Publish any feed, like your blog, to an email newsletter and send it to subscribers on a scheduled basis using the intelligent FeedMail application. The FeedMail application was launched a few days ago and it's an easy to use feature that will benefit many of the GraphicMail adavanced users. FeedMail will go fetch the content from a blog (or any RSS feed) and format it in a stylish email template. You have 5 templates from which to choose and once you have selected one, all you need to do is supply us with your feed's URL and tell us how frequently you want us to fetch your feed and send it. We do the rest. There is always the option of supplying us with your own custom XML should you choose not to use one of the supplied templates. Personally, I think FeedMail is one of the most handy, easy to use applications developed by our team!

Integrate your communication channels - from blog to social network and email marketing

You've created a great email campaign. At least you think it rocks - the images are well balanced against the text, your teasers are irresistible and you have even personalized your email newsletter. You also have your opt-in lists set up. It's all ready to go. But just before you hit that send button - pause. Do you know that you can publish your information using different methods? With GraphicMail, not only can you hit that send button and send newsletters to eager email subscribers, but you can also publish your information via an RSS feed, SMS/ text and a microsite.

Let's start off with the coolest toy - RSS and our new FeedMail feature
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It allows internet users to "subscribe" to websites that provide RSS "feeds". The RSS feeds provide a list of content, a brief description, and a link to the webpage with the full article. For example, in addition to reading the news headlines via email, you can read the latest news via web browser bookmarks or through an RSS reader.


How using an RSS feed benefits you
By using RSS, you can re-purpose (or "syndicate") your email content via a second medium. This gives your audience another way to receive your message and provides you with an additional route to reach readers. RSS is a great complement to your email marketing program. Also, RSS is filtered through the web, thus ensuring seamless (and trackable) delivery to your subscribers. Create a "feed", link and promote it on your site, and you're well on your way towards creating a new communication channel with your audience.


No time to send email newsletters? Send an RSS message directly to someone's inbox - FeedMail is here!
So you might already be blogging away, but you don't have time to create and send out an email newsletter. You know that you would increase your readership if you could also use the email channel.
After all, email marketing is still the most widely used, high-yield medium marketing communication channel. Also, you would like to push your content to the people who do not have time to read the feeds. GraphicMail's FeedMail feature helps you easily publish any feed, like your blog, to an email newsletter and send it to your readers on a scheduled basis.

The benefits of using this tool include a choice of templates (or you can use your own), access to all of GraphicMail's open and click tracking; and the list management tools which manage subscriptions and bounces.

But the tool is more powerful than that because RSS feeds are not just blogs. They can be event calendar services, notifications of when products are in stock; and they can be feeds from social sites like Facebook or Twitter.

By sending your RSS feed out using GraphicMail you'll get our reporting tools which will enhance your understanding of your readers interests.



There's another cool toy. Some call it the thumb war.
With 1 in 3 people globally owning a mobile phone - SMS provides the ideal route to reach the unwired, at any time, anywhere. GraphicMail's SMS gateway connectivity offers you access to a secure, dependable, high capacity SMS messaging system.

Connect with your audience via SMS/ texting. There are basically two options of how you can publish your information via SMS/ texting. You can use SMS as a standalone tool to send links to your latest newsletter/blog and to alert subscribers about an email newsletter that has just been published to their email inbox. Or, when sending text-messages (SMS), you can exclude recipients that have already received your newsletter or promotion via email, saving money by using the more cost-effective email route for sends whenever possible.



Publish your email campaign to a Microsite
Hang on. How does a Microsite differ from your main website? The main website generally provides an overview of all features, products and services that your company provides, while a Microsite offers an easy way for you to store past newsletter content online, accessible as web pages. This way you are able to provide consumers with desired, very targeted and specific information.

How does publishing to a Microsite benefit you?

• Your archived newsletters often contain a wealth of information, which new subscribers have missed out on. Owning a microsite will give each subscriber access to useful information.
• If the Microsite is being used to promote a product or to update a company event or private function, you can encourage subscribers to bookmark the site. This will encourage them to come back and visit to get the most up-to-date information.


• If you have Google Analytics enabled you can view click-through rates and reach prospective clients. The more time that is spent on your site allows for more opportunity to track and obtain your clients individual interests.


• Your Microsite can be optimized for search engines. Other websites are able to link to your website, and links pointing to your website boost your search engine traffic.

Okay. You can now hit that send button.

Way to a man's heart is not only through his stomach - sometime, you simply need the right keywords.

It's not only the opposite sex that we need to woo with the right choice of words - but also our clients. Most of us wouldn't call our client relationship a love affair, but an affair it is nonetheless. We need to choose the right words to get our clients visiting our site. You have to apply a bit of psychology - what words would they use to get through to you? Not online what you should be doing with your loved ones. But unlike our romantic advances in life, the words we choose for our websites and blogs don't do well with poetical license. They need to be as precise as possible.

Phew. So you're already struggling with the communication in your relationship/s. You don't hear what she says and he doesn't react to what you say.  And you're not much of a wordsmith. So what can you do to get the right keywords to promote your site with search engines?

There are two free keyword tools that we can recommend to you.

1 - Google has launched their new Beta Keyword Tool end of September. Paul Broomfield from Vertical Leap Search Engine Marketing points out that the new tool can be found by clicking the ‘Tools’ (or ‘Opportunities’) tab and clicking on the keyword tool. You will then see the following beta link at the top of the page ‘Check out the new Keyword Tool (beta)’, that will direct you through to the new beta keyword tool. Thanks, Paul! In order for you to use the new Beta Google Keyword Tool, you will need to set up an Adwords Account. This is free of charge... until you decide to link a PPC campaign to your site (paid Google ads). Why not try it out?

NB: If you just want to do a general keyword search, for instance to get the right set of keywords for your content writing, use the seasoned Google Keyword Tool - to see a full list of keyword ideas customized to your website (typically excluding those already in your account), you would still have to sign in to your Google Adwords Account.

2 - WordStream have now launched their free new keyword tool. Similar to Google, you can just search for a keyword such as "email marketing" and wait for the return of related keywords that are relevant to your desired search query. You can export the selected keywords or have them emailed to you. Vertical Leap recommends using this keyword tool alongside the Google keyword tool to ensure you have all long tail keyword areas and permutations covered within your SEO and PPC campaigns to maximize ROI.

 

This month everybody will be out carving Jack-o-lanterns, pranking neighbors, watching scary movies - and do tons of trick-or-treating! Who has time for work? Well, GraphicMail does! We decided to treat you to a really good deal. There are no tricks. Honestly. We also haven't employed werewolves to rip apart your mailing lists. And we haven't contracted any ghouls and devils to bewitch you.

Sign up for a free trial account. Play around with our easy-to-use email marketing service, and if you like it - sign up to a paid account from only USD 9.95 a month!

And what's the treat?

Once you sign up to a paid account of your choice, we will give you double the amount of send credits that you've purchased with your account for your first month.

Follow GraphicMail on Twitter. Get the latest updates, be the first to hear about cool new features from our lab, grab email marketing news, stats, fun, promotion call outs and more - from an international team of birdies. Blue Crane, European Robin, Kookaburra and Common Loon will all be chirping and tweeting with and for you. GraphicMail is a song worth singing!

Yes, yes, yes, we have jumped on the bandwagon - become a fan of GraphicMail on Facebook! Get the latest gossip, staff pictures, new features, helpful email marketing articles and much more on Facebook.

Email marketing has found a new friend in social media. We're busy pushing out features that will enable you to link up your email marketing campaign with your social networking. Our lab rats are giving our FeedMail the final touches - soon you can send your RSS feeds to email addresses. We're also busy polishing our customizable footer so you can add different social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace etc to your footer when you send out your next email campaign.

Psst... a bird tweeted recently that you'll soon be able to publish your newsletter, eflyer and promotions from your GraphicMail account to all the major networking sites.

Next stop: Twitter.

Internet Service Providers are changing their spam filters. How does this impact you, the legitimate email marketer? In their exclusive report , Pivotal Veracity recently highlighted the fact that domain-based reputation has arrived.  A number of top ISPs including Yahoo and AOL are said  to augment IP-based reputation systems with portable domain-based reputation systems for those mailers using DK/ DKIM authentication. This means, ISPs will “attach” your spam complaint rate, unknown user rate, and spam trap rate to your domain, in addition to your IP.  So even if you switch IP addresses, you get to keep your domain-based reputation – for good or bad.

So what can you do to make sure emails get delivered?
First of all, reputation is and will remain of your own doing  To get  reputation you need to be using a domain in your “from” address that links to you.  That means don’t use generic domains like (@hotmail.com or @gmail.com) as your from address.   If you are not already start using an email address with a domain that you control that you can begin to create a reputation for.  For example, if your email address was james@wyofarm.com  your reputation would be calculated on past and current behavior on the sends originating from the domain wyofarm.com and not just a IP  address which relates to the server from which the email originated and not the sender from which it originated.  This will make each sender more responsible for the delivery rate of their mailings.   Both Yahoo and AOL  are moving towards this structure and will probably be in full swing at the beginning of next year.  Other ISPs will follow suit.

How can we help you build your reputation?
If PivotalVeracity is right then having your FROM domain properly authenticated, will become increasingly important.   So if you haven’t already implemented DKIM on your domain, it’s time you consider doing it.  DKIM is a process that uses public-key cryptography to guarantee that the from sender is actually the domain owner.  To implement it the sender attached an electronic signature to the email that is then matched against a signing module saved at the DNS.   If you don’t know how to generate the keys the public and private keys needed to implement DKIM, then will GraphicMail's tool will create them for you.

What else are we doing?
Almost all ISPs now base whether or not they will deliver emails to client’s inboxes on some ratio of the complaint rates they receive from their clients against sends originating  from IPs or domains.  ISPs share these with ESPs using feedback loops.  So every time a client clicks on the ‘this is spam’ in their email client they let us know that that client didn’t want to receive the message.

We help them close the opt-out loop by unsubscribing these clients.  We mark those as complaints against the client’s account so they’re aware that not everyone that has received their mail is happy with it and we make the ISPs happy by reducing the amount of unwanted email being sent to their users and as a result they accept more of our mails