Wednesday, 8 September 2010

Gmail’s Priority Inbox – how this is going to affect your email marketing

Posted by Unknown at 11:14 am Labels: , ,
As a regular user of email, you will, by now be aware of Gmail’s new Priority Inbox feature.
 Still in its BETA phase, but available to all Gmail users, it automatically sorts your inbox into (1) Important emails and (2) everything else. A ‘service’ which has been met with mixed reviews by email marketers. Whilst my own thoughts were pretty negative at the start, I have done some checking within the industry and am beginning to see the positive side. Mainly it will separate the wheat from the chaff and make it easier to focus on quality client leads and client-relationships.  

So, how do you proceed to ensure that you gain from the process?
1)      Emails, by their very nature, are direct and personal, which is why it is the ‘weapon of choice’ for building customer relationships. The benefit of a priority inbox means that for those of your customers who interact with you and your brand campaigns, your emails will be given a higher ranking, further enhancing their trust of your  brand in their inbox.

2)      The long term effect being that Generic messages simply will not get through which makes it even more important that the content of your newsletter is personalised and relevant to your readers and loaded with value. Use the available tools to test, segment your lists and to set up autoresponders for your campaigns.

3)      The Gmail subscribers who are recipients of your email will need to be able to identify your emails very easily if you want them to keep opening. So your business name and/or brand will have to be highly conspicuous in the ‘from’ name, the subject line or the pre-header. That will ensure that, if you’re campaigns are already successful your Gmail subscribers will be quickly aware if your emails are being marked down and re-set you as an important sender.

4)      You will need to concentrate some effort to ensure regular response from your subscribers to prevent your emails from slipping into obscurity. Encourage them constantly to interact and engage with your email newsletters. Make sure that all of your emails carry a very clear call to action, preferably one that encourages engagement, such as clicking a link, replying, or submitting a comment.  

Put simply, Gmail’s priority inbox has changed the email marketing landscape, whilst the benefits of email marketing remain as solid as ever.  It will force you to be better at email marketing which should reward you with an even greater ROI as quality campaigns will be the ones that bubble to the top of Gmail inboxes.
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Thursday, 2 September 2010

Inbox Preview – view your newsletters in various email clients before you send them

Posted by Unknown at 11:16 am Labels: , , ,
We welcome the BETA version of our Inbox Preview.
With such a wide range of email programs to choose (Outlook 2007, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) - do you know if they render your campaigns correctly ?  To add to that list, what about all the range of smartphones and the iPad? Well, to test this question, you could have setup a myriad of email accounts and servers to check this for yourself. You could go to the expense of buying a bundle of smartphones and an iPad too Alternatively, you can now click a button in GraphicMail  and all the testing will be done for you. How? Well, we have just launched a BETA version Inbox Preview tool !
 
Inbox Preview

Introductory Offer
To help you to test it – we are giving you your first 3 tests free of charge!
Once you decide which bundle suits your best for you – we offer them in 10, 25, 50 and 100. So if you’re need is to preview 10 newsletters, you simply buy a bundle of 10, if you want to preview 100, get a bundle of 100 and so on – it all depends on what you want ; how often you send and how many tests you want to run.

Get a bundle of
•    10 for   £10
•    25 for   £23.75 (5% discount)
•    50 for   £40 (10% discount)
•    100 for £80 (20% discount)

These rates are once off – meaning that you only buy the amount of previews that you need, then, if you want to test more newsletters at a later date, you just buy the additional bundle from within your account ; 10, 25, 50 or 100. You will very quickly agree that this is the best investment that you can make for your email marketing campaign.
As the saying goes……..”You only get one chance to make a first impression”– so use the Inbox Preview to make sure all of your subscribers get an impressive newsletter.

How does Inbox Preview work?
It couldn't be more simple...
1)     Go to “newsletters” in your GM account, then the ‘Inbox Preview’ menu
2)    Select the email that you want to run your test on. (It will take a few minutes to run the test, as GraphicMail sends emails and takes snapshots of the inboxes for you.) 
3)    View the thumbnails of the various email clients. (To view in greater detail, just click on the thumbnail.  This will allow you to see if any changes are needed.)
4)    Make the necessary changes and test again.

Remember this tool is there to help you to save time on testing your emails, but you are responsible for fixing them. We do offer troubleshooting services or we can build templates for you, but this is not included in subscription costs.
Any questions? Comments? Issues? Contact our support team at info@graphicmail.co.uk
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Wednesday, 11 August 2010

New Help Centre voting icons

Posted by Unknown at 11:17 am Labels: , , , ,
Whether you are new to email marketing or are a seasoned pro, GraphicMail will have, at some point, been a new piece of software to you and there were no doubt questions you had about how something in your GraphicMail account worked, or how to increase proficiency.  It's common, and totally understandable when you’re working in a technical application with as many features as ours.

When you're not sure about something in GraphicMail the easiest way to rectify the potential problem is to visit our Help Center.  The Help Center covers a range of topics and categories, offering step-by-step instructions on how to solve some frequently asked questions. We offer help documents, video tutorials and FAQs.

 
However, although we try to make these answer ALL your questions and direct you to the answer quickly and effiently we’re not sure how helpful the answers are to you as an individual user. So to solve this issue, and to assit all our users with any future issues or questions that may arise, we need your feedback so we can continuously improve on our help centre. 

So now you can vote on how helpful our FAQs were to you.   Next time you have a question, check out our Help Centre, and tell us if our help was helpful or not.  You can also leave a comment or additional question. Any constructive feedback is most appreciated!
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Tuesday, 10 August 2010

Back to school was never so easy

Posted by Unknown at 11:20 am Labels: , ,
Kick off the new school year with the right gear:
our FREE back to basics email marketing guide AND…

New back to school templates!

These are perfect for all your back to school promotional mailings.  Simply log into your account and find them in our template library.
Happy mailing!
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Free Back to Basics email marketing Primer

Posted by Unknown at 11:18 am Labels: , , ,
To kickstart your email marketing for the new school year we’ve included our FREE back to school email marketing primer.  Swot up on the basics for a successful email marketing campaign – it includes how to increase your mailing list, design a top-marks newsletter and your test cheat sheet, we’ve even included tips to boost your campaign. 

It’s easy to follow and childs-play to implement – download your free Back To School Email Marketing Primer here.
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Friday, 4 June 2010

Target your subscribers using TriggerMail and get a greater ROI

Posted by Unknown at 11:22 am Labels: , , , , , ,
A few months have gone by since our 6-part series of blogs highlighting the launch of our TriggerMail feature and our recent case study  about the benefits available, I thought that we should maybe take a look at the usefulness of autoresponders (AKA TriggerMails).
If you’re unsure what TriggerMails are, checkout our video or the blog series.
The benefits of sending automated emails are very clear; timesaving, strengthening customer relationships with such things as an annual ‘Happy Birthday’, but there is something else which was shared with you in our segmentation blog article ; Triggered (or Prompted) emails provide a way to target your readers – much the same as segmentation.

So, where do I start ?
If you’ve decided to give it a try, and I strongly recommend that you do, begin by setting up a couple of triggers; if you’ve captured the dates of birth for your subscribers, simply setup an email to be sent to them say, 3 or 4 days beforehand giving a list of items that you will happily discount during the week in which their birthday falls. It is a fact that Birthday email messages generate a very good response and conversion-to-sales ratio.
Basically you are able to integrate your segmentation and TriggerMails, allowing you to monitor a customer’s past purchases, their account anniversary, any reviews that they may have posted on your site, payment reminders, even their wedding anniversaries and then set TriggerMail to automatically send them an email relevant to that occasion.  It can be anything from congratulations and best wishes, to product information or discounts on something they might find of interest.
If the response from your subscribers is positive you can always find more ways of integrating evermore TriggerMails into your campaigns.

What reason would I have to set these TriggerMails? 
Think of this as just another way for contacting your customers and develop the relationship between them and your brand, it tells them that you understand them and their interests. The result is that you email them more often and, because your emails have more relevance, they respond in a more relevant manner.

Isn’t this likely to result in my readers thinking that I’m bombarding them?
No, although you will be keeping in touch with more frequency, it’s a more relevant contact and these contacts are prompted by your subscriber’s response to a date or product specifically relating to them. Not all the contacts in your list will have received the email, as you only sent the emails to small proportions of your list.  Also, because these emails are more targeted, the result will be a greater ROI than your untargeted bulk email sends.

But doesn’t this mean that I should stop sending out mass emails and newsletters?
Of course not!  Bulk sending your newsletter is the way to spread your message and to gather more subscribers.  After all, it is the one that all your subscribers initially signed up to receive.  Using TriggerMail is your way of refining those relationships more and pushing potential customers into becoming actual purchasing customers, or existing customers to make further purchases.  Autoresponders are there to complement your email campaigns by balancing your bulk broadcast emails with relevant, targeted emails sent to a specific, small portion of your subscribers and, because they’re automated it releases you to focus on other things – be it a reviving cup of tea or an in-depth promotional strategy.

Put simply, TriggerMails added to your campaigns help you to send the right message at the right time to spur your subscribers to action.
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Thursday, 3 June 2010

What is the best time to send your newsletters?

Posted by Unknown at 11:23 am Labels: , , , ,
One of the most-often repeated questions I get is “ What is the prime sending time for my email newsletters; Monday?  Wednesday? Friday? ”
I suppose the REAL question is………… is there a ‘BEST’ time ?
 
One of the most important components in your email marketing campaign is controlled by your subscribers – the part where they DO or DON’T open your email. So much of your time and effort has been put into the creation of your a newsletter – the images, text, layout, the research for information and yet, all of that could be valueless if the recipient just simply deletes it, or dismisses it as junk. 

This is the time to consider timing your sends! Give some thought to what your subscribers would be doing on your scheduled send days. Will they be have the time to open and read your email?  

Many studies have shown that the most beneficial days to send are the middle of the week, mainly because this tends to be the busiest, so it would follow that your email has the most possibility of being opened and reacted to on those days. This is an observation but not a rule.
Monday and Friday should also be in your thoughts. As far as Monday goes, with plenty of week-ahead planning meetings, colleague catch-ups etc., it’s best to plan your email to arrive in the afternoon so that your subscribers have more time to read it.

Friday being a day when business people receive less email and, if they are able, they may invoke the ‘Poet’s Day’ rule (Push Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday) so send your message earlier in the day – or later if your mailings are B2C and you expect them to read it at home in the evening or over the weekend. So, what about the weekend? This is a bit more risky and you should only send if your stats have shown that sending (maybe to selected segments) at this time gives you a good response. If they do not show as active, it may be that they have been received and not checked and then lost in the Monday Mass of emails and possibly consigned, along with most of them, into the recycle bin.

As you can see from this, each day has its own benefits and disadvantages. The rule here is Research and feedback (check reports & statistics). Experimentation is acceptable and could be considered part of the research. It’s important that you send to suit your subscribers in preference to your own preferred schedule.
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