It’s been almost a decade since we began our journey here at GraphicMail.

For me it really did start as a journey. I met Paul on a raft trip down the Orange River in Namibia. We wanted to create a solution that enabled companies to connect with their customers. We focused on a dynamic email application which would be the basis to help our clients meet this goal. From the first email sent through the GraphicMail platform to the opening of our local office in Beijing, there have been many exciting milestones along the way.

Today’s milestone is the most exciting. I can announce that we’re being acquired by SMTP Inc. and merging with SMTP and SharpSpring.

I’m thrilled about the news of joining forces with SMTP and SharpSpring, and after you learn a bit about these companies, you’ll understand why.

By joining with them we will continue to deliver on our goal of providing a great product to help you connect with your customers.

SMTP is an industry leader in email delivery, bulk and transactional sending, and reputation management. SMTP helps its customers increase email deliverability with less time, cost and complexity than if they managed it themselves. By teaming up with SMTP, we’ll be able to strengthen GraphicMail by ensuring increased email deliverability which is crucial in the landscape of today’s overwhelmed inboxes.

SharpSpring offers a best of breed, next generation marketing automation solution. It’s an amazingly powerful integrated marketing platform and rivals the current top platforms in terms of features and performance, but it’s affordable at a fraction of the cost.

The three companies are a perfect fit – like the pieces of a puzzle coming together: SMTP’s delivery solutions, SharpSpring’s marketing automation solutions and our email solutions.

The fit is even better than just the combination the solutions.
All our companies have similar cultures. We all share a commitment to delivering outstanding service and support to our customers. We’ve always believed in the importance of customer relationships here at GraphicMail. It’s why we focused on building a global network of local support for GraphicMail clients.

SMTP and SharpSpring understand the importance of being close to the customer.

All of our companies grew out of similar entrepreneurial, bootstrap beginnings. This means we understand the value of money and know that solutions must be affordable to be effective.

I’ll continue to head up GraphicMail as President, because I’m really excited to be part of this opportunity. For me, this is the next part of the journey I started years ago. Together with SMTP and SharpSpring, we’re looking to create an email ecosystem that gives you the ability to reach and connect with your customers like never before.

- Nick Eckert, President, GraphicMail

If you still have some questions or want for more information on the acquisition, check out our FAQ.

Auto-responders have the ability to automate your email campaign which in return will help you save time, target subscribers and drive sales from those taking action in your emails. We have numerous auto-responders that can help you to continue the communication with your subscribers.

A lot of our users will schedule emails to be sent via our auto-responders as that allows them to set an email to send at a particular date and time. However our powerful auto-responders can do a lot more to help your email campaign succeed. To make sure you don't miss out, our auto-responders are explained below:

✓ Subscribe - When a user subscribes to your mailing list, you can have an email automatically sent to that person immediately or it can be delayed if you prefer. Within this email I suggest that you thank the user for subscribing, provide them with some information about what they can expect from your email campaigns and award the new subscriber with the advertised incentive such as discount offer or similar. The final section you should include in your subscribe email is to ask the recipient to add your from email address as a trusted sender. By doing this, it will help your future emails to land in the inbox as the recipient will be telling their email client that they expect emails from you and that they are trusted.

✓ Schedule - This auto-responder will allow you to schedule an email to be sent at a particular date and time so even if you are out of the office your email campaign can still be sent as intended. All you need to do is create the email, setup the auto-responder and sit back and relax as our system sends it out for you at the exact date and time you selected.

✓ Open - The open auto-responders can help you to continue the communication with your subscribers as it allows you to automatically send an email once a previous email has been opened. An example of proactively using this auto-responder is to use it to remind people of your offers such as if you have an offer running for a week. You may want to send the first email about your offer on a Monday and have the open auto-responder automatically send another email 2 days after the first email has been opened, that way the second email will remind the subscribers that the offer is going to end soon, pushing them to take action now.

✓ Click - This auto-responder allows you to take a more persuasive approach with those that are actually interested in your products. If a subscriber clicks on a link in your email to view more information about a particular product, you can use this auto-responder to have another email sent to that subscriber providing them with more information about the product. You can also include similar products and be a lot more persuasive as you know they are interested in that particular product so this is your chance to give them an incentive to actually purchase it.

✓ Anniversary - Our anniversary auto-responder allows you to send emails to your subscribers based on dates you have stored about them. For a garage those dates may relate to a car's M.O.T so you can have an email sent to the subscriber a few weeks before the M.O.T is due reminding them of this and providing an offer to them. For other companies it may be a subscription renewal, or simply the subscriber's birthday. If it is relating to a birthday you may want to have the email automatically sent a few weeks before so they have your products on their mind (as they can ask others to purchase them). Alternatively on or after their birthday you may want to email them advertising some of your more expensive products as they will likely have more money to spend.

✓ Unsubscribe - Although users may unsubscribe it doesn't mean you have lost them forever. If you don't have an unsubscribe auto-responder setup then you are missing an opportunity to tell the subscriber what action they have taken. Some people may click on the unsubscribe link without meaning to, so by using an unsubscribe auto-responder you can have an email sent immediately after they unsubscribe telling them they have unsubscribed, provide them with an option to sign back up and you can also give them an opportunity to follow you on social media instead as email may no longer be their preferred method of following you.

✓ RSVP - It is not best practice to add a form in your email as those using Outlook Desktop won't be able to submit the form meaning you won't get any feedback and your subscriber will have a bad experience with your email. A far better way of gathering information is to use our RSVP auto-responders as they allow you to ask a question and then obtain the answer from the recipient by them clicking on a particular link such as "Yes" or "No". When they click on one of the specific links it will then update some information within your dataset allowing that information to be used at a later stage such as if you would like to segment the mailing list so you can send to those that answered "Yes".

Hopefully this blog has shed some light on how auto-responders can be a very good asset to your email campaigns as they are powerful, automated and can drive sales for your company. If you would like some help setting up an auto-responder then please don't hesitate to contact our support team.