Tools We Can't Live Without

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