submit one of their regular newsletters.

We received many great submissions over the past weeks, and would like to express our thanks to all of those who participated in sharing the love with GraphicMail.

So who got the most love?

Of course there can only be one winner, and in the end it was a neck-and-neck race between just two competitors who had clearly won the hearts of many subscribers.

Today we tallied up all the blog votes, as well as Facebook comments and likes to see who got the most love.

Our congratulations goes to Anicke Novi Steyn for her ‘Arts Connexi’ mailer, which received just a little more support than anyone else:

Well done! We hope you enjoy the prize of your choice.

Honourable mention goes to Sam Adams from Start Living Green, who narrowly missed first place with this entry:

Congratulations on a job very well done!

We hope that Cupid smiled upon you this year and that all our GraphicMail clients had a red-hot month of February.

Holiday resort increases Facebook followers through GraphicMail newsletter

2012-02-29T04:59:00.000-08:00

Email Marketing Case Study: Sefapane Lodge & Safaris

In one campaign, GraphicMail client Sefapane Lodge & Safaris sent out a Valentine’s greeting which greatly succeeded in helping them boost their social media followership:

Says Arlette Bruggeman, Marketing and Sales Executive for Sefapane Lodge & Safaris: "By using GraphicMail, we got a great response when we asked subscribers to 'like' our Facebook fan page, and we now have many more than what we had before."

"I like to work with GraphicMail because it is easy to use and they have a lot of different templates to choose from with the option to completely change them to your own liking. And last but not least… I really like their online support because it is fast and they are very helpful!"

First impressions

In this case we have an example of a 'quick call out' type of email; one that's easy to read with a single point of focus. Again there is no mistaking the nature and purpose of the email right from the start.

Key learnings

1) Simplicity is king: Everything about this mailer has been done with as little as possible content. Evidence of them knowing what they wanted to achieve with the send even before drafting it.

2) Communicate with purpose: The clear goal of this send was to increase their social media followership by getting subscribers to ‘like’ their Facebook page. The layout has been smartly set up so that a clickable facebook icon is the very first thing any reader would notice. You just can't miss that big red "f".

3) Less is more: This is a perfect example of how having only one call to action on a marketing email can sometimes be very potent. The newsletter can be read, understood and acted upon all within moments.

This February, Sefapane once again managed to impress us with their Valentine's promotion newsletter. We decided to take a closer look at it as well, to highlight a few pointers on how they are making email marketing work for them.

First impressions

This newsletter is real eye-candy. Before you’ve even read a single word of what they have to say, you're already sitting up and paying attention simply because of how beautifully the colouring and images have been implemented.

Key learnings

1) This newsletter is a good example of designing for the preview pane. Straight off the bat you know exactly what it’s about and that it'll be worth your while to give it a read.

2) The layout is elementry and effective. It's obvious at which points to begin and finish reading, and how the content has been positioned in order of priority. Notice how the vertical lines in the background encourages one to read from top to bottom, instead of letting your eyes dart around randomly.

3) The text is minimal, but impactful. They've said what they needed to say and did it in as few words as possible.

With the picture of the romantic candle-lit table, as well as the the colour scheme and decorative heart frame, there’s just no mistaking that this is a Valentine’s mailer: perfect for most readers, who take no more than 2 or 3 seconds to scan everything in their inbox to look for relevant offers that they’d want to take advantage of.

Friday Corner: How youngsters are using their mobiles.

2012-02-24T00:03:00.000-08:00

Original infographic found here

February Newsletter of the Month

2012-02-21T01:20:00.000-08:00

We've selected this perfectly structured email from Colour Puncture as our GraphicMail newsletter of the month for February.

Congratulations on a job well done!

You can see some of our other award-winning newsletters and keep up with new winners by following us on our GraphicMail Facebook Wall of Fame.

Friday Corner: Social Media Explained

2012-02-17T00:22:00.000-08:00

Original image found here

Shopping goes Mobile

2012-02-16T02:05:00.000-08:00

We already know consumers love their mobile devices, but we’re only just beginning to understand how they make their purchase decisions on the go, and how to market products or services to them.

To get greater insight into this, Google studied online shopping behavior for the United States in the 2011 holiday season, which revealed a number of interesting stats:

One key observation was that consumers use their smartphones at many different points in the purchase path.

41% of those who used their mobile phones to help with shopping said they made a purchase directly on their smartphone. 46% said they researched an item on their smartphone then went to a store to make their purchase. 37% said they researched an item on their smartphone then made their purchase online.

Another key insight that emerged for mobile marketing purposes is that consumers used all three devices (smartphones, tablets and desktop computers) throughout the research process, but some activities were more popular on specific ones.

Consumers who owned tablets read product reviews and looked for product information more from their tablet devices than from their desktop computer or smartphone. This is likely due to the combination of the large screen and portability of the device that enables consumers to use it more often and in more places.

Not surprisingly, more consumers used their smartphones to contact a retailer. With the many click-to-call phone numbers on websites and in ads, smartphones make it easy to contact retailers.

The powerful data they uncovered can drive best practices for bulk mobile advertising year round, and it’s obvious that smartphones and tablets are only going to become a bigger part of the consumer shopping experience worldwide.

Bulk SMS marketing is one way to encourage the use of mobile devices as a part of the shopping journey, especially in emerging markets where mobile commerce is still taking root.

SMS marketing is the one form of communication that many people are glued to 24/7, and is the closest thing in the digital marketing world to a guaranteed read. Some research has even shown that 97% of all SMS marketing messages are opened, 83% of which within one hour of receipt.

Business that have mobile-friendly offerings need to take the initiative in introducing it to their audience to get them out of the desktop-only comfort zone.

To help with this, last year GraphicMail finished with the development of an innovative new mobile marketing platform that marries mobile websites and push marketing by way of a personalized web-link send within bulk SMSs. This tool revolutionised the way businesses communicate with their clients - enabling messages to be delivered directly to subscribers’ phones with a simple click-through from an SMS, channeling viewers to an image-rich, personalised mobile site.

Want to find out how it works? Watch our mobile marketing video.

What’s clear is that advertisers who engage with their customers across all three devices will have an advantage in 2012.

4 Hot tips for making sure your email gets to where it needs to

2012-02-15T04:37:00.000-08:00

Email delivery is a highly important consideration; after all, nobody can click on a link in an email they never see. Unfortunately though, there are a number of obstacles each email must overcome before reaching its intended destination, ideally avoiding the spam folder of course.

According to Return Path‘s Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report for 2011, only 81% of global email reaches the inbox. Email deliverability in the Unites States is the highest with about 86% of emails making it to the intended recipient, but marketers can still move the needle a lot higher by understanding the process and by taking responsibility for where emails land.

Just because a subscriber has opted in to a newsletter, it still doesn’t mean the mailer will arrive in their Inbox. Increasingly rigid anti-Spam filters and the users’ ability to mark certain incoming mail as “more important” over others makes getting messages through to them exceedingly difficult. So one of the biggest concerns facing businesses that use email marketing in their communication mix is how to get legitimate emails to their intended readers.

Shaun Swanepoel, GraphicMail Systems Administrator says: “It has become more of a challenge to send emails. ISPs are taking serious actions to catch spammers and legitimate mailers have to take action to make sure that they’re not caught in the same net. It is a consistent and ever-changing business challenge to keep abreast of changing ISP policies, rules and filtering methods. This can become a laborious and constant effort, but users can help themselves by cleaning up their mailing lists periodically and adhering to the rules that most spam filters operate by.”

Just as the New Year is an excellent time to clean house and embark on new endeavors, it’s also an ideal time to clean out your email marketing list. Every list, no matter how good the process behind building it has been, will need a scrubbing every once in a while to keep deliverability high and reduce spam complaints. The better your sign-up processes, the less cleanup you’ll need. However, you will always still need to repeat the operation now and then.

It might seem like a big undertaking to scrub a list, but it doesn’t have to be and the benefits make it worthwhile. Ensuring your list is clean and up to date means your subscribers stay interested in your emails; and you’ll have a better sender reputation, leading to increased email deliverability, higher opens, higher click-through rates, enhanced customer loyalty and increased sales.

Delivery vs. Deliverability

People often mistake the terms email deliverability and email delivery, using them interchangeably, when in fact they are two different things. This tends to cause some confusion when people analyze emailing reports, which means some users may not even be figuring their success rates correctly at all.

Email Deliverability refers to the ability of any given email to be delivered properly. It’s about ensuring bulk email messages are delivered to the inbox and aren’t blocked or rerouted by spam filters. Neglecting email deliverability is a surefire way to worsen the any campaign issues you might already be having, because these messages could equally end up in the inbox, in someone’s junk folder, or be blocked by spam filters.

Email Delivery, on the other hand, is calculated by taking the total number of emails that you’ve sent and then subtracting the ones that bounced or were rejected. In other words, this is the number of emails that actually appeared in your subscribers’ inboxes compared to the number that you’ve sent.

Learn why you can be sure our email service will ensure high

delivery rates for your sends, watch this video.

To improve the quality of your list you’ll need to spend some time cleaning it up by following these steps:

1. Sweep your mailing list

The main work is in pruning your list regularly to remove known bad email addresses, or addresses that are bouncing. If someone unsubscribes, make sure they’re removed immediately. Asking people to add your email address to their contact lists can help their servers recognize your email as legitimate, making it far more likely that it will be allowed through.

Eliminate duplicate email addresses. If your email marketing service provider (ESP) does not do this automatically, do it yourself manually. Remove fake accounts, or addresses that were entered as a prank or are plain nonsense. Look for addresses like abcd@, qwerty@, test@, and any other common bogus user names. These are all entries that you absolutely want to get rid of as they are wasting your time/ money and dragging down your email sender reputation.

Frequently monitor your list for “no opens” and “no clicks’ to determine who is no longer engaged and remove them from your primary mailing list. If you are reluctant to let go of these contacts, consider moving them to a separate list for re-engagement campaigns.

2. Cut out bad entries

The next thing you can do is to search for and correct simple data entry mistakes like misspelled domains (geemail.com, hotmole.com, etc.) for example.

Having a few of these is quite normal, but if you are finding many bad domains then you may want to try and determine how those addresses got onto your list.

Do you have data capture issues? What can you do to eliminate the possibility of bad domains making it on to your database? Perhaps include reminder text on your signup form for subscribers to double check their entries, or add another email address field that gets recorded on a separate list, to cross-compare the entries when you are doing list hygiene checks.

The presence of a large number of dead domains shows that you haven’t been performing consistent list cleanups. Remove these and commit to regular address book reviews in the future.

3. Keep emailing

Consistent and regular attempts to contact subscribers is in and of itself a delivery solution.

To keep your list current, make sure you send messages to your subscribers at least once every 90 days. If you wait too long, your list will have many bounces due to people changing addresses or forgetting who you are and assuming your email newsletters are spam.

Stay in front of your audience and retain their interest by giving them valuable content. Don’t keep trying to sell them something every time your send out an email. If you do, you’ll become an annoyance and people will no longer want to receive your messages.

Business owners also need to make sure that the list they use is a real reflection of their target audience. Don’t transfer addresses between various unrelated lists or simply copy addresses off business cards, brochures and other media.

This is bad behavior and will harm your deliverability in the long run; unless you get permission from every person that gives you their address before you place it on your database and make sure that every bulk email you send contains an unsubscribe link.

4. Plan for future hygiene

Once you’ve given your email list a good scrubbing, immediately schedule the next house cleaning (before you forget or become too busy). How far out the next list scrubbing should be depends on the efficacy your opt-in processes, however your list will need less frequent and less intense attention if you adhere to best practices in html newsletter subscriptions.

Here are more email delivery tips from GraphicMail in an easy-to-understand visual format:

Article originally published on Memeburn.

Valentine's Competition Entrants #10

2012-02-10T06:42:00.000-08:00

The competition is heating up. On the 10th day of Love, we've got to 2 more competitors to add to the crop.

Vote for them now!

1) Arts Connexi

2) BCWWA

Friday Corner: The Trials of the Social Media Manager

2012-02-10T02:48:00.000-08:00

Original cartoon found here

Valentine's Newsletter Subject lines that win hearts and open wallets

2012-02-10T01:21:00.000-08:00

It’s the final Friday before the 14th and last minute Valentine’s Day email promotions are in high gear.

Will the results of your Valentine’s special offer leave you broken-hearted, or will your subscribers be pulling out their credit cards and showing you the love?

The busiest Valentine’s promotion timeframe is normally from the 10th to the 14th of February. Inboxes everywhere are getting crammed, which means that most of the offers in circulation are more than likely being ignored.

This is where the all-important subject line can make or break getting a recipient to open your email marketing message.

A Valentine’s promo newsletter is a good chance to capture subscribers’ attention, entice them to click through to your store to view your products. But, there is a fine line between being creative and influential, and getting it wrong.

We’ve selected a few of our favorite Valentine’s Day email subject lines that we’ve seen in past campaigns, to give you some insight and inspiration.

Here are our top 10 most successful Valentine’s Subject Lines:

#1     Order now to avoid heartbreak this Valentine's
#2    Save on our Best Selling Valentines Day Gifts
#3     Next Day Shipping - For those of you staying in for Valentine's Day
#4     Shipping + Valentine's Specials
#5     Need Valentine's inspiration? You’ll love these last-minute offers
#6     Get gifts as extraordinary as your Valentine
#7    Valentine Sweetness for Your Someone Special
#8     Get Valentine’s Gifts They’ll Adore, at Prices You’ll Love
#9     You’ll Fall in Love with These Valentine’s Ideas
#10   Valentine’s Day gifts shipped for FREE

Valentine’s Day is also a favourite time for spammers to get into full swing. To help real-deal email marketers make sure their campaigns don’t look like junk messages, researchers at Symantec have compiled a list of the top 10 most spammy Valentine’s Day subject lines in use today.

Holding the top 3 spam subject line spots are the "male enhancement" crowd who have really taken to this holiday. Right behind them is the "fake gift card" gang and lastly, the "replica watch" fraternity.

These are the top 10 Valentine’s subject lines to avoid:

#1     Increase your length, the best Valentine's gift
#2     Show off your length for Valentine's
#3     Get it before Valentine's day and watch her smile
#4     You have been invited to partake in a shopping spree with [Removed] This Month for Valentine's!
#5     Happy Early Valentine's Day, You have been selected to go on a $1000 Shopping spree to [Removed]
#6     The Best Valentine's Day Present Ever...
#7     Your Valentine's Day is about to get a lot better
#8     Enjoy your Valentine's Day with a Grand Cash from us =)
#9     [Removed] invites you to take a $1000 shopping spree for Valentine's Day
#10   Great watches for your Valentine

Researchers have also seen an increase in other Valentine’s Day-related spam with the words “Feb 14”, “February 14” and “Cupid” in their subject lines, which are a safe bet not to use.

To drive home those last-minute sales you need to write your subject lines from the heart and provide subscribers with product and service offers that they'll really want, but you should always test those subject lines before you hit send and study what other marketers have successfully used in the past.

Valentine's Competition Entrants #9

2012-02-09T06:41:00.000-08:00

On the 9th day of Love, we've got to 2 more competitors looking to walk away with the grand prize.

Admiring their newsletter making savvy? Vote for them now!

1) Solid Edge Technology

2) Abhyasa Yoga Center

3 Best Practices for Increasing Subscriber Engagement

2012-02-08T22:31:00.000-08:00

There's lots of hype surrounding email engagement, yet everyone has a different opinion on what that really means. In practice, we can only influence people while they're engaged with us, but engagement doesn’t happen automatically or overnight. It takes time and work, and is a slightly different process for every kind of business.

Engaged subscribers usually represent a small percentage of a list, but they do have the most value to a brand. This makes cultivating engagement a worthwhile pursuit.

Here are three tips for increasing subscriber engagement in bulk email marketing campaigns:

1) Roll out the welcome wagon: Engage subscribers from the start. Welcome new subscribers with a helpful, eye-catching email to connect them with your brand from the first click. It can be hard to get newcomers to engage with you and respond in the way long-term subscribers do, so it’s necessary to reach out to them specifically. That’s where automation through triggered emails and personalisation comes in.

Set the right precedent for a long-term relationship with every new subscriber by developing a welcoming system. Be supportive of newcomers by offering them additional customer support or maybe even extra incentives. Consider having a newsletter series specifically aimed at teaching them the ins and outs of your company. If they lose interest, you lose money, so don’t give them the opportunity to by engaging them from the start.

2) Track and understand user actions: To increase customer engagement, you first need to understand what interests them and why. In email marketing, this means understanding the actions your subscribers take on and from your newsletter.

Begin by defining an engagement score. Combine key metrics such as opens, clickthroughs, comments on your newsletter, friend referrals, time spent on your site, visitation frequency and end-goal actions such as downloads and product or service purchases. Also consider measuring interaction with your support and marketing materials, including downloadable product sheets, promotion participation and access to help centers.

3) The engagement ideal and how to achieve it: To truly be considered an engaged subscriber, there's a logical order of progress that must take place. The individual must first receive your email, open it, view your message as something relevant to them, begin to interact with your brand and then repeatedly purchase from you.

The important thing to grasp is that sales and engagement are two different metrics. Anyone can easily make a single purchase from you, but if they don't come back and buy again, enough wasn’t done to engage them and turn them into a long-term customer.

Talk to your subscribers individually. In addition to using their first name or other demographic elements, consider integrating personalised upsell opportunities into your transactional emails based on how they interacted with other bulk email campaigns.

Engagement is what keeps a business alive. The vast majority of your sales will come from engaged customers. The more engaged customers you have, the more sales you'll make.

Article originally published with two more great tips about email engagement on eMarketing & Commerce.

Hot tips for Valentine’s Email Marketing

2012-02-08T02:17:00.000-08:00

Valentine’s Day is on the approach and whether you personally view the season of hearts as the most romantic time of the year, filled with love and affection, or an annual catastrophe of tacky décor and extravagant gifts; there’s no question that it can have a positive effect on any business.

Valentine's is the perfect opportunity to re-ignite relationships with customers and remind them that they are at the forefront of your mind and that you understand their needs and desires.

February has also become one of the most competitive in email marketing, as recipients' inboxes are stuffed with look-alike offers from various retailers and spammers. This means that most of it will likely be ignored with all the red-hot overload.

Here are 3 things you could do to rise above romantic mediocrity and make sure that you get some extra love from your subscribers this Valentine’s:

1) Send ‘fe-mails’ to Venus and ‘mails’ to Mars

There are lots of people out there ready and willing to part with their cash to buy the ultimate Valentine’s gift, but even if you have the perfect product, one single offer may not be appropriate for all the members of your audience.

You want to present the right message to the right people. For example; you won’t want to send an email with masculine products to the men on your list, since that would defeat your efforts.

So to work around this issue, Valentine’s is a great time to try email list segmentation. You can do this by separating your subscriber list by gender and then sending female -oriented offers to the guys and male-oriented offers to the ladies. Having segments for new customers and those who’ve made purchases before can also play a big role in the type of messaging you have in your campaign.

You can send a special email to people who bought from you last year around Valentine’s Day with an even better offer for this year. If they had a good experience last time round, present them with an exclusive deal and they will most likely buy from you again.

Says Barbara Ulmi, GraphicMail Marketing Manager: “It’s important to take the time and effort to get the perfect emails written for each segment of your list, not just in terms of the products they contain, but also in terms of the tone. The playful, boyish approach that often puts men at ease fails with women - who may prefer something more sincere and heartfelt.”

Have you entered GraphicMail's Valentine's competition yet? Watch this video to find out how.

2) Give them romantic ideas

How many times have you wondered and worried over what you’re going to do for your Valentine’s Day?

Men are always spending more than women during Valentine’s, and often have a tough time coming up with ideas of what to buy and where to go; making them highly receptive to suggestion and easy to influence.

You can draw their attention by doing the homework for them and, for example, providing a list of the top 10 best Valentine’s Day gifts or dates. Tie this to your own offering by sending out a Valentine’s Day email newsletter filled with specials and information about which products you think will make for an unforgettable evening. These could be centered round your top selling items from last year or the ones you currently want to promote.

If all else fails suggest a gift card purchase option for customers who are stumped or can’t decide.

3) Get dressed for Love

The first order of business is, of course, getting your customers in the mood for Valentine’s Day, and this starts with your creatives.

A great Valentine’s themed email template will not only boost their enthusiasm about the celebration, but maybe even your sales. If you use a good balance of Valentine-specific copy and images, subscribers will begin to get thinking about the event and will want to look directly at what you have to offer for it.

This is a very simple, but important step. Changing appearances could even be all you need to do to in practical term to improve your sales.

If you don’t have time to come up with a new look, there are still other options. Think back to the Valentine’s emails you received 12 months ago; do you remember what any of them looked like in clear detail? Probably not, and the same should be true for your subscribers.

So if your schedule is too tight, you can even re-use stock images and certain texts from last year, as long as you are repeating the resources on your site and landing pages to keep the feel consistent.

Valentine's Competition Entrants: Day 7

2012-02-07T06:34:00.000-08:00

On the 7th day of Love, 3 more competitors have arrived and are ready to be voted for!

1) Sefapane lodge & safaris

2) TechnoCity

3) Corporate African Experience

Valentine's Competition Entrants: Day 6

2012-02-06T06:17:00.000-08:00

Day 6 of our Valentine's competition has brought a few more entries to our list of contenders.

Do any of these catch your eye? Vote for them now by commenting on this blog to increase their chances of winning.

1) Willow Creek SA

2) Joey and Julia

3) Saiosh

The competition closes on the 29th of February, so there are still more entrants to follow. To qualify, send us your February newsletter today!

If you're not sure about how to enter or what you need to do to win, watch this video!

Friday Corner: HTML5 Cheatsheet

2012-02-03T02:26:00.000-08:00

This is only a snapshot of the full infographic. Get the full one here

Valentine's Competition Entrant: Day 2

2012-02-02T06:27:00.000-08:00

Another candidate for our GraphicMail Valentine's competition arrived in our inboxes today.

Be sure to comment on this post about this newsletter if you want to give them your vote.

Valentine's Competition Entrants: Day 1

2012-02-01T23:29:00.000-08:00

The first entrants for our GraphicMail Valentine's competition have been received today.

Comment on this post about either newsletter to give them your vote for winning!

1) Darling Tourism Newsletter

2) Anchor Capital Newsletter

The competition closes on the 29th of February, so there are still more entrants to follow. To qualify, send us your February newsletter today!

GraphicMail Valentine's Competition

2012-02-01T05:06:00.000-08:00

Share the love this February with GraphicMail and win your choice of a Kindle Fire, a R1400 online gift voucher or a R119.95 GraphicMail monthly account for a year!

How can you win?

Share your February newsletter with us by including the marketing@graphicmail.com address in either your test sends or your actual newsletter send between 1-29 Feb 2012, and get your friends and fans to vote for it right here on our blog.

You can either use one of the beautiful Valentine's newsletter templates found in our 2011 Editor, create your own or just submit your regular newsletter.

How it works

As soon as we receive your newsletter we will post it on the blog as a screenshot and send the blog URL back to you.

Invite your friends and fans to visit our blog by emailing them or posting the link on your social networks to get as many comments about your newsletter as you can.

Each comment counts as a vote. Your fans can also like your newsletter in our GraphicMail Facebook album called 'Share the love'.

The newsletter with the most comments and likes wins, and the winning emailer can choose one of the prizes mentioned above.

Need some inspiration?

Keep watching our blog for guidelines on how to craft a love-worthy Valentine's newsletter and increase your chances of getting more votes.

Please note, terms and conditions apply.

January Newsletter of the Month

2012-01-31T01:47:00.000-08:00

We've selected this well-formatted email from SA Décor&Design as our GraphicMail newsletter of the month.

This is an excellent example of newsletter layout and content use, being both easy an enticing to read without overloading subscribers with information or confusing them about the flow of information and where to look.

Congratulations on a job well done!

You can see some of our other award-winning newsletters and keep up with new winners by following us on our Facebook Wall of Fame.

3 Ways to Lower Email Unsubscribe Rates

2012-01-30T01:39:00.000-08:00

Over time an email marketing list may erode as people lose interest in your offerings, or worse yet, become annoyed by your newsletter sends. Regardless of the reason, emailers have to accept a certain amount of list depreciation as things go on, but when that list begins to lose too much mass too quickly, it might be time to consider a few ways to stem your unsubscribe rate.

There’s always something you can do to save some of your subscribers. Following are 3 day-to-day campaign tips that are sure to minimise your opt-outs:

1) Listen to your readers

First of all, in opt-in email marketing, a subscriber ignored is a subscriber lost; which is why you need to take whatever campaign feedback you get seriously while they still have that person’s attention. A little remedial communication is always a lot easier than getting someone back onto your list after they’ve left.

Most of the time though, people will unsubscribe quietly and without logging any complaints, despite all of your hard work to keep them satisfied. When this happens you need to take the opportunity to solicit feedback from them and act on it.

Chatting to a disgruntled reader who has opted out probably won't help you save that email recipient, but it may help you prevent future subscribers from leaving your list.

2) Customise email frequency

Are you bombarding your subscribers’ inbox or leaving it too scarce for their tastes?

Just as you could let them choose the types of emails that they receive, you should also let subscribers adjust the frequency at which you send to them. A major step in preventing unsubscribes is in letting your email newsletter recipients tell you what frequency is right for them; which can vary from daily, to monthly, or anything in between.

Everyone on your list will have a different frequency that's the best fit for them. So offer customised email frequency options at the bottom of every email and also on the page to which your unsubscribe link navigates, as a final effort to retain your subscriber.

You can send these emails to your inactive subscribers too, asking them to select their ideal sending frequency to re-engage and prevent an impending unsubscribe.

3) Improve you segmentation

The more specific your email subscriber segments are, the better able you are to deliver content that speaks directly to their interests, making you a welcome fixture in their inbox.

Not everyone signs up to your newsletter for the same reasons; they live in different places, have different behavioral patterns and they like different products. This being the reality, marketers need to split up their lists and craft messages accordingly. Email segmentation is important because it allows you to deliver only the most relevant, customised content to your subscribers.

Suppose that you could create two or three different offers that would appeal to different groups of your subscribers, depending on their needs, wants, interests and objections. The more relevant an offer is, the more likely someone is to take you up on that offer, and less likely they are to unsubscribe.

GraphicMail has made segmentation easy. If you’ve never divided up your subscribers before, read our beginners’ guide to email list segmentation for practical steps on how to get started.

Friday Corner: It really is time for a Mobile Strategy

2012-01-26T23:45:00.000-08:00

Original cartoon found here

The Golden Rule of Email Marketing

2012-01-26T00:05:00.000-08:00

We are the start of what is looking to be a great year for email marketing. Online sales from email are up and it is still the channel that is seeing the highest Return on Investment - a perfect reason for companies to increase email marketing efforts and budgets.

Email marketing isn’t all about the numbers. In the day-to-day work of a marketer it might even be more about the combination of results and enjoying the work. But don’t be fooled, building a great audience and email program is hard work. There is one rule I’d suggest marketers to live by, keeping that hard work doable:

The one golden rule to live by

Enjoy working on your email marketing program.

It is as simple as that. If you enjoy working on your bulk email marketing program it will show through in all emailings you send out. How do you think a recipient is going to be enticed if you aren’t? Going to enjoy reading if you didn’t enjoy writing?

Here are 3 ways to keep the marketing juices flowing and bring enthusiasm to your email program:

1. Get Hooked and get Newsjacking

Marketing is the art of connecting with your audience. One of the ways to connect with your audience is to tap into their everyday life and understand what is keeping them busy. So this year you might want to put the Olympics on your agenda as well as Easter, Father’s Day, Valentine’s or school vacations.

What really gets blood pumping is what is called “real-time marketing” or Newsjacking – a kind of hook on to the events of today. Luckily email and social media are both as quick as you can spell “real-time”. What’s in the papers today can become the subject of your marketing.

Some email tools can connect the website RSS feed to your newsletter templates, making it easy to publish over multiple channels at the same time. Because in these cases, time is of the essence, it requires a flexible marketing team and one or two quick thinkers, tough it can really give you encouraging results and a boost of energy to work on a project like this.

2. Create a goal specific campaign

All email marketers have goals to reach. Even if the goals aren’t written down (yet). Email marketers want new subscribers to sign-up, they want to increase sales or stimulate customer loyalty. Or even measure their impact through the more simple metrics in life such as increasing email opens and click throughs.

Take at least one of these goals and run with it. It is very stimulating to work towards a (new) goal especially if the results can be measured and monitored real time. So for instance; create a campaign that is specially designed to get people that haven’t opened their email in a while to interact. Think about including new and stimulating ‘from names’, stellar subject lines, pre-headers, preview pane design and all elements to re-active that interaction-lagging subscriber. You can just go ahead and make the improvements. But if you really want to know what works best, there are different ways to do A-B testing with your bulk emails. Are you getting some creative ideas yet?

3. Go green

Creating fresh content isn’t about reinventing the wheel. Most companies have a ton of (unused) content lying around and some of that is really good too, like blog posts from a year ago that could have been written yesterday. Check out what evergreen content had some good impact before. There are lots of ways you can go crazy when you have a great foundation.

For example; customer feedback that hasn’t been used or what the top five email newsletters of last year were?

Grab that content, and revive it, make it even better than it was. This is not only very efficient use of your resources, but also very rewarding, because you will almost certainly see the effect.

The one email marketing rule to live by

There you have it. Do you love to create great emails? Maybe not every day. But by adding some juice, a sparkle of enthusiasm and some variance it certainly becomes more enjoyable! So see if you can adapt one of three ideas and don’t forget the one rule: Always enjoy working on your email program.

Article originally published by email marketing consultant Jordie van Rijn on eMail Monday.

List building without headaches: 3 Easy ways to get more subscribers

2012-01-23T02:44:00.000-08:00

When it comes to your address book, size does matter.

The more people you have on your emailing list, the more marketing messages you can send out and the more responses you can potentially get. But, growing an email list can be a slow and difficult process.

There are no shortcuts to building a large qualitative list of subscribers. In fact it can be so much of a bulk email marketing migraine that after a while some people might feel like giving up on promoting new sign-ups altogether.

So how do you build your subscriber database without all the worries?

1) Make signing up as simple as possible

Email opt-in should be made easy. The more clicks and keystrokes a potential subscriber needs to make in order to sign up, the more of them will abandon the process before you have them securely on your list.

Why force a person to take multiple steps to do something that they want to do, if there are ways for them to do it with just one?

Lubricate your subscription process by testing the success of rate of single opt in vs. double opt in. Think about reducing the amount of required fields on your subscription forms - most of which are always details you can ask your subscribers about later. And rewrite your confirmation emails to be as brief and skim-easy as possible.

2) Focus on converting web visitors

If (like most marketers these days) you are promoting your business via online channels, chances are that your website will be a hotspot for catching new sign-ups.

This means that your email newsletter opt-in should be compelling, obvious and everywhere.
Make sure the form is prominently placed on all your web pages and make it stand out visually.
Also place sign-up promotions on relevant content such as within articles and blogs, and at the end of slide shows.

This area is where email marketing services need to help their clients. GraphicMail makes it easy to manage the online sign up process with our lists and contacts tools. You can even import all your subscribers from other emailing programs and cloud-based CRMs such as Salesforce, or sync up your address book with Outlook. Our features make it really simple to gather all your contacts neatly into one archive.

You'll also do well if you sell your newsletter to potential subscribers by adding a line or two about the benefits of signing up, such as mentioning special deals or exclusive content, or adding some testimonials by a few clients who’ve found it useful.

Once your website’s sign up forms have all been set up and testes, focus on driving traffic to your sign-up forms through all possible channels; such as your social media pages and PPC campaigns.

3) Leverage word of mouth and social media

Word of mouth is a powerful technique that works great with email marketing. If your readers find the content you share with them to be useful and informative, they will pass your newsletter on to their friends, which can be a good source of new subscribers.

A really great way to grow your list is to allow people to share your email with others. This adds a social component to your email which increases the possibility of you message going viral.

Add a ‘forward to friend’ link and newsletter social share buttons to your template. Even think about including an incentive for both sender and recipient, such as a voucher or free credits. You may be surprised by the amount of referral activity you can generate if you just take the time to ask.

It all comes down to asking everyone, everywhere and at every opportunity about whether they would like to hear from you via email. Be sure to tell them what benefits there are if they sign up and then make it easy for all subscribers to share your email newsletters so other people will see the advantages.

Friday Corner: The Rise of the QR Code

2012-01-19T23:54:00.000-08:00

Original image found here

3 New Year’s resolutions you should make for your email campaigns

2012-01-18T01:26:00.000-08:00

New Year’s resolutions are always easy to make, but notoriously hard to keep.

2011 is firmly in our rearview mirrors. It’s more than two weeks into 2012, and all those well-intended resolutions which seemed so reasonable at the end of last year may have already fallen by the wayside.

While some of your master plans may have encountered some delays, you can still score points on your self-assessment by deciding to adopt some healthy email marketing habits to improve your campaign performance for the year to come:

1) I resolve to begin my 2012 communications with an email marketing plan

Don’t dawdle for months before you figure out what you want to communicate and promote this year. Do yourself a favor and start setting specific goals. Now.

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 or get brainstorming in advance for specific commercial dates 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 in 2012 on things that won’t help you. After all, it’s a lot more rewarding when you know your goals are within your grasp.

2) I resolve to make it a year of measurement

With the statistical tracking features provided by most email service providers (ESPs) there’s no reason to practice guess-marketing. But if that’s what you’ve been doing, then there’s no better time than the present to become a monster of metrics.

Record all your benchmarks and measure your successes this year. If you're not sure about what kind of stats you should be looking at, download our 2011 Industry metrics white paper to learn about all the key figures and what they mean.

Before you can set real goals you need an accurate baseline of figures and trends to project your annual performance from. Focus on what’s important to your business as you gather stats and set your goals accordingly. Whether that’s new sign-ups, higher open or click-through rates, more fans or followers, better campaign ROI or any other key metric improvement.
Comparing your current figures against last year’s numbers, if you have them, will give you a better idea of how you are growing, what to expect, and let you anticipate high and low business periods before they happen; which also makes it easier to budget.

3) I resolve to become mobile friendly

Mobile marketing will go from buzz to biz in 2012. With the growing popularity of smartphones and the increasing dependence on mobile devices, marketers will have to consider adding mobile to their communications mix and take their marketing strategies to the next level. This will be the year to catch consumers where they are, wherever they are; on mobile.

An increasing amount of people started reading their emails on a mobile device in 2011. As we move closer to the time when mobile web access eclipses PC web access, brands will realise they need a web offering optimised for the mobile environment. This has not yet happened within all businesses, but soon the time will come when consumers will be demanding it.

In 2012, give serious consideration to making your digital communications mobile friendly. Ensuring that you have mobile sign up forms and that both your emails and website landing pages render properly on popular mobile devices are top priorities.

For more email marketing New Year's resolutions, read our original article published on Memeburn.

Google Search Plus Your Word: What it means for Emailing

2012-01-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

You’ve probably heard by now that Google announced the roll out of social search last week, sleekly dubbed ‘Search Plus Your Word’.

In case you are unsure about what it does in practice and wondering if it has anything to do with email marketing; here we’ll brush over the basic concept behind the feature and what to expect from it.

While 'Search Plus Your Word' will mainly be impacting SEO, it’s important to understand what it is and how it should be affecting the emailing business.

First of all, 'Search Plus Your Word' is (at least at this point) an optional feature. Every user has a choice to switch between global search as it is now and the new Google + search.

If they do opt for Google+ search, the short version is that Google search results are going to be personalised for each user. Signals will be drawn from your Google+ Circles, highlighting things your friends, followers, or you have shared.

Google will also be feeding your brand’s Google+ social content directly into personalised results, for consumers who’ve added you to their circles. These search results may also include content that a consumer’s friends posted about you.

So Google’s approach of delivering relevant results based on unbiased data will now be coloured by your social sharing activities. Any of these personalized matches will appear alongside ‘normal’ search results, meaning that whatever the people connected to you online are saying or sharing will be counted as more relevant than before.

What it means for Email Marketing:

One interesting byproduct from Search Plus Your World is that email marketing programs will become more important, because of its power to encourage actions such as social shares.

Google+ content will be dominant on Google searches, and so, some sites will receive extra prominence because they have an audience containing a mass of social media enthusiasts who share their content; be it newsletters, blogs or other communications.

The sites that don’t have an active social media audience or community will be losing some limelight, so now is the time to integrate social media with your email marketing and actively work do build your social fan base, if you have not already done so.

Integrating Email and Social

The real benefit of social media has always been its ability to leverage your message and amplify your content as people take your content and spread it on their networks.

With 'Search Plus Your Word', if you integrate your social media marketing with your email campaigns, you will not only increase your marketing effectiveness, but you will also be boosting your Google search rank.

You can do this by:

1. Placing a link to your email newsletters on your G+ pages every time you perform a send
2. Including social media share options for G+ in your email newsletters
3. Adding social media channel subscribe buttons on your email newsletter such as “Join our Circle” on Google Plus
4. Promoting your content by broadcasting your blog entries via your Circles on G+
5. Sending out email newsletters that have excerpts from your blog with links to each post

Social share has been a groundbreaking feature of GraphicMail’s 2011 developments, making us the first email marketing service to incorporate the ability to easily share email marketing messages on social networking sites and report on the results.

Our clients benefit from being able to see how many times an email newsletter has been shared on social networks, viewed and clicked.

The mashing up of email and social strategies is something that GraphicMail is committed to continue with in 2012 by further integrating social media and our product features.

We will discuss this further at a later stage, so keep reading our blogs to stay up to date with the latest news on social-email integration.

Friday Corner: Past Larry Page meets Future Larry Page

2012-01-13T00:33:00.000-08:00

Original image found here

Exclusive! 2012 Outlook by GraphicMail CEO Nick Eckert

2012-01-12T03:56:00.000-08:00

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

GraphicMail Christmas Competition Winner

2012-01-11T02:27:00.000-08:00

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.

5 Ways to Freshen up your Email Template for the New Year

2012-01-10T02:16:00.000-08:00

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.

GraphicMail welcomes 2012

2012-01-09T02:09:00.000-08:00

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!

Friday Corner: Email is Here to Stay

2012-01-06T01:02:00.000-08:00

Original infographic found on VISIBLEGAINS.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from GraphicMail!

2011-12-22T04:24:00.000-08:00

As the year comes to a close, the GraphicMail Staff would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

We're glad to have given you the best of service during 2011 and that you've been following all our updates so keenly.

We hope you'll keep coming back in 2012, and that we can provide you with all the email and mobile marketing tools and information you'll ever need.

Thank you very much for your support. We hope you have a safe and joyful festive season.

- The GraphicMail Team

6 Email Marketing Predictions for 2012

2011-12-22T00:11:00.000-08:00

As 2011 draws to a close, our thoughts race ahead to the campaign plans of tomorrow. What should the forward-thinking email marketer be considering as part of their bulk email programs for 2012?

To help with this question, here are some predictions for email in 2012:

1. More emails will be sent than ever before in 2012

Consumers are signing up to receive emails in larger numbers. Everyone in email marketing should continue to focus on relevancy to ensure that they're building quality mailing lists and, in doing so, maintaining a healthy sales conversion per audience ratio.

2. Subscribers will be demanding greater respect for their privacy

Consumers became more aware than ever this year about the amount of information available online related to their purchases and interests. Behavioral targeting via cookies has become the norm.

Perhaps the biggest impact on privacy and deliverability in 2011 came from changes to laws relating to consumer permission and protection. In 2012, you'll need to show your subscribers more than ever that you're trustworthy. It will be paramount to review your privacy and email marketing policies to be sure they meet all legal requirements for every country that you send emails to.

CAN-SPAM and the new CASL stipulations need to be adhered to or you’ll be facing grave financial penalties. It’s important to clearly display how opt-in subscriptions will be handled and to what extent user data will be stored and shared.

3. It’s time to make sure email campaigns render well on mobile screens

An increasing amount of people started reading their emails on a mobile device in 2011, and smartphone prices are predicted to continue to drop. Readers will begin to demand that all messages are legible on their mobile devices. Therefore, email needs to continue to be mobile optimised.

Ensuring that both your email and website landing pages render properly is a top priority. As smartphones become smarter and more capable of rendering HTML cleanly, there will likely be less of a need for such specialised mobile markup.

4. QR codes will become more commonplace and rewarding

You should see new list-building possibilities open up once potential subscribers are able to opt in to email communications by simply scanning a QR code. Although technically speaking it's already possible, most email service providers aren’t using QR code reading features.

5. The lines between email and social will blur even further

We witnessed many indications that email is still alive and well this year, and there's no doubt social media is here to stay. Over time it will drive the traditional inbox to become more social. After all, social media marketing is a very effective medium to engage with prospects, drive traffic to a website and build lasting relationships. Looking at it on a superficial level, email will allow for social connections.

Social platforms will include messaging systems that are basically email with a different face.

6. Email reigns supreme

Email continues to be the single most effective marketing medium for small businesses despite efforts from some who claim that social media has taken over.

ForeSee Results’ Report on Social Media Marketing shows that 64 percent of consumers prefer to receive promotional information from retailers via email rather than social media. It's a solid argument that emailers who were considering it to be the year to convert entirely to social media marketing should stick to their guns in 2012.

Email marketing has a healthy outlook for 2012 if marketers continue with the progress they've made this year. Whether managing and optimising existing email marketing programs or enabling integration with social media and mobile, there's a real opportunity for emailers to up their game and achieve more in 2012.

Article originally published on eMarketing & Commerce

GraphicMail Closing Times for the Festive Season

2011-12-21T02:12:00.000-08:00

GraphicMail would like to wish you well this festive season! We hope it's filled with family, friends, good food and holiday cheer!

This time of year South Africa takes a well deserved break! This means that our Support team will be running on skeleton staff from 23 December until 6 January. During this time support will only be available via email and online chat between 1pm and 3pm GMT +2. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Kindly note that GraphicMail will be closed on the following days:
Monday, 26 December 2011
Tuesday, 27 December 2011
Monday, 2 January 2012

Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to another great year with you!

GraphicMail Email Newsletter of the Year Award

2011-12-20T02:02:00.000-08:00

During the past few days, the GraphicMail marketing team searched far and wide through our database and looked at what certainly must've been some of the best, most expertly produced emails sent during the last 12 months.

And, after long and careful deliberation, we've selected a winner.

So without further ado, we'd like to announce our choice for the 2011 Email Newsletter of the Year:

Some say that it if you print it upside down it will smell of magnesium - and that if you hang it in a Ferrari it glows red during the full moon... all we know is, it's the Top Gear Festival newsletter!

This newsletter was sent by the email marketers at digital brand solution Create Online. Our team had many words of praise for the captivating use of images, the savvy font alternation and the text-lean top-down layout; which makes the newsletter both easy to read and mobile friendly.

Congratulations! Stunning job!

Five Mobile Marketing trends to look out for in 2012

2011-12-19T01:02:00.000-08:00

The mobile landscape of 2012 is ripe with possibility. Globally, it’s estimated that 5.3-billion people have mobile phones. This means that there are more people picking up a mobile phone every morning than lifting a newspaper. Increasingly, it’s not only to make calls and send texts either - mobile data traffic is trebling every year.

Mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones became the highest-selling consumer electronic device category in 2011, amounting to 115-million units in Q3 alone - according to one report, beating out PC, laptop, and netbook figures combined.

With the growing popularity of smartphones and the increasing dependence on mobile devices, it’s only natural that everyone will want to take their mobile marketing strategies for next year to a whole new level.

The world has gone mobile, so be prepared.

Mobile commerce is undergoing rampant change. Retailers and consumers are racing for devices and applications with capabilities that they’ve never had before.

As the year-end looms, many of us are left prognosticating about future trends and seeking expert forecasts to help guide our campaign strategies for the next communications cycle.

So, with only a few weeks left until 2012, here are some key stats to think about:

The CTIA Wireless Association recently said more than 250-million Americans now have mobile phones, with 57% of teenagers believing that their device is the center of their social universe.

Biz Report predicts that more than 10-trillion text messages will be sent next year. Text messaging programmes will account for about $14-billion of the over $19 billion it says will be spent on mobile campaigns in 2012.

A recent AT&T report suggests that 88% of marketers will increase their spend on mobile based campaigns.

Renowned research firm Gartner predicts mobile email users worldwide will see pronounced growth next year, increasing from 354 million in 2009 to 713 million by 2014.

Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising networks have delivered 350-billion global impressions in 2011, generating $800-million in media spend, and earning $275-million in revenue. The US market generated 50% of gross media spend, with Europe and Asia both at around 25%.

In a Juniper Research report titled “Mobile Retail Marketing, Advertising, Coupons and NFC Shopping, 2011-2016″, the authors predict that the value of mobile retail marketing (a sector still in its infancy when compared to traditional advertising outlets) will hit $15 billion next year - a 50% leap up from 2011.

Mind Commerce estimates the world market for mobile marketing and advertising revenues will reach nearly $54-billion by 2020.

Mobile Coupons

According to a new survey commissioned by AT&T, mobile barcodes are the biggest area of potential for innovation. 66% of respondents agreed that mobile barcodes will drive new mobile marketing campaign concepts in the next year. The majority of executives surveyed said they rank mobile barcodes the second highest mobile marketing priority for 2012.

Said Nicole Skogg, CEO of SpyderLynk and co-chair of the MMA mobile barcode division: “Mobile barcodes will continue to evolve rapidly worldwide. They offer unmatched opportunity to increase brand value by adding measurable interactive functionality and richer consumer engagement."

One obstacle so far has been that QR code scanning capabilities have not come as standard on mobile phones, but marketers are expecting to find the required 2D barcode readers being issued as part of the original equipment on smartphones in 2012.

Mobile Web

More than 90% of mobile phones going out onto the market today have access to the mobile web through a browser.

The mobile web will be a leading channel in 2012. Mobile search will be the dominant activity for engaging people with branded communications, according to Google. Mobile search could become as big for Google, if not bigger, than desktop search. This holiday season, the search giant expects that 44% of total searches for last minute gifts will be from mobile devices.

According to Forrester research, while 13% of the U.S. population searched with a mobile device in 2010 (90% with Google), mobile searchers will account for 28% of the U.S. population by 2015.

Mobile Commerce

Mobile point-of-sale technology is an area that will see accelerated growth and innovation. However, it’s doubtful that it will become mainstream until 2015, since payment solution providers still need to address use and implementation ease without compromising security.

International banks are developing a mobile transactional capability called “Swipe to Pay”, which is set to completely replace credit cards within a few years. This technology allows an enabled mobile phone to be swiped past a merchant’s reader to pay for goods.

According to PayPal, global mobile payment volume increased by 516% on Black Friday and 552% on Cyber Monday this year.

There are lots of potential mobile shoppers out there. About 43% of Americans own smartphones, according to Nielsen. Amazon says that the number of American customers who shop via their mobile device has nearly tripled since last year and almost 10% of all electronic purchases made in October 2011 came through mobile devices, according to research from IBM Coremetrics.

Mobile Video

The arrival of HTML5 in email and on the web has given brands a lot to work with in terms of the capabilities that can be built into a mobile newsletter and a mobile site. HTML5 has enabled rich-media environments that will help brands achieve the creatives that they envision and reach people more uniformly across various mobile devices.

Designers of mobile interfaces are continually improving their platform to maximize on the commercial aspects of mobile connectivity. Says GraphicMail designer Clint Eksteen: “Discussions are currently in place to transform our master page to HTML5. We have been doing tests on the new markup and are seeing great results, especially in Firefox and Chrome. We are definitely looking to bring HTML5 into the fold in 2012.”

As technology advances, consumers demand more bandwidth. Current development sees the simultaneous introduction of the speedy 4G networks by operators while programming is shifting to the mobile-friendly HTML5 language. Together, this will put mobile-user experience in line with traditional internet delivery.

With the increased activity we’ve seen this year, the mobile web will become what desktop internet became in the 90s: the standard platform for anyone doing business.

Article originally published on Memeburn.

Magento E-commerce Platform Integrates with GraphicMail

2011-12-15T02:47:00.000-08:00

We've just finished integrating our software with Magento; a powerful open source application that allows users to create an entire e-commerce experience online.

Magento is an ecommerce solution that leverages the power of open source technology to help online merchants fulfill their business goals at a fraction of the cost and time.

It offers companies highly flexible software that’s completely scalable and backed by an extensive support network.

Go ahead - grow your mailing list through Magento transactions!

With our Magento email marketing integration, every time someone registers to buy from your online shop or service via Magento, you can ask them to opt in to your GraphicMail newsletters. This way you can grow your mailing list and divide your subscribers into groups that share certain characteristics, such as their product preferences and purchase history.

Visit the GraphicMail extension page on the Magento website to download and install the plug-in to your account.

Watch this quick video to see how it's done.

Magento offers merchants complete over the look, content, and functionality of their online store. Its intuitive administration interface contains powerful marketing and content management tools to give anyone the power to create sites that are tailored to their unique business needs.

Also remember to check out some of our other latest add-ons on our new email marketing Integrations dashbard.

Integrate your GraphicMail and Magento accounts today!

Segmenting Your Email Subscribers: A Beginners' Guide

2011-12-14T05:26:00.000-08:00

Holidays, events and special occasions are ideal opportunities to fine tune your messages to get more people to respond to them.
One way to refine your email messages is to use subscriber segmentation.

Segmentation tools allow you to target a group of clients who fit a specific profile. This means you can send to, for example, only men in your list who are between the ages of 25 and 30 living in the Bahamas.

Segmenting your list is vital to the long term success of email marketing campaigns. Proper list segmentation can lead to improved open rates and revenue.

Not everyone signs up to your newsletter for the same reasons; they live in different places, have different behavioral patterns and they like different products. This being the reality, marketers need to split up their lists and craft messages accordingly.

However, by comparison, segmentation is quite an advanced tool, and to do it thoroughly you will need more info from people than just their name and email address.

So to begin with, getting permission and profile and preference information from the time a person signs up would make your life a lot easier. If not you’ll be battling to segment and target your database in order to push your news to a more relevant readership.

One problem for newcomers to email marketing is that when they first start they tend to think just sending a message out to as many people as possible will be the best way to get results; when in fact targeting smaller groups of people actually produces a much higher return on investment.

Just like putting all your strawberries together in a basket would make perfect sense if you're a fruit merchant, grouping subscribers according to their characteristics makes your mailing list more

orderly, useful and easier to manage.

Suppose that you could create two or three different offers that would appeal to different groups of your subscribers, depending on their needs, wants, interests and objections. The more relevant an offer is, the more likely someone is to take you up on that offer.

But don’t fret if don’t have much to start with - just use what you have and build it up from there.

GraphicMail has made segmentation for first-timers easy:

1) Just log into the application and go to “Lists and Contacts”.

2) Halfway down the screen on the left side you’ll see the segmentation section. Click on the “+” button to create a new segmented list.

3) A pop-up screen will appear titled "Create new smart list."

4) The first thing is to select your dataset to capture information from. In other words, here you choose which address book or collection of contacts you’ll be segmenting from. So, for example, if all your readers on the West Coast of America are already signed up to one list, you could select that dataset if it’s what you need - instead of dealing with your entire contacts database.

5) More advanced users can also search for contacts that have similar properties from an existing list. In other words, refine an existing segment.

Not sure about these instructions? Watch our helpful segmentation video here for some extra guidelines.

6) Below this section there are a few fields where you specify the details that the subscribers in your segment should have in common. For starters there are 5 available query fields, but you can always add more. Some of the basic criteria include first names, last names, occupation, industry, location, and so on.

7) When you’re done setting the criteria, store your results by giving your Smart List a name (Tip: make it something logical, according to segment – like “West Coast truck owners) and clicking "save"

And that's it! Now you can see your apples from your oranges and you'll have a new segment to select whenever you’re sending out an email newsletter.

Finally, remember that no segment is set in stone. You can always add or remove subscribers, refine an existing one or just start from scratch.

Reach For A Dream foundation branch manager Kerry van Schalkwyk speaks about her experience as a new GraphicMail client

2011-12-12T21:41:00.000-08:00

The Reach For A Dream Foundation touches the lives of about 7000 children per year in South Africa.

It was founded in July 1988 by the ex-President of Randburg Rotary, Owen Parnell, who was inspired to bring joy to the youth of South Africa after seeing an article about the USA-based Make-A-Wish Foundation.

And so, for 23 years the Reach For A Dream Foundation has brought hope and healing to South African children.

These children, between the ages of 3 and 18 years, have used the motivational influence of following their dreams to help fight life-threatening illnesses; such as cancer and leukemia, cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy, kidney failure and blood disorders.

We spoke to Reach For A Dream about their experience with us since signing up in September 2011.

1) Describe your audience. Who are the kind of people you want to reach via email marketing?

We are primarily speaking to corporate donors and sponsors who appreciate the work that Reach For A Dream does. The number of people we need to communicate with varies depending on the message and the type of event. We are currently building up our email marketing database and will soon have over 1000 supporters.

2) What made you decide on using our email and mobile marketing tools?

We need to communicate with our corporate sponsors, donors, volunteers and supporters. Using Graphicmail makes it much easier to communicate with our stakeholders as we can send out one mail as opposed to having to send out numerous mails addressed to various groups.

Graphicmail also allows for easy subscriber management, making it much simpler to use than any other email software.

3) Overall, how does GraphicMail perform in meeting your communication needs?

The application is very user-friendly and gets messages out to our donors and supporters in a quick and concise way.

Reach For A Dream has touched the lives of children across South Africa. See how here.

4) Have you seen a significant improvement in your brand awareness and campaign successes since you began using GraphicMail?

Yes. When we send out emails, GraphicMail’s performance reports let us know that they have been delivered and that our message has been received. It takes all the guess-work out of bulk email marketing.

5) What are your goals with regards to your email campaigns?

We want to get more donors and additional funding. Of course, email marketing is the perfect way to achieve this.

6) Which features do you like best or are the most helpful to you, and why?

Being able to manage your contacts without any difficulty makes it very easy to build your emailing database.

7) What are the top three learnings/recommendations for email marketing as an NPO that you can share?

Non-profit email marketing really works. Make sure you keep your newsletter or message short and sharp. Keep it interesting and informative. Get to the point quickly and use pictures to keep your audience’s interest.

Reach For A Dream is self-financing and relies on the generosity and support of individuals and corporates to enable it to fulfill dreams as well as finance its outings, hostings and national projects.

In order to raise the necessary funds to fulfill their purpose, they ask corporates and individuals to either raise funds on their behalf, make donations, sponsor dreams and outings, as well as plan their own various fundraising events.

GraphicMail caters for non-profits such as Reach For A Dream since they can receive our services for free and get the excellent customer support that they deserve, since their work is beneficial to the community.

Want to get involved? Visit the Reach For A Dream website.

Friday Corner: What is Your Mobile Strategy?

2011-12-08T23:51:00.000-08:00

Original infographic found here

Mobile Marketing: Where it’s all going in 2012

2011-12-08T06:45:00.000-08:00

The huge success of mobile commerce so far for the 2011 holiday spending season has shown that we're heading out of the early-adopter phase and companies that missed the mobile marketing boat this year will have to catch up fast.

Industry experts agree that the mobile web will be a leading channel in 2012 and the ability to deliver an experience on the mobile web is crucial for all brands. With more internet capable devices in more hands, a mobile web presence is becoming indispensable.

GraphicMail's got a really easy tool to help you create your mobile web presence.

With our unique innovation you can create SMS/Text messages with links to graphic-rich mobile pages and sites, while capturing campaign performance rates and user engagement via forms, polls and survey tools.

Have a look at our new mobile marketing case studies, which have all proven the success of this product.

According to PayPal, global mobile payment volume increased by 516% on Black Friday and 552% on Cyber Monday this year (both of which are among the top annual sales events on the USA calendar).

This proves that consumers are accessing the mobile web more and are getting comfortable with using it to make their purchases.

Reach and Potential

More than 90 percent of mobile phones going out onto the market today have access to the mobile web through a browser.

The arrival of HTML5 in email and on the web has given brands a lot to work with in terms of the capabilities that can be built into a mobile newsletter and a mobile site. HTML5 has enabled rich-media environments that will help brands achieve the creatives that they envision and reach people across various mobile devices.

Not sure about going Mobile?

If you need a way to justify investing in your company’s mobile presence, just have a look at your own internal data.

For example, if your desktop website is getting 5% more engagements from mobile devices than last year, you might want to come up with a plan to satisfy those customers with a good mobile band experience.
If the engagement is even more than that; drop everything you’re doing and work on your mobile presence right now. Every day you’re not taking care of your visitors in the mobile space you’re losing customers.

The mobile web is a great acquisition tool for cross-channel marketing too.

Trend-savvy marketers have already been working to build up their mobile followership. If you want to know how to get started, here are some ideas on how to grow your mobile email list.

The future of Mobile

As phones get smarter, mobile strategies will be changing to accommodate and take advantage of new developments in technology.

With the increased activity we’ve seen this year, the mobile web will become what desktop internet became in the 90’s: the standard platform for anyone doing business.

"Discussions are currently in place to transform GraphicMail's master page to HTML5. We have been doing tests on the new markup and are seeing great results, especially in mainstream browsers. We are definitely looking to bring HTML5 into the fold in 2012." - Clint Eksteen, GraphicMail Designer

Watch GraphicMail's New Mobile Marketing Video

2011-12-08T03:04:00.000-08:00

On the 7th of November, some of our team members at GraphicMail got up bright and early to film a new mobile marketing promotional video.

We had a very successful day on set, and so, after a few weeks of editing... the final product has gone online!

Watch our mobile marketing video here.

Our story follows Peter, a small restaurant owner who's had some trouble reeling in customers to his establishment lately. He then starts using our powerful bulk mobile marketing features for the first time, to see what kind of difference it would make...

GraphicMail's mobile tools allow users to create SMS / Text messages with links to multimedia mobile pages and sites, while capturing campaign performance and user engagement via forms, polls and survey tools.

Rewards offered: Get writing about GraphicMail

2011-12-05T01:54:00.000-08:00

Are you one of our many satisfied clients and want to tell the world about our products?

Have you learned anything useful or special about email marketing while running your own campaigns that you want to share with fellow GraphicMailers and other readers?

Or are you an independent email marketing guru looking for a new topic?

If you’re already doing newsletter marketing with us, then writing a quick review on your website or blog about GraphicMail is an easy way to highlight the benefits of your own email marketing program and promote signing up to your clients.

GraphicMail's blogging offer is your chance to tell everyone about how you’ve experimented and to share your expert tips - all stories to be featured on our platform to give your website or blog roll international exposure to thousands of readers.

Write about GraphicMail and choose one of these great rewards!

Of course we’re all about giving back to our clients here at GraphicMail and we’re prepared to make it worth your while in return for writing about our products and tools.

So to sweeten the deal, these are the compensation options availabe:

1) GraphicMail could arrange a sponsored email account, which means that you will be able to use all our tools to conduct your own email communications and marketing.

2) Instead we can also offer you a sponsored mobile marketing account. Our innovative product enables messages to be delivered directly to subscribers’ phones with a simple click-through from an SMS, channelling viewers to an image-rich mobile site.

3) Another option is for GraphicMail to do an interview with you to promote your own services, which would be published on our own blog; appearing in the news feed of our many clients and on our social media platforms.

Interested?

If you are interested in blogging about GraphicMail, either as a once-off or as a series of posts, please let us know by sending a confirmation letter to marketing@graphicmail.com and we’ll get back to you in a flash.

Visit our website for more information on how to get blogging about us.

Terms and Conditions:

Rewards offered for writing about GraphicMail are allocated at our discretion
depending on either the size of your account, your history with us and the rank of your
blog on Google searches. Please contact us first before writing any posts so that we
can do an evaluation and confirm your compensation.

GraphicMail Year End Function: Limited Support Today

2011-12-02T00:24:00.000-08:00

It’s that time of year again when the GraphicMail team takes a small breather and actually has conversations with each other that are not work related. Today, 2 December, is our Year End function and we will be taking time out of the office for the day.

This means that GraphicMail ‘s Support won’t be available for online chats or by telephone from 11am GMT +2 today until Monday 9am GMT+2 but please feel free to open a ticket if you are having any problems and we will attend to you on Monday.

Friday Corner: Facebook's Phone Revealed!

2011-12-02T00:06:00.000-08:00

Original image found here

How to add Holiday Embellishments to your Christmas Emails

2011-11-30T02:15:00.000-08:00

Christmas is knocking at our door and it's time to prepare our holiday mailings accordingly.

December brings great opportunities to warm up relations with your clients by sending them beautiful Christmas greetings or promote seasonal special offers and discounts by email.

Giving your holiday email marketing campaigns an appropriate look and feel for Christmas is easy with GraphicMail’s 2011 Editor.

This can be done very simply with the range of embellishments and smart elements we have built into our product.

If you’re starting from scratch, log in to the application and create a new newsletter. Select your usual template from the menu, or browse to the “Holiday” section to see what else we have and try something different.

For now, we won’t be discussing the other normal parts of content creation, so once you’ve taken care of your images, text, links and so on; you’ll be ready to add some finishing touches in the spirit of the holidays.

Part 1: Adding Embellishments

Step 1: Click on "Images" in the left menu and in the drop down, select "Embellishment".

Tip: For speed and convenience - before adding an embellishment, it’s easier if you first click on the area of the email newsletter you want to add it to, since this is where the editor will be placing it. For example, if you want an embellishment underneath a paragraph, click somewhere on that area. Or if you want to place it within an image, double click on that image first for the image editing screen to open up, and then follow the same procedure.

Step 2: Once you’re done that, an embellishment pop-up menu will appear with lots of categories to choose from. Of course for now we'll be focusing on the Christmas theme, so select the "Holiday" option.

Step 3: Here you’ll see large a range of icons; everything from a snowman to Christmas stockings. Browse around, select the embellishment you like and then click “Insert”.

Tip: You can add as many embellishments as you want, so don’t worry about having to pick just one favourite!

Step 4: Your embellishment will now appear on the page. From here you can resize and place it at the desired location by hovering your mouse over and dragging it around. If you're not editing within an image, then you can click on "Format” in the left menu to align any embellishments that you add to "left", "right" or "center".

In this example, we’ve added a Santa, mistletoe, a gift box and some golden bells.

Step 5: Now start having fun. Experiment and add a few embellishments until you're satisfied that your mailer has enough of a Christmassy look to it.

Part 2: Adding SmartElements

Step 1: Next we'll be adding in a SmartElement or two. These are similar to embellishments, except that they are more for sign-posting or calls to action; such as special buttons, bubbles, captions, seals & guarantees etc.

Step 2: To add a SmartElement, again click on the images tab and select SmartElement. A pop up menu will appear where you can choose from an equally great variety.

Step 3: Once you've inserted, resized and placed your SmartElement, double

click on it to open the “Edit SmartElement” screen.

Step 4: Here you can do any of the usual customisations, such as adding or changing the text on the element or giving it a drop-shadow.

Step 5: For more options - from the image edit screen itself you can also add alternative text for the element (in case your subscriber has image display set as automatically off in their webmail client or email program) and add a URL to link it to your website.

In this case we've added a "Merry Christmas" tag to the top right and placed a "Mail Us" button within.

And that's it!

It’s really just all that’s simple to spruce up your bulk email marketing for the holiday season with our 2011 Editor.

Try it out and comment on this post to let us know how this feature works for you.

How did your emails do in 2011?

2011-11-28T01:25:00.000-08:00

It’s that time of year when we give our email stats a gander to see how well our campaigns have performed over the past 12 months; gauging successes and failures, and gaining insights into emerging trends and challenges.

So how have your 2011 email campaign efforts measured up against other people’s worldwide?

Benchmark email marketing statistics offer a glimpse into the broad performance of various industries and industry sectors. These studies usually go beyond traditional metrics reports to provide top-level observations which enable companies to gain a better view of where they stand.

Our metrics on delivery, open and click rates are based on results from over 200 million emails sent by 3 590 of a major international ESP’s users in the period October 2010 to October 2011, and are probably the first in-depth metrics of their kind to be produced for South Africa.

The average metrics across all senders and regions for the time period were:

Delivery Rate: 89.34%

Open Rate: 12.75%

ClickThrough Rate: 2.15%

The average metrics for each region show South African senders achieved around three percent better delivery rates, three percent better open rates and 25% better click rates than their US colleagues in 2011.

In general, metrics for senders in South Africa are slightly better; however South African senders are inevitably mailing to a smaller audience, and as we know, smaller lists tend to produce better results. Every country is different, so it's important to interpret these results in the right context.

Delivery Rates for 2011

About 1 in 10 emails are automatically rejected (bounced) by the recipient’s webmail or internet service. Most industries are actually achieving higher delivery rates and the average is pulled down by the relatively poor performance of one or two sectors. In the USA, for example, 3 in 10 emails sent by the advertising and marketing industry bounced back as undeliverable. In South Africa, the transport and shipping sector performed the worst, with a delivery rate of just over 78%.

Delivery rates by industry — USA and International vs South Africa

Overall, South African email newsletter senders outperformed their international counterparts, with two sectors even achieving over 15% higher delivery rates (advertising and marketing, associations and clubs).

Delivery, however, is just a gateway metric. Once an email is accepted for delivery it may not actually reach the someone’s inbox. It could still be classified as spam and deleted, or rerouted to a spam/junk folder. So delivery rates as a success measure are not necessarily the most telling.

Open Rates for 2011

As with delivery rates, there is considerable variation between sectors. In the USA, International region, for example, senders in the agricultural industry were averaging over five times the open rate of those in financial services and insurance (27.13% versus 4.84%). In South Africa, manufacturers get three times the open rate of those in the transport sector (17.95% versus 5.98%).

Open rates by industry — USA and International vs South Africa

Again, as with delivery rates, South African senders perform slightly better on average than their international colleagues. However, there is more cross-industry consistency in the South African results.

Open rates are useful for simple, basic comparisons and higher open rates generally indicate that the sender is doing a better job of getting people to pay attention to their messages. But there is much variation within the open rate results, and ultimately it’s the value you provide through your email marketing campaigns that draws attention.

Click Through Rates for 2011

Differences between industry sectors are equally marked with click-through rates. In the USA/international results, senders in manufacturing averaged over 13 times the click-through rate of those in transport and shipping (4.43% versus 0.32%). Transport and shipping was also the worst sector in South Africa, with an average CTR of 0.23%, compared with the 4.18% average reached by retail and ecommerce senders.

Click Through rates by industry — USA and International vs South Africa

Click through rates in South Africa are an average 25% higher than in the USA, International region. A notable exception to this pattern is government campaigns, where click-throughs for US senders are almost eight times higher than those of their South African equivalents.

The basic value you offer through your emails is critical to getting a response. As with open rates, any improvements to strategy, tactics, offers, content and copywriting inevitably lead to more clicks. Equally, those practices that lift open rates should also have a positive impact on clicks; which are hard to get without first capturing the person’s attention.

Many benchmark reports include information on best practices, based on the authors’ understanding of the factors behind the benchmark numbers and trends.

And although email performance metrics depend greatly on the purpose, audience and basic value of each email campaign, send or series, there are many specific actions senders can take to lift results, as there is always potential for improvement in areas such as quality of address lists, subject line optimization and the calls-to-action.

GraphicMail's 2011 email industry metrics white paper is packed with more details on the year’s emailing performance for the USA and SA; as well as quick tips on how to get more out of your metrics and optimize email marketing campaigns based on your reports.

Article originally published on Memeburn.

Friday Corner: Are You Checking Your Work Email on Holiday?

2011-11-25T00:16:00.000-08:00

Original image found here

GraphicMail has a New Storage Space Box

2011-11-24T05:38:00.000-08:00

Images are very effective for channeling people's attention in your email newsletters and at GraphicMail we make sure you have ample space to upload new images and save old ones.

We have now added an image storage space box to show you how much more space you have left to save images. This way you will know when it's time to spring clean your GraphicMail image library.

Remember that if you're a Free Account holder, you have 1MB of of storage space to store images and files.

And if you're on a paid account you'll have up to 20MB!

This new feature is just one more way that GraphicMail is helping to make your email marketing experience as simple as possible.

6 Big Developments at GraphicMail in 2011 that you may have missed

2011-11-24T04:32:00.000-08:00

So much has happened at GraphicMail this year.

Have you kept up to date with all of the new developments, or have a few of them slipped past unnoticed?

Here are some of our 6 most newsworthy announcements for 2011 that you really shouldn’t miss:

1) Free Email Marketing Account Launched by GraphicMail

GraphicMailers and potential GraphicMailers everywhere jumped for joy when we brought out our free email marketing account; enabling you to use our full range of email marketing features at no cost. You can list up to 500 subscribers in your free account and send up to 5000 free email newsletters per month. Also, for the first 60 days of sign-up, you're given full access to our advanced features and customer support desk.

2) GraphicMail Releases New Email Newsletter Editor to Simplify Email Marketing

We also released our powerful 2011 Editor, giving you new features such as in-image text editing, a simplified interface and about 300 new templates to choose from. Haven't you switched over yet? The new editor will help you get your email newsletters out faster and better looking than before. Even novice email marketers can now create studio-quality campaigns without any HTML knowledge or skills.

3) Mobile Innovation: GraphicMail Offers SMS + Link to Mobile Site Marketing

Halfway through the year we finished the development of an innovative new mobile marketing platform that marries mobile websites and push marketing by way of a personalized web-link send within bulk SMSs. With this, GraphicMail revolutionised the way businesses communicate with their clients - enabling messages to be delivered directly to subscribers’ phones with a simple click-through from an SMS, channeling viewers to an image-rich, personalised mobile site.

We also took the initiative to go cellular with our very own mobile site http://m.graphicmail.co.za/m/index.aspx, optimised for viewing on any internet-able phone.

4) GraphicMail Mobile Campaign Case Studies Prove Effectiveness of SMS / Text Messages with Links to Mobile Sites

Not long after the launch of our new mobile tools, we published 3 mobile campaign case studies as a proof-of-concept. To showcase the product's potential, GraphicMail selected two suitable candidates based on our call for non-profit organizations to submit mobile marketing proposals, as well as an enterprising student-run fashion start-up. Our case studies provided in-depth coverage about what the campaigns involved and how well they performed.

5) GraphicMail Partners with Social-Data fireball Janrain to enable Social-Email Marketing

In 2011 we tapped into the power of fusing email marketing and social media, making it possible for new clients to sign up to GraphicMail using their their social logins such as Facebook and Twitter. With the Janrain partnership, we expanded on the social widget selection that can be added to your newsletters and the social share tool; and it's all been so successful that we're planning to bring you new social-data mining and reporting features next year.

6) GraphicMail Launches Salesforce and OpenCart Integrations

This year GraphicMail made it an integral part of our strategy to integrate with other platforms to help our clients get the most out of their email and mobile marketing efforts. Some of our best email marketing integrations have included Salesforce; a cloud-based lead-generation platform and OpenCart; a powerful open source application that allows users to create their very own online store.

Do you have suggestions for any other integrations you would like to see at GraphicMail? Comment on this blog to let us know!

How to Add Social Widgets to GraphicMail Newsletters

2011-11-22T02:32:00.000-08:00

Pop-quiz…

A widget is:

a) A whatchamacallit

b) A device or control that is very useful for a particular job

c) (in some beer cans) a plastic device which introduces nitrogen into the beer, giving it a creamy head

Answer: According to various English language dictionaries, all of the above is correct. But in the case of GraphicMail, when we mention widgets, we are usually referring to powerful and mysterious objects called “social widgets”.

What are social widgets and what do they do?

Have you ever visited a website or read someone’s newsletter and seen those little icons for Facebook, Twitter and other social networking or content sharing platforms arranged somewhere around the header, footer or along the sidelines?

Those are social widgets and most websites, email newsletters and digital newspapers / magazines will usually have them.

The simple function of a social widget is to attract people to join, follow or sign up for your account or page on social platforms as a secondary point of contact to enhance your communcation efforts.

What does this mean for you?

The inbox has become more social. Email marketing — as a traditional online channel, with its ability to reach highly targeted groups of people — has melded comfortably with social media. Social websites have shifted the way people communicate, while giving companies wider exposure and a more authentic approach to personal one-to-one conversation.

Want to know more about social sharing? Watch this video.

Using social media tools is a great way to energise your email marketing. Melding email and social together improves you reach and impact. More of your content will be shared, meaning more people will see your messages - so it's really not something that any company should be trying to do without!

Adding Social Widgets to Newsletters in GraphicMail’s 2011 Editor

1) Log in to your GraphicMail account (or sign up for a free one), then either edit an old newsletter or create a new one by selecting a template and clicking "done".

2) Once you’re in the main newsletter editor screen, click on the “Links” section on the left menu. You’ll see a list of different types of links appear on the drop-down, but for now select “Social Links”.

3) Wait for the pop-up window to load. Now you’ll get to pick which social widget you want to add (you could add all of them if you wanted, but of course the easiest method is to insert them one at a time). You’ll get to choose form Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and a number of others.

4) For starters, select Facebook and click on “insert”.

5) A tiny Facebook icon will appear in the header of the email. You can drag this to wherever you want, but we suggest that you place it somewhere it will stand out – i.e. if it's next to a large image, bold headline or any element with sharp colours, people’s eyes will tend to skip over your widget.

6) Once you're satisfied with the location of the widget, double-click on it and a new screen will appear where you can enter alt text (in case the image for the icon is blocked by a subscriber's webmail service provider or desktop email software package – so that readers can still identify the widget) and add the link to your Facebook page which you copy and paste easily enough from your browser’s navigation bar.

7) Finally, click on “done” at the bottom of the screen and your widget will be ready to direct readers to your Facebook fan page. If you’ve got an account on other social channels like Twitter, you can follow the same procedure to put widgets for them on your newsletter.

OpenCart Integration rolls into GraphicMail!

2011-11-21T00:12:00.000-08:00

At GraphicMail we've just finished integrating our software with OpenCart; a powerful open source application that allows users to create their very own online store.

The OpenCart plug-in allows customers to sign up for email newsletter campaigns via the online shopping process; and can then be used as a segmentation tool to send targeted messages by grouping subscribers who share characteristics; such as product preferences and purchase history.

Go ahead - grow your mailing list through OpenCart transactions!

Every time someone registers to buy from your online shop or service via OpenCart, ask them to opt in to your GraphicMail newsletter. This way, you can send them targeted newsletters; notifying them of new specials, good deals, new products and so on.

Also remember to check out some of our other latest add-ons on our new email marketing Integrations dashbard.

Small businesses have small budgets, and often having a custom e-commerce solution developed simply isn’t feasible. Fortunately, for the small retailer who wants to get online and start selling quickly - there is OpenCart:

Watch this quick video to see how it's done.

OpenCart is feature-rich online sales solution that enables internet merchants to participate in e-commerce at a minimal cost. It’s suitable to sell goods (including digital products) for any business around the world.

So what are you waiting for? Integrate your GraphicMail and OpenCart accounts today!

Friday Corner: Batman's inbox

2011-11-18T00:19:00.000-08:00

Original image found here

GraphicMail Integrates with Salesforce!

2011-11-17T04:23:00.000-08:00

Today we’re announcing our new integration with Salesforce; the most powerful lead management CRM in the cloud.

Companies everywhere have jumped on the Salesforce bandwagon, reaping the benefits of this great customer relationship management solution.

Over time, GraphicMail has received many enquiries asking if we offer data-sharing integrations with them. Given this big demand we’ve made a plugin that allows our email marketing application and Salesforce to work together:

In the past GraphicMail users would have had to copy and paste their leads into Salesforce, and vice versa - a messy and time consuming process to be sure. Our plugin solves that issue by creating contact forms that send information directly to Salesforce.

It supports one-way contact list synchronization with Salesforce, and after each email send; GraphicMail will feed open-rates, click-through rates, bounce-rates and unsubscribe data back to Salesforce - which will really help you segment your subscribers and manage your leads better.

Also check out our new Integrations dashboard to give you an overview of all our latest add-ons.

Watch this quick video to see how it's done.

With our Salesforce integration, GraphicMail now offers everything you need to transform your business and connect to customers like never before. As soon as you start to use all these tools together, you can be seeing a positive impact on your business - quickly!

What's more is that this is only version 1.0 of the plug-in; the first of many to follow. The next version of the Salesforce plug-in will feature even more data-sharing tools that work both ways.
We bet that there will be a lot of our customers dancing with joy once they hear this news.

What are you waiting for? Integrate your GraphicMail and Salesforce accounts today!

Just Released! - GraphicMail’s 2011 Industry Metrics White Paper

2011-11-17T01:38:00.000-08:00

How do your email marketing programs measure up against other people’s worldwide?

Our new white paper covers delivery, open and click rates for each of 22 industries with a focus on the USA and South Africa, including multinational senders.

Benchmark email marketing statistics offer a glimpse into the broad performance of the industry across various sectors.

This study of ours goes beyond traditional metrics to provide insights that enable you to gain a better understanding of where you stand.

The report contains trend information, benchmark data and analysis necessary for marketers to gain an understanding of changes in the industry and maximize their return on investment.

By seeing how we monitor trends and view the role of best practices in driving results; you can use this data as a starting point for evaluating and planning your own email efforts to ensure a higher success rate.

We've also packed this white paper with quick tips on how to optimise your email marketing campaigns based on what your stats are saying.

See how to get more out of your metrics. Download the 2011 email industry white paper now!

7 Steps for In-Image Text Editing in GraphicMail Newsletters

2011-11-16T01:07:00.000-08:00

In case you missed the big news back in September, that’s when we released our powerful and easy-to-use 2011 email newsletter editor.

If you haven’t tried it yet, you’re missing out on hundreds of free templates and a few new features that let you breeze through creating professional email marketing campaigns without any HTML or design skills.

Apart from all the other features, we’ve got a whole section dedicated just to image editing tools, some of which let you add text for headings or calls-to-action and so on; right on top of any image.

That’s design-suite flexibility right in our newsletter application!

When you log into your GraphicMail account, edit an old news newsletter or start from scratch and create a new one.

Once you’re in the main newsletter editor screen, just double click on any image and you’ll shift to an image management page.

By clicking on the “Text” section on the left menu, a list of options will appear. Now you’re ready to get editing:

Step 1: For starters, click on the "Text Box" tool and small rectangle with some sample text will be created on the top left corner of the image.

Step 2: Now move this text box around the image to place it on the perfect spot. Then drag one of the white corners to redefine its size to whatever you need.

Step 3: Once you've written your text, highlight it and click "Font Style" on the left menu, to change the style to Arial, Times Roman, Veranda or whatever you want.

Step 4: Next adjust the "Font Size" to your preference by clicking on that option.

Step 5: If you want to change the text colour you can do that as well from the left menu. Remember to pick a tone that stands out on your image without clashing with the rest of your email newsletter colour scheme.

Step 6: At the top right of the page there’s something really handy: a "Layers" drop down that lets you manage how the image and all the boxes of text you add are stacked up on top of each other.

For example; you can make all the text disappear by setting the image as the top layer. Or you can try to create interesting visual effects by layering lines of text on top of each other. But don't worry, none of the changes are permanent, so you can play around with this until you get the best look.

We also have more standard word processsing tools; such as making your text Bold, Italic, Underlined, aligned to left, right or center and one for adding drop-shadows.

Step 7: When you're finished, click on "done" and you’ll be taken back to the main newsletter editor page. It’s that easy.

Of course you’ll need to opt to switch over to the new 2011 editor to make use of this great tool. So why not try it out when you’re creating your next email newsletter campaign?

GraphicMail has Simplified its Mobile Pricing Pages

2011-11-15T22:51:00.000-08:00

We’ve just finished with a big push to simplify our mobile pricing pages.

Now you can calculate the costs of your mobile sends more easily; whether you are using the bulk SMS or SMS with link to a mobile site option.

And, because we're so budget-minded and really want to make your mobile marketing campaigns as cost effective as possible, we've even woven some tips for saving money right into our application - so you know every campaign will always be as inexpensive as possible .

Go check it out and save today!

Want to know more about saving cash on your bulk mobile campaigns? Here are some quick tips on how to make each penny count:

1) Keep text below 160 characters: Sending a “mutli-part” SMS (especially when you don’t intend to) is the fastest way to break your mobile marketing budget. This happens when your message goes over 160 characters, for which you get charged a lot more.

Shave your text down to the minimum and double check how much you’ve actually written before hitting the send button.

2) Personalise in a teacup: SMS personalisation allows your business to choose and address certain fields that will be specific to the recipient’s message (e.g. name, gender, age) to make him or her more interested. Keep in mind that personalisation takes up ground in your character count, so always account for this when drafting your call-out.

While the 160 character limit does make this more challenging, the power of personalisation should never be ignored - though you should not let this push you unwittingly over budget.

4 Rules for getting the most out of your Holiday Emails

2011-11-14T00:08:00.000-08:00

Email marketing is becoming increasingly vital to the holiday promotions of any business. A successful holiday email campaign helps you not only get the most out of the end of the current year, but paves the way for your success in the following year.

So when it comes to effective holiday campaigning, the sooner you can set a plan in motion the better.

Running an effective bulk email campaign that will gain traction over the rest of the year-end noise requires a lot of co-ordination. Many people make a point of planning out their holiday sends well in advance — sometimes even as early as mid-year.

But if you’ve left it to the last minute, or if you’re looking for ways to make this Christmas even merrier for your mailing; here is how to get the most out of the inbox this season:

1) Review past campaigns: The most important step in planning your holiday email campaign is reviewing what happened last year. Examining your 2010 holiday email performance is a great way to prepare for the upcoming season. Doing it beforehand gives you the opportunity to address new challenges you’ll be facing and new approaches that you can take. Look at what worked last year and which communications resulted in the greatest sales.

2) Email with variation: Communications that feature the same offers or arrive at the same time every week will quickly become invisible. Include a variety of offers and send at different times to keep the consumer interested in what you have to sell and guessing about what other unique deals you might be bringing down their chimney.

3) Get creatively festive: Seasonal imagery and content should be part of your customer engagement strategy and might just reinvigorate interest in your business from consumers. Christmas is a good time and a great reason to paint the inbox with a bit more colour. Involve your creative department in the campaign process, or alternately make use of GraphicMail's free newsletter templates.

4) Purposeful happy holidays: If you want to send your customers a holiday greeting, make sure you don’t waste their time. All too often businesses really just add to the inbox clutter when sending emails with a simple holiday well-wish. Instead, one solution is to give your greetings more value by offering a coupon, a free gift or something that your subscribers would cherish.

Article originally published on Memeburn.

Email Newsletter of the Month

2011-11-13T23:05:00.000-08:00

We've selected this promotional message by Sourpuss Clothing, one of our very happy clients, as the GraphicMail email newsletter of the month.

This is a great example of email newsletter design - with it's excellent image use, smart employment of fonts - and the fact that it provides just enough information and a clear call to action without being at all text heavy.

Superbly done!

Friday Corner: Google + Vs Facebook

2011-11-10T23:36:00.000-08:00

Original image found here

3 New Mobile Marketing Case Studies from GraphicMail

2011-11-10T04:46:00.000-08:00

We’ve just published 3 new mobile campaign case studies as a proof-of-concept of our innovative tool, which lets you send bulk SMS / Text messages with links to mobile sites.

To showcase the power of this feature, GraphicMail selected two suitable candidates based on our July 2011 call for non-profit organizations to submit mobile marketing proposals, as well as an enterprising student-run fashion start-up.

Have you been reluctant to bring the mobile channel into your marketing mix?

The GraphicMail mobile tools allow you to create SMS messages with links to multimedia mobile pages and sites, while capturing campaign performance and user engagement via forms, polls and survey tools... Just imagine the possibilities!

Want to see how well it really works? Well here’s a quick outline of what our three candidates did:

T-art: Founded as a team in the “50 to infinity” JP Morgan Young Entrepreneurs Showcase; T-art created and competed with a write-on-wipe-off ‘status update’ T-shirt. GraphicMail launched the group's first mobile campaign in unison with Mobile Marketing Week.

GraphicMail ran a weekly mobile campaign with T-art for the duration of the Rugby World Cup to help promote their Springbok Supporter competition. Participants entered by posting a picture of themselves wearing a T-art Springbok supporter shirt with an inspirational ‘status’ message written on it to the T-art Facebook fan page.

TB/HIV Care Association: A non-profit organization which aims to improve TB management by increasing access to Tuberculosis and HIV care, treatment and community support. They developed an acronym, “ACT NOW”, to spread awareness via mobile marketing and help people remember all the symptoms of TB to promote early diagnosis.

MedicAlert: An international medical NPO that launched a project which aims to raise funds to provide healthcare necessities for vulnerable children and orphans. GraphicMail’s mobile marketing tools were used to appeal to subscribers to make a once-off ZAR 200 donation to the project.

“I keep recommending GraphicMail’s wonderful mobile marketing services to new clients of mine. We are all happy with this great product and have listed GraphicMail as a sponsor to our website.” Tina Thiart - Medic Alert

4 Best Practices for Building Your Email List

2011-11-08T22:52:00.000-08:00

The mailing list is the most important element in the success of your email marketing campaigns. If you can convert visits to your website and social pages into lasting relationships via email, the chances of retaining customers are much greater.

A permission-based list built by yourself always yields the best results, since you're providing people with content that's relevant and interesting to them.

Here are 4 key principles and practices to help you build a responsive list of addresses:

1) Offer a sign-up form on your website and blog for your email newsletter: The very obvious and most important example of when you have someone’s interest is when he or she visits your website. So feature a html newsletter sign-up form in a prominent position on every page, including text that:

• clearly states that this is a sign-up form for getting email;
• describes the benefits of being a newsletter subscriber; and
• indicates how often email will arrive.

2) Integrate sign-ups with other website interactions: If the ideal time to invite someone to join your list is when they've shown interest in your brand, it makes sense to build a sign-up opportunity into all your online processes. For example, whenever people:

• register for an event or webinar on your website;
• go through the payment process for a product or service; or
• enter an online competition or complete a survey.

3) Encourage sign-ups via social media: Consumers also interact with your company online outside of your website. Encourage social media contacts to sign up for your html newsletter, to provide a more effective channel for direct promotional efforts.

• Send tweet invitations to followers to sign up to see the next publication of your email newsletter;
• embed your email sign-up form on your Facebook page; and
• ensure your social media messages contain information about offers that are only sent to email subscribers. Exclusivity is a powerful incentive to join a list.

4) Work with partners: Find related businesses whose products or services are complementary to yours and ask if they'll add your newsletter to their opt-in form. Do trade offers, adding an extra registration check-box so people can subscribe to your list and your partner's bulk email marketing list at the same time.

GraphicMail Makes a Movie

2011-11-07T02:43:00.000-08:00

This morning some of the staff at GraphicMail got up bright and early for the filming of our new Mobile Marketing promotional video.

Everyone was in good spirits and thanks to the professional efforts of our camera crew and the great acting talent that was put on display, it was a fun-filled start to our week.

We can't wait to see the end product!

While our latest feature film is in the post production pipe-line, take a coffee break and watch some of our other most popular email marketing videos.

3 Rules for Writing Stellar Email Subject Lines

2011-11-07T01:11:00.000-08:00

Writing the subject line is often the last and most hurried step before sending an email, when it should actually be the other way around. Those first few characters are the doorstep to your emailing success; since it’s all you have to catch the attention of your reader, entice them to open your message and take action.

Your subject line is all your subscribers have to go on until and unless they decide to open your message.

So if you want to be able to leverage your mailing list in the best possible way, you have to learn how to write appealing subject lines:

Rule 1: Know your objective

Since a subject line distills the essence of an email, consider writing it first, as this will keep you from straying off point. Think about what the objective or end goal of your email marketing programs is.

In most cases your end goal is not necessarily high open rates, but to have subscribers take a specific action. Determine what that one action is and make sure all components of your email, especially the subject line, will highlight a clear path to the objective.

Rule 2: Key information first

It’s important to mention the most significant information first when it comes to both your subject line and the email body copy itself. You only have one opportunity to make a first impression. You need to convey one compelling line that prompts the recipient to both notice and open your email - which is difficult to do.

If you have an answer about what would make your readers care enough to open your email in 50 characters or less, you probably have your subject line, or something close to it.

Rule 3: Test, test, and test again

Testing subject lines give you better data and ultimately better campaign results. If you’re dealing with a big list of names, run tests to a small group before sending to your full opt-in email list. An A/B test involves splitting a list into two different headlines, without making changes to any other part of the email, to see which had the better result.

Use the metrics from each segment to determine which subject line delivered the highest open rate or click-through rate. Every email send is unique, so you will need to repeat this testing phase every time you send a message, to consistently identify the higher-performing subject line.

With GraphicMail’s A/B split testing, you can find out what works in your email marketing campaigns.

Friday Corner: Amazing Social App

2011-11-04T00:47:00.000-07:00

Original image found here

4 Lessons from Email Marketing Benchmark Reports

2011-11-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

Benchmark email marketing statistics offer a glimpse into the broad performance of email campaigns across various industries and regions.

Senders can use the data as a starting point for evaluating and planning their own email efforts, monitoring trends and understanding the role of best practices in driving results.

Industry benchmarks can be both a help and a hindrance, depending on how they are used.

One key point to realise is that the senders whose results are included in the benchmarks do not necessarily share the same audience, goals and email approach as you - which can make it frustrating when you're trying to pick a clear path forward through an overwhelming stack of data.

So now you're probably thinking: "If I can't make direct comparisons with benchmark statistics from my own industry, what use are they?"

There are actually at least 4 great learnings you can, and should, always take away from any benchmark report:

1) Campaign Planning - If you're starting from scratch, benchmarks give you some rough numbers you can use to predict responses and plan budgets and your operations accordingly.

2) A Starting Point - Benchmarks give you a basic number to work with. They give you a quick overview of whether your results are within the range of normal expectations, or whether you're doing something notably right or wrong. For example, if your open rate is significantly below your industry's average, then you need to investigate why.

3) Trends - Benchmarks can alert you to broad changes and challenges in the bulk email marketing environment by tracking shifts through time; or differences between senders based on characteristics such as where they are located or what industry they belong to.

4) Insights - Many benchmark reports include very useful information on best practices, based on the authors’ expert understanding of the factors behind the benchmark numbers and trends. Data can be open to interpretation and it's important that you don't skim past the perspective offered by a professional.

Remember these points the next time you read up on email statistics; but don't forget though that the best benchmarks around are those you produce yourself through your own campaign reports. These tell you whether you’re improving with time and how particular email marketing tactics have affected your results.

GraphicMail Launches New Client Support Pages

2011-10-31T02:36:00.000-07:00

Are you looking for quick and simple solutions for those everyday email and bulk mobile marketing questions? Need to talk to one of our staff in person or do you want to get e-marketing fit by signing up for online training?

Our new support pages are a one-stop destination for solving all your hassles!

GraphicMail’s support section has been revamped with a new email marketing support landing page and easy-to-navigate help categories.

We’ve compacted everything you need in one user-friendly reference hub: direct lines to our support channels, our most popular video tutorials and the top 10 frequently-asked questions we get here at GraphicMail.

Helping customers is not just a job, for us, it's a way of life. All of our support is done in house so you can get in touch with the real email marketing experts and ask us anything.

If you're a new email marketer, GraphicMail has the tools and resources to help you start your first campaign and learn how to create messages that get results.

Live Webinars!

Learn more about GraphicMail and what we can do for you by attending one of our regular live webinars, or watch recorded webinars at your convenience. Live email marketing webinars offer comprehensive training and have open Q&A sessions.

Videos and Tutorials!

This page includes some helpful email marketing videos that showcase our features and tools. Within a few minutes you will by guided through newsletter creation step-by-step, and get some tips about how to use our advanced features.

Support FAQs!

Read our responses to the top 10 email marketing questions that users ask GraphicMail's sales and support teams most frequently.

If you're an existing GraphiMail client, you will find dozens of FAQs and many more product and marketing videos via our help-desk, which you can access through your account at any time.

Friday Corner: Where Are You Guilty of Text Messaging?

2011-10-28T03:39:00.000-07:00

Source: Tatango

Designing Email Newsletters for the Preview Pane

2011-10-26T05:05:00.000-07:00

While elements of design for web or print campaigns can be used across different mediums, there needs to be a clear distinction when designing for email marketing.

Email has many unique characteristics and you need to use specific email-centric design practices, such as creating a snippet is visible in the email client preview pane.

Newsletter recipients will initially see your email in a small preview pane, no more than a couple of centimeters in width and height. The email preview pane is your first impression, so it’s an important task to make sure it's a good one and that key content, such as your proposition and call to action, is easily visible to draw people's interest.

The Rule of 3rds: Divide your email newsletter space horizontally into thirds and put your most important content in the top two thirds of your email. These areas of your email are the most valuable because they are what the recipient sees first.

Effective Branding: A prominent logo in your email increases brand awareness and can reduce spam complaints if the recipients know that the email is coming from a company that they trust. Use fonts, colours and simple copy to make sure your email logo is unmissable and recognisable. If you embed the logo image, you can be certain that all recipients will see it.

Preview Pane Text: The area of the newsletter templates that is visible to the viewer in the preview pane is usually restricted to the top third of your email. This makes it very valuable real estate. Make sure you include information that will sell your product or service (such as a special or a chance to win something) which will encourage the people to read the whole email. Once you've lured your subscribers to open the message, more information can be included using a click-through.

With GraphicMail's Advanced features you can make use of snippet texts, or "preheaders"; which is that small piece of real estate at the top of an email. It's your value proposition - a teaser for clients to read on. This is especially great for pulling readers from mobile devices since more and more read their email on a mobile phone.

Marketing Internship at GraphicMail opens up - Apply Today!

2011-10-25T01:31:00.000-07:00

Are you a budding marketer, hungry for opportunity?

Well here is the chance of a lifetime!

GraphicMail's marketing department is looking for a new intern to help them with communications and brand marketing for our US, South African and Canadian markets. Ideally, we're looking for a 6-month commitment. The internship is based at our head quarters in Cape Town, South Africa.

What we offer:

You'll have the chance to work in a great team at our super office location in the heart of Cape Town. Your working hours will be flexible and we provide free lunches. The remuneration is negotiable.

What we'd like you to do:

Assist in marketing research in US and SA markets
Help with online marketing material, such as content pages, blogs, copy writing
Editing and copy writing improvements on the user interface (software application)
Assistance with off-line marketing material such as videos, PDFs, print ads and advertorials
Administrative work (creating and managing of Google docs, Excel sheets)
Learn more and assist in the areas of search engine optimization (SEO) Google Adwords, and many other areas of today's digital marketing

For more information on what the internship involves, visit our home page here.

Want to meet us first? Learn all about the people working on the GraphicMail team.

5 Response Management Tips for Email Marketing

2011-10-24T02:05:00.000-07:00

Email marketing is a productive and efficient technology. The convenience and flexibility of email makes it the perfect vehicle for improving a company’s communications performance, but it can eat up time faster than most other communication channels. When you get an email you have a few seconds to decide what to do: read it later, to delete it or reply to it. If you decide to reply, you have only a short time to craft your response; however, even this may break down when what should be a simple once-off reply draws out to long game of email ping-pong.

Good Email marketing management is as much about learning to send communications effectively as it is to respond like a pro; so here are a few reliable ways to help you declutter your inbox:

1) Assess and plan: Establish the quantity of incoming written communication, which response channels your customers prefer (email, SMS/Text or telephonic) and what type of contacts you mainly receive (queries, orders, complaints) then use this research to determine what can be resolved directly, without you mounting the keyboard.

2) Respond rapidly: How many times have you sent in an email to a company and received no response or only a partial answer after waiting for days? Make your customers trust email as a reliable communication line to you by responding as quickly as possible.

3) Stick to the point: When you send an email newsletter; the subject line is your headline, the email’s purpose should be clear in the first two lines and the action expected of the recipient should be explicit. If you are routinely receiving an excess of queries after every email campaign, it may be that you are not providing all the necessary information.

4) Filter out unwanted email: If your inbox is bulging periodically with 2 000 messages or more after you send bulk email; you need to become a filtering ninja. Most email systems allow for filtering and sometimes you can set up an account to forward emails with certain keywords to an assistant, or to provide specific automated responses. Spend an hour setting up a few of these and then sit back and watch your inbox lose weight.

5) Leave no email unanswered: When customers take the time to send an email, they expect a quick and meaningful response. As a preferred interaction channel, email communication is an effective way for organizations to answer questions, resolve issues and guide people along the customer journey. Answer all emails and avoid causing frustration by ensuring responses are consistent and timely.

For more email response management tips, read our original article on Memeburn.

Friday Corner: Frankenstein Today

2011-10-21T01:33:00.000-07:00

Original image found here

Successful Newsletter Marketing with Email Personalisation

2011-10-20T05:19:00.000-07:00

You never get a second chance to make a first impression with your email marketing campaigns. You have only a few moments to get someone’s attention and if you don’t make an immediate connection, you may have lost a golden opportunity.

One of the best ways for your business to get the attention it deserves is by personalising your messages.

Subscribers always respond better to emails if the information contained within it is personalised (or tailored) to them. This could be as simple as addressing the email to someone by their name specifically, or it could be as complex as referencing past purchases or comments.

Any field in your subscriber datasets can be incorporated into a newsletter's subject line or body for personalisation. For example, tou can even personalise the "From" field if you are sending an email on someone else’s behalf.

One of the last steps in email sending is personalisation; so firstly you need to load all your contacts into your address book and finish creating a newsletter.

Then, a personalisation tag (which is kind of like a placeholder for data) is inserted into the email. When the emails are sent that tag is then replaced with the personal information that you have saved for that specific subscriber in your account.

With GraphicMail, adding a tag is simple: While you’re editing your newsletter, place your mouse cursor on the location where you want it to appear. Then from the “Insert Personalisation” dropdown menu at the top of the screen, select the personalised information dataset (for example a first name or the recipient's occupation) you would like include on the email. So if you want each email to say “Dear” followed by the person’s first name, select the ‘First name’ dataset.

Select a dataset (which you can find at the "Send to Mailing List" page in the application's "Sending" menu) then choose the field you want to personalise by clicking on 'Copy to clipboard' to the right of it, after which pasting this code in your text where you want it field to be displayed. So it's just a few steps and you're all done!

Remember that you need to have an address book or Contacts Database / Dataset set-up and you need to have imported your subscriber data into your account for this feature to work.

It's quick, simple and effective!

And the best thing is that there are no extra costs involved in sending personalised emails, because it's one of many useful features that come with GraphicMail's Advanced bulk email software account. If you don't have an Advanced accout yet, upgrade now to make use of this awesome tool.

Personalisation is one way to show your subscribers you care about them and a key to your email marketing success. It helps you get people's attention, and once you do, make sure you use that little bit of valuable time to get to the point fast. Since people don’t have the patience for long emails, you have to explain what your opt in email marketing campaign is all about within moments - and personalisation is a great way to open the door.

Happy Halloween from GraphicMail

2011-10-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

It's a dark month with a moon so bright, a time for ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night.

GraphicMail wishes all our clients and readers a scary October with bountiful trick-or-treating, and of course, emailing!

So, when black cats prowl and pumpkins gleam, may luck be yours on Halloween.

Insights form South Africa's Top 10 Email Marketing Industries

2011-10-19T01:22:00.000-07:00

At GraphicMail we've recently delved into our database to see which industries using our email marketing software have been the most active and have performed the best during the course of 2011 so far.

What we came up with were some definitive figures about the shape of the South African emailing landscape:

The Top 10 Emailing Industries for the SA:

1. Advertising and Marketing
2. Travel & Leisure
3. Retail / Ecommerce
4. Professional / Business Services
5. Non-Profit
6. Arts & Entertainment
7. Media & Publishing
8. Miscellaneous
9. Computer / Software
10. Restaurant & Hospitality

The average delivery rate for these leading industries is at 91.53%, which is impressive when we consider how the major internet spam filters have tightened their nets this year. The average open rate for the Top 10 is 12.56% - which is over 1% higher than the 2010 international average (according to MarketingProfs).

Keep in mind that this 1% increase represents all mails sent for the most active email marketing industries. This becomes a huge number when you calculate the relative increase in everyone’s ROI!

Some other interesting facts that we’ve seen for 2011's bulk email marketing include:

Best 3 Click-Through Rates for Top 10 Industries:

1. Retail / Ecommerce
2. Non-Profit
3. Media & Publishing

Best Click-Through Rate for All Industries:

1. Healthcare

Highest South African Email Send Volumes per Industry:

1. Advertising and Marketing
2. Arts & Entertainment
3. Media & Publishing
4. Travel & Leisure
5. Professional / Business Services
6. Retail / Ecommerce
7. Miscellaneous
8. Non-Profit
9. Education
10. Computer / Software

Lead Generation through Email Marketing

2011-10-17T05:18:00.000-07:00

Direct digital marketers are always under constant pressure to generate sales leads. Lead generation tactics have evolved over time and become more sophisticated, and marketers have been able to take advantage of the latest tools and platforms for cultivating leads. Regardless, generating high quality, sales-ready leads is a difficult objective. The great news is that good old email marketing, if done right, is still one of the most effective ways to generate, nurture and qualify leads.

Today, rather than sitting at a trade show table for hours on end, or setting up a display in hopes that targeted consumers will complete a form, you can generate many leads by using the internet alone. In a bulk email marketing campaign one seeks to provide the right message to the right people at the right time, so there is a great deal of value behind and possibility in leveraging email marketing for new client acquisition and retention.

Leveraging email marketing as a lead generation tool, however, requires strategy. And as with most growth strategies, it is easier said than done.

There are no magic bullets in today’s direct lead generation game. You need to do lots of little things right to nurture a lead from prospect to client.

Key processes for Using Email as a Lead Generation Tool

Introduce yourself: Send welcome emails to prospective clients who have recently subscribed to your newsletter. This is your opportunity to start earning trust and building a positive reputation with new subscribers. Keep the emails short and simple, while including just enough information to lure the customer to your products and services, and tell them why they need it.

Qualify leads: Next you want to see who reads the emails and then visits your site. Email marketing software can be used to qualify potential leads by tracking how your would-be customers are interacting with your email newsletters. By doing a little homework, you can identify the warm leads in need of nurturing by examining what links people are clicking on and what they are reading about.

Maintain interest: Some individuals may be interested in your product or service but are not ready to buy yet. Keep these people interested by continuing to send informative emails, offering free resources; such as white papers and eBooks or invitations to webinars. As they continue to see valuable content consistently originating from your company, they will feel more confident to buy from you when the time is right. And in the long run, consistently sharing valuable, useful content will likely result in satisfied customers who continue to read your email newsletters and engage with your brand regularly. Here are some of the best resources you can choose from to feed your prospects with:

Segment, Segment, Segment: Targeting the right people is a large part of good lead generation. For example, an email sent to a buyer holds a different value than one sent to an influencer. The buyer, after all, is the one who ultimately makes the decision. It’s important to be aware of who you are reaching when trying to sell your product. What will appeal to the CFO may be different from what will appeal to the COO; therefore a great tactic is to tailor messages to different types of decision-makers and test which works best for each.

Make the Offer: When the time has come to bring home the bacon, this will be the offer you’ve decided to provide to your prospect in the hopes of converting him or her to a paying client. To make it impactful, the offer email should be incredibly relevant and advantageous to the recipient. Don’t sell yourself short.

Follow up: Follow up emails are vital to the success of your email lead generation strategy. Keep following up with prospects and try to stay connected, you never know what opportunities it can bring you later. Also, a quick “are you satisfied with your recent purchase?” email for new clients is an excellent way to show you care and keep earning trust.

The secrets to success in nurturing your leads until they are qualified as being sales-ready are relevancy and frequency in email communications. Just imagine the letter that would make you buy something, and then go create that email.

Article originally published on Memeburn.

Where Are Smartphones Being Used?

2011-10-14T01:03:00.000-07:00

Source: Tatango SMS Marketing

Getting your Timing right for Email Marketing

2011-10-13T01:57:00.000-07:00

The clock is always ticking in email marketing campaigns. If you want to connect with prospects in today’s crowded marketplace, you have to make sure you’re sending the right message at the right time.

But with email checking habits varying from person to person, how can you determine that exact moment when recipients are most engaged, most likely to be in their inboxes and most likely to take the action you want?

Sending timely, relevant content is critical in a landscape in which most people on a website are just there to research (though many of them will eventually buy from you or a competitor). This means you have to listen, you have to educate, and you have to help them on their conversions path - all at the right moment in the purchase cycle.

Many bulk email marketers try to bypass reality by relying on applying an urgent calls-to-action on everything they send. But this strategy can backfire if your emails hit the inbox at the wrong time or if you are not allowing a sufficient period for subscribers to read and react.

So here are a few of our favourite ways to achieve optimal synchronisation with customers' time preferences and requirements:

Provide advance notice - If you're sending out an on-the-day sales event notice then you can expect the majority of subscribers may not even be able to read it or take action before it's all over. While you might not want to let your competitors know too early about your special events, you also want to give your customers a chance to shop before its history. It's up to you to find where this fine balance point is.

Specify dates and times - While the phrase “Special offer today only" has a lot of zing to it, the first question your audience might be asking is; just when exactly is “today”. Remember that many of your customers may only be opening the email days after you’ve dispatched it, and then it's either already too late, or even worse, it's not too late but a lack of basic information is preventing them from purchasing.

Send at the time that people usually respond - You can track your responses by time and so understand when customers may be more likely to be opening your emails. By analysing the timing data, you can group individuals who habitually open and/or click at specific dates and times and then be able to better optimise your sending timing to that specific segment of email subscribers.

Adjusting for buying cycles can be particularly tricky, since they vary due to many different reasons. But you can change your email timing from guesswork to fact and improve your general response rate by following these tips.