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.

Our 35 page eBook named, 'The Ultimate Guide To Email Marketing' can now be downloaded for free and best of all, here's a sneak preview of it:


This eBook explains every step of email marketing, so whether you're an email marketing pro or an enthusiastic beginner it will give you inspiration together with design & implementation tips and over 20 free resources & tools to help you to make your email marketing more successful.

You can download the full version of our free eBook here: http://graphicmail.co.uk/free-ebook

Did you know that if you upgrade to a paying account during your 30 day trial period then you can request a free responsive template. This exclusive offer has been put in place to give you the best possible start when using GraphicMail for your email marketing.


As our Template Team will create this bespoke email for you, we remove all the hassle of importing existing emails or taking the time to customise the templates we provide. This free custom template will be created as close to your specification as possible.

It will be responsive so it looks great on all devices.
It will carry your professional branding across to your online campaigns.
Utilising our user-friendly editor you will be able to easily add, move & delete any sections.
It will be fully customisable.
You can use the template over and over again for all your campaigns.

Want to find out more?

If you've started your trial account then time is already running out as you only have the 30 day trial period to take advantage of this limited offer.

Find out more

*Terms & Conditions apply: You must apply for the free template during your 30 day trial period.

New To GraphicMail?

If you haven't started a trial with GraphicMail yet then now is the perfect time to try our service. Signup to a trial account, upgrade it to one of our paying accounts during the 30 day trial period and then request your free responsive template.

It really is that simple!

Start A Free Trial

On 22nd September 2015, Gmail announced a new 'Block' option to allow you to have more control over the emails landing in your inbox.

Gmail state that if you use the 'block' option then it allows you to, “Never see messages from this person again" as "Future mail will go to the spam folder (and you can always unblock in Settings)." Full Gmail article available here.

So what does this mean for Email Marketers?

It means that it's now more important than ever to make sure you're sending well timed, targeted emails that your subscribers will be interested in. There are numerous features available within each GraphicMail account that allow you to easily achieve this.

What Advanced Features Should I Use?

Segmentation - Our Segmentation tool allows you to create targeted groups based on actions taken by the subscriber, or the information you have stored on them such as their interests, location, last product bought, etc.

Autoresponders - Our Autoresponders allow you to have automated emails sent when subscribers take certain actions such as if they click on a link to find out more about a product, subscribe to your mailing list or even on a renewal date.

Extensive Reporting – Not only will you be able to view statistics based on sends, but you can also drill down into reports based on mailing lists, autoresponders & even per recipient. You can easily compare results within the account, or export them onto an excel spreadsheet and filter it further such as using it to find the perfect time to send.

If you'd like some advice to improve your sending, our staff are here to help so call us on 0191 5004 114, chat with us via livechat available here or email support@graphicmail.co.uk

Within this last section of our Ultimate Guide To Email Marketing, we will cover all aspects of Email Delivery and explain what data you should use to help better your next campaign.

Improve your delivery using an ESP

One of the main benefits of using an Email Service Provider (or ESP for short) is the consistently excellent delivery rate you can expect from any email campaign that you send out.

If you were to send your emails in bulk from your personal Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo accounts, then not only will it take an awfully long time but it is also likely that the emails will start to get rejected. This is because you will likely look like you are spamming, whereas if you were to send via an ESP then they would go through as expected as they have rock-solid relations with all of the major ISPs.

With an ESP you will not only receive brilliant rates of delivery, but you’ll also have a dedicated delivery team working on your behalf. This team will ensure that no matter the volume of your campaign or time of day that you are sending it it will be delivered very quickly for you. The speed of delivery will also increase allowing your campaign to be delivered within an hour or two as it will usually be sent through a pool of IP addresses via their powerful servers.

Spam prevention techniques

Now you know the benefits of having it delivered by an ESP, the next step is to make sure that when it is delivered that it lands in the inbox, and not, the dreaded spam folder.

No doubt you have sent an email and received no reply due to it landing in the recipient’s spam folder. Well ESP's will have tools for you to use to help reduce the possibility of your email landing in the junk.

So how is this done?

The first method is to use a spam checker, which will give you an indication of the likelihood of your email being caught in your recipient's servers spam filters. Not only will the spam checker provide you with the result of the check, it will also tell you the steps that you need to take in order to reduce the spam score as low as physically possible. It may even be something as simple as the subject line was all in capitals, or the ratio of images to text is a little high. Once you know the cause, you can then make the necessary changes to reduce the spam score.

Email authentication is becoming more and more important and as a result ESPs offer all of their clients email authentication technologies such as SPF and DKIM to further combat spam. These are extremely simple to setup within your account as it’s usually just a case of copy and pasting a record into your website’s DNS settings. Once that has been done it and you have confirmed the records are matching, it will give the ESP more authority to send on your behalf.

Now this one is quite simple so it can easily be missed. Ask your subscribers to add your 'from email address', the one you are sending from, as a trusted sender (as a contact within their email contact list) as that will help the email to be trusted. It's best to include this request within the first point of contact with your subscribers, generally an ESP will have this information in an email header, or if not you can simply add some text into the body of the email. This can be presented within the welcome email, an automated shopping cart email or even when you have an email triggered to send after a certain action.

Reports & Statistics

When you send out a newsletter using an ESP you will have a wealth of reports and statistics which will let you know exactly how the send has went; how many have been delivered, who has opened your emails, which links in your email have been clicked and so much more.

The depth of the statistics available to you is something that you would never have when sending through your personal email account, and these statistics are vital to ensure that your email marketing is as effective as it possibly can be.

You can even track your subscribers’ access to your website by enabling Google Analytics within your ESP, meaning you can see exactly which traffic has been driven to the website from your email marketing campaigns, which again is extremely useful information to have at hand.

So what data should I be paying attention to? 

Regardless of what you've heard there is no straight forward answer to finding the best day/time to send your email campaign. This is because every list is different and you need to find out what works for your subscribers rather than anyone else. This can easily be achieved by checking your 'opened' statistics to see what time the majority of your emails were opened.

The rest of the data is up to you, you can of course follow up your hot leads (those that have taken action) or you can focus on a retention campaign to get interaction from those that appear to be on the edge of unsubscribing.

What's next?

All in all, we hope we’ve demonstrated the immense benefits of sending your newsletters using an ESP rather than through your own personal email account; the deliverability will be vastly improved, you’ll have a team of professionals making sure your emails are sent in a timely manner and you’ll have access to an endless amount of statistics which will tell you exactly what has happened with your email campaign since you clicked ‘Send’.

Don’t just take our word for it though, why not start a free no-obligation trial with GraphicMail and try it all out for yourself: http://graphicmail.co.uk/get-your-free-trial

We would like to notify you that although the GraphicMail software will be available as usual, our UK office will be closed on Monday 31st August as it is a bank holiday.

As the UK office will be closed, support via email, live chat and the telephone will be unavailable however if you do require any assistance then you can view our Help Center (tab on the left within your GraphicMail account).

Our Help Center has lots of up-to-date user guides, video tutorials and FAQ's for you to view; you can also gain direct access to it here: http://graphicmailuk.uservoice.com/knowledgebase

Our UK office will reopen at 9am on Tuesday 1st September.

Within this section of the 'Ultimate Guide To Email Marketing', we're covering the vital task of Growing Your Mailing List. If you have a fantastic email design but nobody to send it to then you're not going to get very far. With that in mind we've outlined some key points that will help you gain more subscribers and collect the much needed data in the process.

Below we've provided guidance from the beginning stages of deciding what data you need to collect, all the way through to sending your first welcome email.

Decide what data you need to collect

Gather your subscriber’s first name and surname, as you can use this information to personalise your emails making a better connection with the recipient.

It would also be beneficial if you're able to gather further details from your subscribers such as; their location, date of birth, gender and interests. When you have this type of information you can use it to send to your subscribers more targeted and therefore relevant emails.

Find out what your subscribers actually want by displaying different mailing lists for them to sign up to such as daily, weekly or monthly emails, special offers, company updates and much more.

Decide how you will collect the data

There are many different ways in which you can collect data from your subscribers;

• Subscription forms - add a subscription form onto your website.
• Facebook - add a subscription form onto Facebook to convert your Facebook friends into subscribers.
• Free downloads - include a subscribe option on online purchases and free downloads.
• Directories - get listed in directories and search engines.
• Marketing strategy - make growing your mailing list part of your marketing strategy.
• Be social - make sure the 'subscribe' and 'forward to a friend' options are presented in the emails you send out so new people can subscribe.
• Microsite - include a microsite on your main website, by doing this you can archive all of your past emails so users can see exactly what you have been sending. Don’t forget to add a subscribe option at the bottom of the microsite so those users can subscribe to receive your future emails.

Promote your mailing list

• Website - add subscription forms on your website so every visitor knows that they can sign up to receive emails from you. It is best to include a subscribe option on all pages if possible; an ideal place to add it is within the website footer.
• Share emails - share your emails on social networking websites to promote them.
• Facebook - create a Facebook app so you can include a subscription form in it, or if you would prefer, you can just add a link to your subscription form within your Facebook description so anyone can use it.
• Website blog - if you have a website blog then why not produce a blog promoting your mailing list to get more signups. The blog is also another great opportunity to include a subscribe option.
• Viral marketing - use viral marketing so everyone knows you have a mailing list they can join.

Provide incentives to gain new subscribers

• Special offers - you can provide special offers for those that sign up to your mailing list.
• Discount - you can provide a special discount for those that sign up to your mailing list such as 20% off the first order if they quote a specific code.
• Free downloads - if you have content that you are willing to give away then why not use it as an incentive for people to sign up. Once they have signed up for the white paper, ebook or even discount code you can send them a follow up email with the discount code showing, or providing them with a direct link to download the resource. This can easily be achieved using a subscribe auto-responder.

Decide how to use the data you have collected

• Include personalisation - you can include your subscriber’s details in an email. The best place to start is with their first name, their location or even their last product bought. By doing this you are letting your subscribers know the email is specifically targeted to them.
• Segment your data - you can use a segmentation tool to separate your mailing list into smaller more targeted groups based on the data you have such as males within a specific area who have stated they are interested in the same things.
• Target your email design - you can change your emails depending on who you are sending them to, such as changing the terminology used, products presented, the layout, colour scheme and more.

Key elements of a welcome email

• Subscribe auto-responder - you can create a subscribe auto-responder which will automatically send an email once a new user signs up to a specific mailing list.
• Incentive - make sure the incentive you advertised is actually presented within the first email you send.
• Gather more data - you may want to take this opportunity to ask the recipient to provide more details.
• Trusted sender - ask the recipient to add your 'from email address' as a trusted sender to make sure your email arrives within the inbox.
• Tell them what to expect - let the recipient know what they can expect from your emails such as what content they will be sent and how often.

Continue communication

• Use automated emails - you can use auto-responders to send follow-up emails when a subscriber has taken a certain action such as opened an email, clicked a link or when they subscribe/unsubscribe.
• Landing pages - ensure the landing pages used are easily recognisable and that they provide the relevant information needed. Also if your email is responsive then make sure your landing pages are too.

With the information provided above, hopefully it has given you some great ideas of how you can gain new subscribers & use the data they provide. If you have any ideas of your own then please share them with us on Facebook: share your own ideas

On Tuesday 25th August we will be introducing a new auto-sieve feature. This feature will scan any lists you import and inform you of the cleanliness and validity of that list. Instructing you to either clean the list or, if potentially harmful to your sending reputation, whether you will be able to send using that list at all!

If your mailing list is fine then you will see no message after importing it, however if further action is required then you will have to action one of these:

• You will need to clean your mailing list using our list clean up tool.
• Blocked: Sending to this list will have extremely hazardous effects on your sender reputation and as such you will be unable to send to this mailing list. Contacting support in this respect may enable us to point you in the right direction.

This feature is not retrospective and as such will only be actioned on new imports (not your current mailing lists) however if you re-import any existing mailing lists as a new import then the sieve function will be initiated on this, irrespective of the fact that the mailing list may have been used in previous campaigns without any previously highlighted issues.

What are the benefits of cleaning my list?

• Save money: Remove unresponsive subscribers that never react to your campaigns or contribute to your return on investment.
• Improve reputation: Your delivery rates and your sender reputation will be remarkably improved by emailing only to clean lists.
• A partner to help you: GraphicMail will take care not to over-cleanse your list and drop any good recipients by mistake.

What if my list gets blocked?

If your mailing list gets blocked then that means it's a bad list. Simply contact our support team as they will give you an indication of why it was blocked and what action you need to take to have it unblocked.

We will do everything possible to help you achieve a clean, opt-in mailing list. This will not only prevent complaints it will also help to better the response from your subscribers.

We are available via livechat, telephone or email.

Got some questions of your own?

As this change is going to happen on Tuesday 25th August, you will likely have some questions so here's some answers to help:

Question: Why are you forcing me to clean my list?
Answer: We are now backed by SMTP Ltd who specialise in email delivery, so although our prices have not changed there are some more rules in terms of your list that you need to follow. These new rules are not there to stop you sending, they are set in place to improve your sending.

Question: What if I don't want to clean my mailing list?
Answer: Unfortunately if you don't want to clean your mailing list then you will not be able to send to your mailing list.

Question: I am importing an existing mailing list with some new contacts but it states I need to clean it, why is this?
Answer: As you are importing your full list again the auto-sieve will check the full list. You may want to try only importing your new contacts.

If you have any questions regarding this then please contact us via email, livechat or telephone.

When designing an email there are three important steps to consider; making your email responsive, deciding what type of email you'd like to send and finally thoroughly testing your email design. If you complete these 3 stages then your email design should be setup with ease and working without any rendering issues.

Creating Responsive Emails

Making your email responsive so it can adapt to the device being used helps to provide an overall better experience for your subscribers. If you're not convinced about creating responsive emails then maybe this will change your mind, the email client market share provided by Litmus, shows that the top email client being used out of a recorded 1.06 billion opens is the Apple iPhone.


Before you start to panic, creating responsive emails doesn't have to be a daunting task; if you use an Email Service Provider (ESP) then you can create responsive emails within minutes as they will often provide free responsive templates to base your emails on.

GraphicMail offers over 80 free responsive templates and as the template library is so extensive it covers many different business sectors so there will definitely be a template which suits your company’s needs.

Now you know why the email should be responsive and how you can create them, here's some design tips for when you begin creating your responsive email:

Pre-Header (email snippet text) - As pre-header text will display next to the subject line it can be a great way to entice your subscribers to open the email fully. More details regarding this can be found here.

Images - As your email is going to be viewed by someone on the move using their 3G it's important to make sure your image is as compressed as possible. You can compress an image without compromising the quality via tinypng.com or tinyjpg.com

Spacing - As your email is going to be viewed on a small screen spacing is very important as it gives you the ability to make certain sections of your email stand out as well as helping the usability of the email. Make sure you don't have too many text hyperlinks together as it's easy to tap the wrong one.

Buttons - Use buttons rather than hyperlinked text it makes them stand out, easier to tap and will help to provide a better experience for your subscribers. If you'd like to create a button that will work in all email clients & devices then you can view our button creator here.

Use Headings - When people are viewing your email on a mobile they will likely be busy and on the move so it's best to make use of headings. Using headings & sub-headings will give your reader the ability to easily scan read your email to decide what they would like to concentrate on.

View In Browser - Let's be honest, sometimes things can go wrong whether that's because of a subscribers settings or an email client that you forgot to test your email in. By providing a 'view in browser' link you are always giving your subscribers an opportunity to view your email in the browser which will display it correctly.


By viewing the responsive email on the left, you can see that the images have been scaled to fit the screen size, the text has been enlarged and it is easily readable, and overall it is a very user friendly email.

Compared to the non-responsive email, which requires a lot of zooming to read the small text, it is hard to navigate because the email has been scaled down into a smaller viewing window and above all it doesn’t give a good impression to the recipient.

With this example, it’s clear to see the benefit of sending a responsive email.

What type of emails should you be sending?

Okay, so now you know how easy it is to create your email campaigns with an Email Service Provider, how much time it’ll save you in the long run by using your saved templates and the benefits of sending a responsive email. The next step is to decide what type of email you are going to send out to your subscribers, and to help we have comprised a varied list of different emails that you may want to send.

Limited Offers - The shorter life span you give the offer such as this week/day only will help to add urgency to a sale likely resulting in a better return on investment. Remember that emails are convenient and people check their emails frequently so don’t be afraid to limit your offers.

Last Minute Offers - These are the emails that you can send to sell your last load of old stock to make room for your new stock.

Email Newsletters - This can be used to tell people about your business and explain how your business can improve other people’s workplace. You could also include hints and tips into this type of newsletter, along with some selling of course.

Product Updates & Information - This can inform your subscribers of any updates or anything that they would need to know about your company.

Staff Newsletters - Use your ESP as a means to email colleagues, keep it all in one place. Inform your colleagues of any new offers that you are going to be sending out so everyone can be prepared for any questions they might get asked.

Invitations - You may want to invite people to your business for an open day, free workshops, or even invite them to enter a competition.

After Sales Emails - Always store the data about your sales, as you will be able to use that information to send more targeted emails to that individual depending on what they have been buying. You can also include any thank you messages or service ratings to check your customers are receiving their goods, and to see if there are any improvements that could be made.

Personal Greetings - This is why you should ask your subscribers to include their personal details when they subscribe as you will be able to send a birthday message to your subscribers. On the selling side of things, you will know that a subscriber that has just had his/her birthday will most likely have more money to spend. In that in mind, why not send them a newsletter advertising some of your more expensive products that they may be interested in.

Final Email Testing

While you are creating the email it's best to test it to make sure your changes are working as expected, however there are also some other things we'd suggest:

Save As Template - If you intend to reuse the email for future sends then it's best to save the email as a template as that will only have the original working HTML code which should reduce the risk of errors.

Inbox Preview - Most ESP's (Email Service Providers) will have an 'Inbox Preview' feature that allows you to see exactly how your email looks in multiple email clients and devices. This is the best way to quickly check your email is displaying exactly as you expect.

Check Spam Score - Checking the 'spam score' will help to make sure that your email has the best chance to land in the inbox. A spam score checker should give you a score and advice based on your email and send details allowing you to make some changes if needed.

Create Text Only version - Although you want your fantastic new design to be shown in its full glory, if you don't include a text only version then you run the risk of a subscriber receiving a blank email. Most ESP's will allow you to create a text only version of your email as an addition to your send. They should only send the text only version of your email if your HTML version isn't accepted. So if a text only version is sent in its place then as long as you include a URL to your HTML email then they can view it in the browser and they can read any text within your text only version. You can find out more about text only versions here.

If you follow the advice given above then your email design should impress and achieve the best results possible. We wish you the best of luck and as always you if you'd like more ideas about how you can make sure your email campaign is successful then view more tips here.

Have you ever been puzzled as to why one of your emails received a higher open rate than expected? Let me start off by saying you're not the only one. Most of the time we will consider a number of causes; was the subject line more enticing? Maybe it was the time that it was sent out? Or was it the preview pane in Outlook that helped to entice subscribers?

All of these are valid reasons so you may think that all you can do is look at the reports and speculate the reasons but that's not true. A/B testing can help you to pinpoint what works and more importantly what doesn't.

What is A/B Testing and why is it useful?

A/B testing allows you to experiment with different subject lines, or even email designs, to increase the open rate and click-through rate of your email campaigns with a simple click of a button.

Within GraphicMail you can test up to eight subject lines or newsletters in a single A/B test, and it is as simple as deciding which newsletters or subject lines you wish to test, and then selecting which percentage of your mailing list you would like the test to be performed on.

Testing two subject lines against 10% of the mailing list.

After the A/B test has is complete, the ‘winning’ subject line or email design will be sent out to the remaining percentage of your list, it’s that simple!

This isn’t something that you should only do once either, A/B testing should be an integral part of your marketing strategy as it will allow you to pick up on subscriber trends over time, improve the interaction with your emails and make sure that all of your hard work isn’t going to waste.

Examples of what you can test

Okay so now you know all about A/B testing and how it can be a fundamental part of your email marketing, here's some ideas of what you can test within the subject line and email design.

Subject line
1. Try asking a question in the subject line.
2. Add personalisation.
3. Shorten the subject line with keywords at the front.


Email design
1. Change content.
2. Change the email design.
3. Change the email layout.
4. Change the use of buttons and hyperlinked text.
5. Change the pre-header/email snippet text

Another well deserved mention for A/B testing is to test your email pre-header (also known as snippet text). This will display in most email clients and give you the ability to have text displayed next to your subject line which can be used to entice your subscriber to open it.
Pre-header text is shown as grey font in the screenshot above, "send up to..."

Why not start a free no-obligation trial at; graphicmail.co.uk/get-your-free-trial, and try out A/B testing for yourself?

Did you miss series one our 'Email Marketing Overview'? view it here.

Email Marketing Overview

Why is email marketing so important?

Email marketing is much more than just sending out a quick email. It is an easy, inexpensive and effective way to reach a large number of your consumers within minutes. No matter the size of your business, email marketing is a vital marketing tactic as many have voted as 'most effective type of digital marketing and the least difficult to execute' (survey completed by Ascend2).

What are the benefits of Email Marketing?

Customer Retention
It is obviously extremely important to make sure you don’t lose customers. Email marketing is a great way to keep in touch with your customers to let them know your still in business. There are many different types of emails that you can send, ranging from invitations and limited offers to company updates and after sales emails. All of these will help to keep in contact with your customers to ensure your brand is still something they will continually recognise.

Improve Customer Relations
An inbox can be a place of excitement as you can lighten up someone's day with a simple invite, exclusive offer or a bargain they will actually be interested in. It's vital that you know your audience and once you know their preferences, whether that be the type of email client they use, products they're interested in or simply their location you can then create a targeted email just for them. Using our segmentation tool together with personalisation means that you can make a huge difference with very little effort to ensure your subscribers are receiving emails which are relevant to them.

Increase Sales
Email is well known for being one of the most cost effective marketing tools with one of the best ROI. Even if you have a small budget, email marketing can still help you achieve those all-important sales, and when sending personalised emails to targeted lists you immediately increase your chances of a sale. When you combine that with A/B testing to ensure you are using the most effective subject line your open rates will increase and therefore your potential sales will do so too.

Why use an Email Service Provider?

If you want to send out nice, professional looking emails and don’t want to have to worry about coding it (or learning how to code!) then using an Email Service Provider is important, as well as many other reasons.

Email design
Select from a wide catalogue of ready-made fully responsive templates, which will looks great no matter which device it is viewed on, whether it’s a tablet, mobile or desktop.

It is incredibly simple to customise your chosen template using the drag-and-drop editor included within the ESP which means that you can add your company’s own brand identity with ease, and insert your content and images at the click of a button.

Creating great looking emails could not be easier using an ESP as all of the hard work has already been done for you, all you really have to do is add your own content to the template and you’re ready to send it out to your consumers.

List management
One of the main reason why you should be using an Email Service Provider is that your mailing list will be managed automatically. Therefore if one of your subscribers decides that they want to opt out of your newsletter, rather than having to manually remove them from your mailing list, all they have to do is click a link within the email and they will be removed automatically.

It really is that simple.

You can even place a subscription form on your website or Facebook page which can also be created with an ESP. This process is also completely managed as any of your visitors that sign up to your newsletter using these forms will be automatically added to your mailing list, meaning you never have to go through the painstaking process of adding them to the list yourself.

Delivery
If you are constantly sending your emails in bulk from your Gmail, Yahoo or even Outlook accounts there is a high likelihood that your emails will begin to get rejected by your recipients email servers, or your email address may even be shut down by your free email provider as it is probable that it will look like you are spamming.

Whereas Email Service Providers are highly trusted by the major ISPs which will mean that your emails will get delivered as intended. As you will be using their powerful servers, your newsletter will be delivered into your subscribers inbox in no time at all.

Statistics
In any form of marketing it is important that you know how effective your campaign has been and therefore statistics are crucial. Sending to your subscribers through your Hotmail or Gmail account means that you don’t even know if it has been delivered, never mind the depth of analytics that an ESP provides.

Within the reports and statistics of an ESP you can find out which emails have been opened, how many times a specific link has been clicked within your email, if they have shared it and even whether they have viewed your newsletter in Gmail, Outlook or on their iPhone.

Knowing this type of information about your subscribers will help you to make changes to future email campaigns helping to achieve the best possible results. An example of this is, if most of your subscribers are opening your email on a mobile then you can make it more user-friendly by using buttons rather than hyperlinked text.

Free to try
The vast majority of Email Service Providers offer a no-obligation free trial which you can sign up to in order to try out the platform before you make the decision to sign up. For a limited period, these trials give you all of the advanced features of the paid account so why not make use of it and see what it’s all about?

You can sign up for a 30 day free trial with GraphicMail here; http://graphicmail.co.uk/get-your-free-trial

Even after you’ve reached the end of your trial period, you can take advantage of our free account which has a contact limit of 500 and allows you to send to them up to 10 times a month.

Your hard work and determination has paid off as you've created the perfect newsletter, excellent! Now comes an extremely important step before you’re ready to send; testing.

There are so many different email clients available to your subscribers these days and they all will potentially display your beautifully created newsletter in different, possibly design-breaking ways. This is why the testing phase of your email campaign is truly essential and it is imperative that you do not overlook this step.

So how can we test your newsletter within GraphicMail to make sure that it is getting received in the manner that you intended?

Preview

The first step to take would be to use the Preview section within the account, this will let you see the personalisation exactly as your subscribers will see it when it arrives in their inbox.

Simply select your newsletter and your mailing list and cycle through some of the contacts to make sure that it’s all looking great!

Email before the personalisation is populated.
 
Email within the Preview section showing the personalisation.

Send a Test

The next logical step would be to send a test (or a few tests) from within your account. Sending a test of the newsletter will not only give you another chance to see the personalisation in action but it will also allow you to make sure that the email is displaying correctly in the inbox.

Newsletter in the inbox.
 
We would recommend that you send your tests to a few different email addresses, preferably using an array of different email clients; Outlook, Gmail, iPhone, and any others that you want to test. This will enable you to make sure that it looks just as expected across all of these different platforms.

This is incredibly good practice and is a great habit to get into as it means that you’ll be able to see what the email displays like on real devices and see exactly what your subscribers will see before you do decide to send your newsletter.

Inbox Preview

Using the Inbox Preview tool, you can view what your newsletter will look like in over 30 different email clients, simply at the click of a button.

The Inbox Preview is completely free to use and is an exceptional way to preview exactly how your newsletter will display on the different email clients your subscribers could use ranging from desktop, mobile and web clients.

Here’s just a handful of the email clients tested within our Inbox Preview
 
It will take less than five minutes to populate from start to finish, and once it has you can then view the full email from any of the preview panes and note the changes that you may have to make in order to get it to display as designed across the board.

Note: all email clients render the newsletters in different ways and it will never look exactly the same, but using the Inbox Preview will save you time and help you to take steps to get as close as possible.

You’re Ready To Send

Once you have completed the three steps above, made any changes that you needed to make (if any), and you’re happy with how your newsletter is displaying across all of the platforms you have tested it on then you’re ready to send it out to your subscribers!

Using one of the 80+ free responsive templates available to all GraphicMail users will ensure that your newsletter will look great on any device, and they are therefore a great base to build your newsletter on. To try out any of our free responsive templates, sign up for a free no-obligation trial at; http://graphicmail.co.uk/get-your-free-trial.

The newsletter used in the screenshots of this blog are from our video tutorial which shows you how easy it is to create a fully responsive email in under 10 minutes using GraphicMail, and you can view that video on YouTube here.

We understand the importance of keeping your account safe which is why we have now introduced a new 2-Factor Authentication process when logging into your account. Although it is not vital for you to use this new feature, we would strongly recommend it as it will help to strengthen the security of your account.

There are 2 options when using the new authentication process:

Option 1 is email which will send a verification PIN code to the email address related to your account (username).
Option 2 is SMS which will use the mobile number assigned to your user profile and send a text message to you displaying the verification PIN code.

Once you have the PIN code, simply enter it into the textbox to finalise your login:


If turned on within the settings of your account, you will not be required to 2-factor authenticate every time you log in. You will only be required to authenticate once every 30 days or when you use a new browser/device to access your GraphicMail account.

Please note: The 2-factor authentication process will not use any of your mobile or email send credits as the verification messages will be sent free of charge. If you'd like to turn it on then follow these steps:

Setup & Options (tab on the left) >> Security Settings and then select how you would prefer the verification PIN to be sent to you; once selected, click save.



If you have any questions regarding this new process then please don't hesitate to contact our support team via telephone 0191 5004 114, email gms@graphicmail.co.uk or livechat available here.

It's no surprise that when talking about personalisation in an email, it often makes people think of populating the first name within an email. However what's commonly missed, is that personalisation isn't just a case of 'populating a first name' as it's a lot more powerful than that.

If used correctly, personalisation can create a more personal connection with the recipient, ensure the email content is specifically targeted for them while simplifying the whole process of targeting your subscribers as you'll only be using one email.

Now we've covered what it's used for, let us show you exactly how it works...

Personalise Your Subjectline

You can insert personalisation into the subject line which will help to attract the subscriber's attention. You can also use our A/B testing tool which will allow you to test different subject lines to see which one generates the best open rate.

Personalise Your Email

Now for the more advanced side of personalisation. We can insert it into the body of an email as personalised text and images, yeah that's right I said images. By adding personalisation to your email, you are instantly making it more relevant to the recipient, resulting in a better user experience and increase the likelihood of interaction with your email.

As well as personalisation helping to keep the email relevant, it also helps to simplify the process of targeting each of your subscribers. As the information is going to automatically change for each recipient, it means you can use the one email to send to thousands of customers with each customer reading valuable content related to them.

Personalising Text and Images...

An example we've created is for an Italian Restaurant. This company has 3 restaurants in different locations so we're going to use one email but have the content & images change using the information we have stored for each subscriber.

The personalisation fields being inserted are going to cover client data, booking information & restaurant details. We're also going to be inserting two personalised images which will make it clear which restaurant each customer has booked a meal at.

The screenshot below shows the email with all of the personalisation fields that have been added as well as the images. The reason the top 'banner image' and bottom 'map image' are not displaying correctly is because they will only display once the image path is complete. This is done using personalisation as it will insert the final image path such as 'newcastle_header.png'.
Once sent, the personalisation fields in the email will populate relating to that specific subscriber's details. The animation below shows how a recipient related to each restaurant would receive it:
If you'd like to see a more in-depth step by step guide detailing how to personalise your email with text & images then please view this help file.

If you have some ideas of your own but aren't sure how / if they can work then contact our support team as they'd be glad to discuss your ideas with you. Call them on 0191 5004 114 or via live chat available here.