If you’ve kept an eye on our Facebook and Twitter updates you’ll know that this week marks our favourite GraphicMail event of the year.  Our 17 global GraphicMail teams have all congregated at our head quarters in Cape Town for one week – to brainstorm, catch up and plan how GraphicMail will take over the world of email and mobile. 

Amidst all the email marketing, sightseeing, and socializing I managed to hunt a few of them down during one of their workshops to get some pictures for you.

Michaela (above), who heads up GraphicMail Germany, says she loved watching each person’s presentation and learning from what GraphicMail’s other markets are doing.  She was inspired by everyone’s efforts and varied strategies.  The most important thing she learnt? “Don’t underestimate the culture. What works for me doesn’t necessarily work for you, and vice versa.”  A good point - that is, after all, why we prefer having teams of every nationality to cater to all GraphicMailers' unique needs.

Anne-Catherine (above), who represents GraphicMail France, agreed with Michaela.  As one of our newer markets, it was the first time she’s joined in on an annual meetingand she found it inspiring to see what our other teams have achieved.  When she’s not on the hunt for new French GraphicMail interns or translating our latest features, she runs around after her 3-year old daughter, India.

You might remember Rafael (or Rafa, as he's known to us) from his feedback on the World Mobile Congress.  He's our Barcelona local. True to form, one of the things he enjoyed most over the past week was gathering all our international expertise around one table.  He gets very excited when talking about all the new developments planned for 2011!

Guus (pictured above with Anne) was GraphicMail’s first European representative and heads up our presence in Belgium and the Netherlands. Anne runs the communications for this market, and accompanied Guus.  They’re both very at home in Cape Town.  She actually met Guus here, and the two have spent a considerable amount of time in the Mother City, making a point of coming at least one month a year.  We hear Guus also enjoys a good braai (barbecue) - we think he was born in the wrong country.

Mark (GraphicMail UK) has just represented GraphicMail at the TFM&A (Technology For Marketing & Advertising) and will be heading to London for Internet World in May.  He also made use of his time in Cape Town to go shark cage diving with the Great Whites in False Bay – a much needed distraction from a week of hard work!

Nicolo, GraphicMail Italy

Tomas, GraphicMail Slovakia

Other representatives present were GraphicMail Italy, Portugal, Slovakia and Mexico.  (Unfortunately, our teams from from Brazil, Australia and New Zealand, and China couldn't make it.)

Highlight of the week? It was unanimous: Meeting up with all the other GraphicMailers face-to-face was the highlight for all. Emails, chats and Skype conversations are all very convenient, but nothing beats catching up in person – especially when you can do it over a drink!

I bet when you tell people you, or rather, your business, has an email marketing program, there’s always that one person who asks you “What, like spam?”

That’s the mine field with email marketing – even though marketers recognize the value of a good email campaign, outsiders often mistake what we do for spam.  And it’s not only spam that’s an issue: Many of us are wary of opening emails from unknown senders as this is often how viruses are spread (and that’s why it’s so important to use a recognizable From name!).  There are a myriad of deliverability, spam, virus, and denial-of-service problems when it comes to sending bulk emails.

The MAAWG (Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group) is a leading global organization that addresses messaging abuse, both online and on mobile phones.  (This is very important to us as we offer bulk SMS marketing as part of our service.  We’re also working on bringing you more mobile campaign solutions.)

We’re happy to announce that, from January 2011, GraphicMail will be working with the MAAWG to prevent message abuse and carry the MAAWG trust-seal.

So, GraphicMailers, as we enter a new year we are, as always, doing our best to ensure that your messages are delivered successfully with every send.  Not only that, but we’re working with top class international organizations to make sure your inbox is spam-free.

GraphicMail is also a member of Return Path and TrustE.

iPhone App – Version 1

We’ve just released the first version of the GraphicMail iPhone app!  (And it’s free!)

 What it can do:

Sign up new subscribers and edit existing contact details:  Business lunch? Subscribe that new business acquaintance to your mailing list then and there.  You can easily add new subscribers to a mailing list, or even just edit the contact details of     existing subscribers.

Send your newsletter:  Say you’re away from the office – be it on a trip or simply experiencing a manic day – your newsletter is ready to go, you just have to conduct the send.  You can use our iPhone app to send a readily designed newsletter to your mailing list.

View recent subscribes and unsubscribes:  Keep track of your latest list activity on-the-go.

Track your sends:  After your send you can track your newsletter’s performance by viewing your bounce, open and click-through rates from your iPhone.

It'll make it easier to manage your email marketing on the go.  You can check out more details on how it works here OR download the app here.

Only ten days into the new year and we’ve already rolled out our first new feature for 2011 – off to a good start, don’t you think?

MarketingProfs published some research on the open rates for mobile emails.  Given the recent post I did on how to optimize your emails for mobile devices, I thought this might be of interest to our followers:

According to them, mobile email open rates peak from 16:00 on Thursday afternoons until 09:00 Monday mornings, which makes sense given that Monday to Thursday is when you’re more likely to be office-bound, with a mobile device your primary email connection when you’re on the go over weekends.  If you send emails during this time, it’s important to ensure that the email is optimized for mobile. 

While it is still easier for most of us to check our emails once we’re seated behind our laptops and PCs (we don’t always have the time to focus on an email when we receive it on our mobile), the research indicated that, during workdays, 12% of email subscribers will open and read their emails from their mobile phones.  Of course, this number then increases over times when we’re not at work, like early mornings, evenings and weekends.

Food for thought, hey?  As always, the key here is to ensure you don’t isolate your various digital marketing strategies.  Keep your mobile marketing strategies in mind and design your email marketing emails to cater to those users who prefer reading emails on mobile – especially when sending at during peak mobile open times.

We hope you enjoy the few days with your family and friends and get some much deserved rest. 

Thank you for using GraphicMail for your email marketing!

For those of you who are on the lookout for a Thanksgiving bargain:

We'll be giving all US trial users who convert to paid accounts on Black Friday double credits!*  Simply look out for our Facebook messages and Tweets on Friday, and reply with your GraphicMail account username.

Enjoy the holiday!

*This offer excludes trial users who convert to Reseller or Corporate accounts.

Smart phones are addictive. 
It takes a person of exceptional character and will power to refrain from checking their phone as it lights up with a new text, notification or email.

And therein lies the crux of the matter.  (Or rather the cruxes.)

1)     We send out email newsletters to stay in touch with our clients, and on the one hand the rise of mobile devices plays perfectly into our email marketing hands.  Subscribers are receiving our emails instantly, and, I think, more likely to open them.  However, unlike when you’re sitting in front of a PC, focused on the screen, you tend to be more distracted when checking emails on a mobile device – juggling the phone, a coffee and a conversation all at once.
2)    Our email marketing emails aren’t being read on computer screens – have you checked what yours looks like on a mobile phone?  When emails aren’t optimized to display well on mobile screens it’s too frustrating for me to bother reading them – and by the time I check my email on a PC or laptop, I’ve usually forgotten that I received your email.

What to do to avoid these less than ideal situations?

A mobile screen is small – at first glance no one’s going to see much of your email newsletter, especially if it’s designed to fit a PC screen rather than a mobile one.    So make your email narrower.  Typically, a mobile screen is about 350px by 380px, of course, this varies.  iPhones are an email marketer’s dream as they usually fit the emails to the screen size automatically, however other phones generally don’t play this nifty trick.  That means that, if your email is designed for a larger screen, your subscriber will have to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll to get to the other side of the email, i.e. read your full sentence.

Keep the HTML design of your email simple – the simpler it is, the more likely it is to render well in mobile browsers.  Remember that you can also use the Inbox Preview tool to preview your email on certain devices.

We all know the importance of a powerful subject line and nothing’s changed when it comes to mobile.  Your subject line is your first attempt at hooking your reader and if it succeeds, they’ll open your email.  One area that email marketers sometimes neglect though, is the preheader.  Preheaders are especially important in mobile – it’s the snippet of text that will be displayed in your inbox on your mobile.  Subject lines and preheaders go hand in hand; when they complement each other you have an even greater chance of achieving a high open rate.

It’s important to keep a balance between the two.  Don’t just repeat your subject line as the preheader!  In fact, avoid repetition.  Just like a heading and subheading in a news article, the subject line should convey the point you want to get across to your readers – that which you think will hook them in.  The preheader is like a continuation of the subject line, giving a bit more detail.  (Of course, with subject lines and preheaders there’s more room for creativity than with news headlines!)  The preheader is also the perfect place to put in a call to readers:  “Click here for a mobile version” or “Like? Share this email with your friends”. Combine these calls with an exciting hook and you’re making the most of your preheader.

Also keep in mind that one of your challenges is a distracted subscriber.  The subject line and preheader can be the perfect place to maximize your call to action.  (The call to action tells your reader exactly what it is you expect them to do with your email.)  A succinct, clear CTA will get better results.  When your mobile email recipient is busy or distracted, they’ll value that you cut straight to the chase.  For optimal results it’s always best to test your subject line and preheader, using an A/B split test, before sending.

A final note
Most traditional email marketing tips and best practices also apply to mobile email design.  Prepare for blocked images by inserting alternative text into your emails (ALT text is the text that displays in place of the image if the image is blocked).  Remember to design your layout so that your call to action is clearly visible – bear in mind that mobile screens are small, and that clicking on links may be difficult.  And, as always, conduct a test send to check that all coding and links are rendering correctly before you send.

Mobile is the technology with the highest penetration rate globally, and with smart phones (which I think is probably the best thing since internet) mobile email marketing is going to become increasingly important.  You want to be prepared.

Image courtesy of jscreations.

Just as our own email newsletter competition comes to an end, MarketingSherpa starts up their annual email campaign awards - exciting stuff.

MarketingSherpa is one of the leading industry sites for industry news and statistics.  Winning and award from them is quite the honour – we think all GraphicMailers should enter!  They have a range of categories to choose from, namely:

•    Best triggered email or autoresponder series
•    Best integration with other channels
•    Best email list growth campaign
•    Best personalization/segmentation strategy
•    Best email newsletter for marketing purposes
•    Best innovation (this is wide open -- surprise us!)

Their entry form spells out exactly what information they’d need from you – all of which you can get quite simply by logging into your GraphicMail account.

What’s up for grabs?

Your email campaign will be published in the MarketingSherpa Email Awards Winners’ Showcase as well as being featured in their newsletter, you’ll receive recognition at MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Email Summit in Las Vegas and you’ll receive a badge to display on your site.

All in all, it’s great publicity, has the potential to generate a whole lotta traffic to your website and is guaranteed to impress the big shots!  Get cracking – entries close on Friday 3rd December.  And please let us know if you do enter; we want to know if you’re doing GraphicMail proud!

Hotmail yesterday announced a brand new change, one that I think will be super useful to email users!

They’re making it possible to integrate different email addresses into your Hotmail account, without changing your email addresses.  Basically, this means that you can register and validate your existing email address from any email client (like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc.) and read and use it within the Hotmail interface.  Kind of like Microsoft Outlook, only web-hosted. 

You’ll be able to use all Hotmail features (and they’ve rolled out plenty of new ones recently).  If you want to find out how to do, read their instructions here.

Why are they making these changes?
According to Dick Craddock, Group Program Manager at Hotmail, they understand that most of us already have an email address and that users don’t always want to inconvenience themselves by changing their existing address.  “You already have at least one email address and you probably don’t need another. You may also use your existing address for things other than just email, such as signing in to online shopping sites, which makes changing even more challenging. Also, you might have an address that you really like, but a similar name might not be available on another email service. So we looked for a way to make it easier for people to give Hotmail a trial run.”

I think this is really nifty!  Apparently it will take a few days for this feature to be available internationally.

Time to start optimizing your email marketing emails for the Hotmail preview panes then…

Lists, mailing list, contact list, contacts, dataset, database, datalist…

I bet somewhere along the way you’ve lost track of
a) what it all means,
b) what the difference is and
c) where to find it in your GraphicMail account. 

We thought it was time to simplify the whole thing – so, we’ve improved on our Address Book.

Basically, we’ve combined the ‘Mailing Lists’ section and the ‘Address Book’ section of your account, so that it’s all in one place.  This new section is called “Lists and Contacts” and you’ll be able to easily manage ALL your subscriber contact information and mailing lists from within this section.

We’ve also set up a default dataset that’s really easy to use (with sections like site, job, company, etc.).  If you’re an advance user you’ll also still be able to create more than one dataset tailor-made to your specific needs.

All in all, you should find it to be a lot easier to navigate all your subscriber contacts and mailing lists!

So, just to wrap up:
Mailing Lists + Address Book = “Lists and Contacts”

Easy!

We promised you more social share options, didn't we? They’re finally here!

We’ve extended our social share tool to enable you to share your newsletters, not only on Facebook and Twitter, but also on Google, My Space, Yahoo and LinkedIn!

Not sure what social share is?  Don’t worry, I sometimes struggle to keep up with all our new features myself. Social share is a tool that enables you to share your newsletters with your friends and followers on the all the social networks I just mentioned.  Basically, you’re able to publish your newsletter to your social network profile on Facebook, Twitter, etc.  It will show up as a brief description of your newsletter along with a link to the full newsletter. 

The handy thing is that you can now do it all from within your GraphicMail account, without having to log in and post updates on all your social accounts (and you probably have quite a few) manually.  We also have an URL shortener, GMtiny, that will automatically shorten the link to your newsletter for you.  It looks more appealing that way and it’s especially useful on Twitter where you’re limited to 140 characters.

We realize how important it is in today’s marketing environment to integrate and automate your various marketing channels.  It’s the only way to stop on top of it all – email, social, mobile…  So we’re trying to make it a little easier.  To find out more about how to integrate your email, social and mobile marketing, watch this 2 minute video.  You can also read this article to find out how and why we choose to integrate marketing channels.

Please note: We recently announced that we were temporarily suspending the Twitter social share option due to technical difficulties.  Twitter social share will once again be available along with the launch of these new social share options.