Within each GraphicMail account you are presented with a wide range of features all with their own merits, however there are 5 main features that you should be using to make sure you're getting the most out of your email campaigns.

These top 5 features will help to ensure your email looks great, is aimed at the right target audience, lands in the inbox, achieves the best results and is helping to send the right email at the right time.

#1 Inbox Preview

Although we provide over 80 free responsive templates which have been tested across all email clients, it's still best to use our Inbox Preview tool to make sure the email still displays as expected after you've made your own changes to it. Our new and improved Inbox Preview tool takes less than 30 seconds to complete and shows you how your email displays in over 30 email clients display including Android mobiles & iPhones.

#2 Segmentation

The segmentation tool allows you to use your subscriber data to segment your mailing list(s) into targeted groups. By doing this you will increase your chance of engagement as the emails you will be sending will become more relevant to your subscribers. You can and should also be using this as a way to focus your email content and design, allowing you to be very specific in what targeted emails you send to your subscribers. If you don't have any subscriber data to use for this tool then why not simply ask your subscribers to share more with you. Although a form is a good place to start, another great way to request information from your subscribers is to do so visually as shown in this, example from Sony.

#3 Spam Score Checker

Once you've created your email and have the subscribers to send to, it's important to check the spam score rating of your newsletter to make sure it's going to land in the inbox as expected. Our spam score checker will conduct numerous tests giving you advice on how to increase your chances of the email landing in the inbox.

#4 A/B Testing

Rather than sending to your entire list, why not try different subject lines to see which one gets the best open rate? By using the A/B testing tool, you can test against numerous subjectlines or even email designs to see which one achieves the best results. If you're thinking of trying different subjectlines then you may want to try adding personalisation, limit the characters being used (to cater for mobiles), add urgency, add facts or just have some fun with them.

#5 Auto-responders

We all know that feeling when your to-do list keeps getting longer, so to make sure you don't forget about your email campaign you can use our auto-responders to help. You can have emails automatically sent for you such as thank you emails sent immediately after people signup to your mailing list. You can have follow up emails sent when subscribers show an interest in a product or you can simply schedule an email to send at a specific date & time.


Want to start using the advanced features? Start a trial or simply login into your account.

Do you ever feel that other tasks are getting in the way of your email marketing?

If so then then we have the perfect solution... let our team of experts create and send your email campaign for you.

With our Managed Account service you will be assigned your own account manager who will be your point of contact and they will organise your sends for you.

	Once you provide the mailing list and email content (images & text) they will setup the email campaign & update the mailing list.
	They will then create the email campaign ensuring it looks great in all email clients and on mobile.
	They will also use their expertise to ensure the email design looks great as they'll make use of HTML buttons, pre-header text & other extra efforts to ensure you get the best result possible.
	Once the email has been created, you will then be sent a test so can see exactly how it looks and once you're happy they will send it for you.
	After 24 hours, they will then discuss the campaign results with you providing you with ideas on how to improve this.

How much does it cost?

The cost of the managed sends are as follows:

There is also an additional service costing only £5 per send which entitles the account manager to conduct an A/B test to help achieve a better open rate and conduct a resend 24 or 48 hours later to those that did not open your email.

There are certain tools which can help to greatly enhance your email marketing campaign, whether it be image editors to create your supporting graphics or a button generator to insert HTML buttons into your design with ease.

In this blog post we will be talking about all of the tools which we personally find useful when creating our email campaigns in the hope that if you aren’t already aware of them, then you will soon find them to be as vital as we do.

Stock Images

Everyone knows that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ but finding that perfect image can be a time consuming and daunting task; you also need to make sure that you’re not recycling the same old images all of the time.

This is where stock images come in, there are hundreds of websites out there which allow you to use their stock images, totally free of charge.

▸ Our personal favourite is a new find for us; Libre Stock (librestock.com). Libre Stock allows you to search through the best 34 free stock photo websites in one place, meaning you don’t have to switch back and forwards between different websites to find the perfect picture.

▸ Before we found out about Libre Stock, we were permanent visitors of Pexels (pexels.com), StockSnap (stocksnap.io) and Unsplash (unsplash.com) which all offer high resolution royalty-free images for you to download.

Photo Editors

Now that you’ve selected and downloaded your stock image, you are likely to find the file size is too big due to the image resolution being so high. So to fix this we need to correct the image and file size so it can slot straight into your email campaign.

People have been using programs such as Adobe Photoshop for years to manipulate images but if you don’t want to fork out the fee, there are many free and low priced alternatives out there which are just as good in our opinion.

▸ Our first recommendation is our own Image Editor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDM0fCWVWBE) as you can start making changes to your images without leaving your GraphicMail account. Our editor has everything you need as it allows you to enhance, crop, resize & make other changes to images such as adding a blur, focus point or adding text. It is very fast and easy to use which is why it is very popular with our clients.

▸ Our second recommendation is Pixlr Editor (pixlr.com/editor) as this is a web-based editor which means that there is no need to download any additional software and it has all of the general functionality you’d expect to have when using the more expensive options.

▸ Our third suggestion is Canva (canva.com) which again is web-based, however with Canva you can select from a whole host of ready-made templates covering a range of different sizes from Facebook and Twitter posts to Tumblr banners, YouTube thumbnails and much more. Similar to the Pixlr Editor, as this is so easy to use you can create professional looking graphics in a matter of minutes.

Two brand new tools from GraphicMail

We have recently launched two brand new tools and our clients have found them extremely useful when creating their email campaigns.

▸ The first is our Button Creator (graphicmail.solutions/button_creator) which allows you to create a HTML button to insert into your email template within a matter of seconds. Simply select your colours, enter you text and the URL you’d like the button to link to and the button creator will provide you with the code to insert into your template, it’s as easy as that.

▸ The second tool is our Subject Line Preview (graphicmail.solutions/preview_tool). Have you ever wondered what your subject line will look like when it arrives in the recipient's inbox? There are so many email clients out there that it's imperative that you know it looks great, and this is where our Subject Line Preview comes in. Enter your details, select your previews and view the results, does it get any simpler than that?

Miscellaneous

Colours

Have you ever needed a specific colour but you can’t seem to match it, no matter what you try? There are two extremely easy to use tools that we use on a daily basis which could also help you:

▸ ColorZilla (colorzilla.com), allows you to get a colour reading from any point in Chrome or Firefox, you can then quickly adjust this colour and paste it into another program, meaning you no longer have to guess which colour is being used again!

▸ By using Adobe Color (color.adobe.com), you can create colour schemes with the colour wheel when you’re in need of some inspiration, and you can even upload an image and Adobe Color will show you the hexadecimal colour codes for the main elements of the image, helping you to create a colour scheme for your email template.

Images

▸ One of our Template Team's most used websites is TinyPNG (tinypng.com). This unbelievable website reduces the file size of your PNG and JPEG images by up to 80% while still preserving the quality of the image. Try it out for yourself, you’ll be amazed!

▸ If you run out of inspiration and need an image to fill up some space then FreePic (freepik.com) is the perfect place to start. It offers thousands of free images and a very useful search bar which helps to reduce the time it takes to find exactly what you're looking for.

▸ Sometimes all that is needed to jazz up your email design is a few cleverly placed icons, and we’ve found that FlatIcon (flaticon.com) is the best resource to use. With an archive of over 16,000 icons there are more than enough options to choose from. You can even customise the colour scheme before downloading to help with your creation process.

Want more tools?

If you want to find out what other tools we find useful, you can download our latest free eBook, The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing here: graphicmail.co.uk/free-ebook

We have always valued our customers and in doing so we try to provide the best support possible.

As we are UK based, we provide support from Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm via livechat, telephone and email. We also provide an extensive help center which has help guides, videos & walk through tutorials for those that are working during off peak hours.

Even in a ThrowbackThursday image we can see that as early as 2005 we provided livechat:

Want to learn more about our system?  If you'd like to know more about the system that we provide then there are three ways to do that: 1 - Request A Demo  Let our support staff show you and any of your colleagues how our system works and more importantly how it will work for your company. Request A Demo 2 - Start a free Trial  You can start a 30 day no obligation trial allowing you to take a look around the account at your own pace and of course if you do have any questions then you can use our livechat. Start A Trial 3 - View Pricing As well as having a strong focus on customer support, our prices are very competitive as we have 'Per Contact' and 'Per Send' plans allowing us to cater to businesses of all sizes. View Pricing Plans

We all know that feeling when you're at the testing stage of your email design and you find that one email client is having a real strop. To help you bypass that 'tearing your hair out' stage, we've got 5 tips to help you rescue your email design.

1) Create a template to use as a base for all of your emails; by doing that it will ensure that you're always starting each send from a working version. Also as you're using the original version as a base, there will be no unwanted styles telling email clients to display your newsletter differently.

2) Always test your email, ideally using our inbox preview tool as that will show you how your email looks in various devices. Within 2 minutes you will be able to see exactly what your email looks like in over 30 different email clients ranging from the most popular email clients, iPhones, iPads and Android mobiles. This will help to ensure your template is working perfectly so you are giving yourself the best possible start when creating your next email campaign.

2) Don't paste from Word! If you paste from Microsoft Word then it isn't very forgiving regardless of the editor you are using because it's extremely difficult to remove Word specific markup. When you are able to use tools to remove the Word specific markup, you often end up removing some of your wanted styling too. So although we have tools that try their best to do this it's always better if you just copy and paste from Notepad first as that will remove all the unwanted markup.

3) Save your images correctly. To save time, it's best to insert your images at the exact size you need them to be within the email as that way they will be less likely to expand and cause your design to fail. Also as email clients turn off images by default it's best to add 'Alt Text' as that will display before your image loads.

4) Create with mobile in mind. As Litmus reports, over 50% of email opens are done on mobile devices (via Email Client Market Share) it's easy to see why you should try to enhance the experience of those viewing your email on a mobile.

Here are 5 additional tips to help you design for mobile:
- Start with a responsive template, we provide over 80 free templates within each account so why not signup to a free trial or take a quick look at our responsive templates.
- Make better use of spacing as it will help to attract the eye to the next section of content.
- Use sub-headings to allow your subscribers to scan read your emails while on the move.
- Add clear call to actions; HTML buttons are best as they will display immediately and can be styled to fit in with your design. We have created our own Button Creator which you can use, try our tool here.
- Make use of pre-header text as that is another great opportunity for you to entice your subscribers to open your email. You can use our Preview Tool which shows you how the subjectline and snippet text display in major email clients, try our tool here.

5) Include a good ratio of text to images, by doing this not only will you be reducing the spam score (to ensure your email doesn't land in the junk folder) but you will also be able to track what your subscribers are interested in. As you'll have reduced text, it's beneficial to include a 'read more' button after each section as that will allow you to drive traffic to your website or blog and also track what your subscribers are interested in via the click reports.

If you'd like some more tips on email design and all other aspects of email marketing then you can download our free eBook, 'The Ultimate Guide To Email Marketing'.

In the spirit of all things spooky, you may have noticed three new Halloween Themed templates have mysteriously appeared in your template library.

These templates have been created to help you have some fun with your emails during Halloween as you can use them as a base for your email marketing. As these templates are responsive they look great on all devices and as they've been tested in all major email clients they'll display exactly as expected. You can access these within the 'Template Library' of our latest editor by simply clicking on 'Emails' (tab on the left) >> Template library and then start using them today:

Are you wasting your time & effort on those that aren't actually looking at your emails, or even worse sending to email addresses that don't actually exist?

If you're tired of seeing low open & click-through rates then it's time to remove those inactive subscribers from your mailing list and try a re-engagement campaign. You can do this by sending targeted emails specifically created to try and entice inactive subscribers to get more involved.

How can I find the inactive subscribers?

An easy way of locating the inactive subscribers is to use our Segmentation tool to create a list of those that have took action as you can then filter those contacts through your list(s), allowing you to be left with those that haven't taken any action yet.


Now you've taken action with your inactive subscribers, it's time to remove the bad addresses that are actually affecting your sending reputation.

What about the bad addresses?

Once you have sent to your mailing list, our system automatically detects those that are Hard Bounced and gives them a status of 'HB - (Hard Bounced)'. As they have a status of HB they will not be sent to again, unless they are deleted and reimported.

When you repeatedly send to hard bounced email addresses it negatively affects the IP reputation you are sending through. This also has a knock-on effect when sending again and for others sending through that IP (as there are a number of clients using that pool of IP's).

To prevent this from happening, it's best to keep the existing contacts in your mailing list and simply import into that existing list as our system will automatically de-duplicate the addresses for you. This will make sure the addresses continue to have the 'HB' status whilst allowing you to update any records, or import new contacts into your mailing list(s).

It's also beneficial if you use our List Clean Up tool on new and old addresses as it will automatically check your contacts and removes all bad addresses for you.

What are the List Clean Up benefits?

• When using this tool we remove the invalid email addresses from your list, create a new cleaned list and provide you with a report of what the likelihood of engagement is from the good addresses. This consists of an excel spreadsheet outlining the individual email addresses and a PDF report.
• It will increase delivery rates as the reputation of the IP address you're sending through will be better due to reduced bounced rates.
• It will help to produce more accurate Reports & Statistics within your account.

Best of all this clean up tool starts from as little as £1.00 per 1,000 addresses. You can use the list clean up tool within the Contacts section of your account, simply login and clean your list today.