Video 7


Subscriber segmentation - you know what this is.  Or you think…  Well, it’s when you - okay, you take a segment and…  No, no that’s not it, wait…
Still not quite sure yet, hey?  That’s okay, we find many of our clients, particularly novice email marketers, think they understand all our features, but when it comes to it they’re not sure how to implement them.  They loose out on all the amazing power tools we offer!

The videos you’ve been watching this past week were all produced with the aim of making our services even more accessible to you.  And so, as you’ve probably guessed, the latest of our GraphicMail videos is about Subscriber Segmentation.  Segmenting your mailing list means you group various contacts together according to specific criteria.  The video gives you a more detailed explanation of how to do it and what it means for your marketing campaign.  It’s targeted email marketing at its best.

This may be the last in our series of video blogs, but don’t for a moment think the fun stops here!  The six videos we’ve blogged about this past week are but the first - we’ll have more for you in April.  Happy viewing!

Video6

You’ve heard the buzz around our FeedMail service – you even think it sounds impressive, this RSS to email thing.  However, it sounds like more time and effort spent on email marketing and you really have other business to get back to…  Don’t despair!  Give us a few minutes and we’ll have that ball rolling for you.

Our renowned FeedMail service let’s you send RSS feeds (that’s a live newsfeed on the latest activity in your blog or website) straight to email.  It’s like a mini-headline that is sent to your subscribers’ inboxes and they can then click on the link to your blog or website if they want the full story. 
Your readers can be constantly up to date on your latest happenings, services or promotions, while you’ll have broader more targeted contact with your subscribers over a wider range of communication channels.  It really is a win-win situation.

Of course, we’ve very conveniently put together a video showing you how to operate FeedMail!  It explains the service and you can see where to find it all in your account.  Who could ask for more?  It’s the couch potato’s way of learning how to keep subscribers up to date.

Video 5

Watch the Oscars last night?  We’re picking up where we left off last week and continuing our own celebration of film with our GraphicMail videos!

As part of our new series of email marketing videos we’ve included one specifically on TriggerMail.  We told you all about the new TriggerMail feature we launched last month, but now you can actually see how these advanced autoresponders work.

TriggerMail was developed to save you time, right? So instead of trying to figure it out on your own, why not watch this brief TriggerMail introductory video to see exactly how it works and what you can do with it? It shows you where to find TriggerMail in your account, how to set it up and what it can do for you. 


Like it?  The new buzz around email marketing is all about incorporating video into your emails.  Did you know that you can also include a still shot of a YouTube video in your emails?  Hop on the bandwagon and see how your subscribers respond.

Video 4

You’ve created a newsletter, sent it out, and did your best to ensure optimal deliverability rates.  You pat yourself on the back, think “I’ve got the hang of this” and merrily continue to send monthly newsletters, impressed by your new-found   email marketing skills.  This is when we tap you on the back to say “Not quite done yet, tiger”.

Of all the value-added services our email marketing platform provides you with, our comprehensive reports and statistics are possibly the most important.  Each time you send an email newsletter we give you a full statistical report on how your emails were received, for instance how many of your subscribers received, opened, or followed a link in your email (plus much, much more).  Reading these reports is one of the most important things you can do for your email marketing campaign, because it tells you where you went wrong so you can tweak your approach and improve in future campaigns.

This video shows you exactly how to do just that!  It shows you where you can view the reports and where to find all the different email metrics, and gives you some tips on how you can improve on them. 

If there’s one thing we know about our clients it’s that they want results – so have a look at this one and learn how to read yours.

Video 3

Deliverability - what a mouth full. Yet, it’s just the process of getting your emails into your subscribers’ inboxes. Well, maybe not “just”. Deliverability has always been a concern for email marketers, but the constantly changing landscape makes it even harder to ensure great delivery of your email campaigns.

We'll be honest, no email marketing platform can guarantee 100% inbox delivery.  Your reputation, and by that we mean the quality of your message and your readers interest in it, is the best antidote to delivery.  Every time someone opens your email or clicks on a link in your emails it improves your reputation.  Every time they complain it harms your reputation.

So how do you keep current on changes to ISPs, ESPs, legislation, opt-in, open rates, click rates and opt-out? What are the latest best practices? Do you know fact vs. fiction when it comes to email deliverability? Do you know your own deliverability rate?

Spend a worthwhile 3 minutes with email deliverability guru GraphicMail, who will give you an overview of Yahoo, Comcast,  Roadrunner and other major feedback loops, the CAN-SPAM Act, permission methods and sender authentication.

Did you know?

GraphicMail is a member of ReturnPath, the EEC and Truste.

Video 2

How did you like yesterday’s video, our new email marketing tour?  Makes for some fun, informative entertainment behind your desk, doesn’t it?  Well, we think the next one in our series of video tutorials should be very useful for all aspirant and accustomed email marketers.

This one’s all about newsletter templates.  Say you’ve signed up, you’ve set up a mailing list, you know what you want to say… and then you hit blank.  Great, you want to send out email newsletters, but how do you make one of those?  And how is it going to look?

Newsletter templates have to convey so many things!  Sure, content is important, you have to get the right message out after all, but the frame it’s presented in is equally important.  The look and feel of your emails has to be consistent with your brand image so you don’t only attract once-off sales, but a loyal customer base.  It needs to simultaneously be visually exciting and easy on the eye, so your subscribers will actually read it.

Our latest GraphicMail video, Free newsletter templates, gives you a quick glance at how you can get a template; whether it’s importing or creating a template, to using one of our free templates; and what you can do with it once you have one.  It takes less than two minutes of your time and should set you on the next step in creating your campaign.

We’re hoping these email marketing videos will save you time and make life a whole lot easier – and it’s so much more exciting than reading a brochure, isn’t it?

Video 1

So you’ve been getting all these emails about GraphicMail; or you’ve been hanging around our site figuring out what we’re all about; or maybe you’re a bit in the dark about all these new email marketing features we’ve launched recently.  Perhaps you subscribed to our newsletter or signed up for a free trial account, but just never quite got round to actually checking out our website…

GraphicMail’s decided to step into the spotlight with some funky videos!  (They really are funky, wait till you see the graphics…)  Each video takes less than five minutes and they cover various aspects of our service – we’ll be telling you a bit more about each one every day for the next week, similar to how we introduced you to TriggerMail.   What’s easier than kicking back with a coffee (or some popcorn if you want to go all out) and watching a quick movie to find out all you need to know about email marketing services. 

You might want to start off with the Introductory Tour:  It tells you a bit more about how you can use email marketing, what it can do for you and what we can offer you.  You’ll get a bit of insight into our various packages and features, all accompanied by a very, very sexy voice and images that’ll show you it’s not nearly as scary as it sounds. 

All the videos are available on You Tube, but we’ll provide links directly to each video as we tell you about them.  Don’t forget to keep watching this space all week!

Now run along and get your popcorn - and listen out for those little background sound effects…

You’ve seen the first two new home pages and here, last but not least, we have the third!

This one took a bit more tweaking…  It’s targeted specifically at those agencies or individuals out there who want to fast track their business to the next level of success – by reselling or re-branding the GraphicMail product.  It’s worked for many of our clients and after consistent feedback from clients who are passionate about the GraphicMail system, we thought there might be more of you out there who would like to boost your revenue using the system as your own.  Just sign up with us, take the GraphicMail software and give it your mini make-over, dressing it up any way you like!

Branding GraphicMail as your own allows you to provide your clients with all the value-added services we give you (and you’ll have access to our GraphicMail support, just in case you ever feel you might be in over your head).  We’ve been offering this service for ages, but decided to shout it out on this new home page.  Still featuring the design improvements of our first two looks, this third little number gives you links to all the information you need on how to become a reseller, from tutorials and signing up to case studies showing you how it’s worked for others. 

Like we said in our first home page blog, it is time to put the targeted communication theories we preach into practice on our new home pages.  We’d like to hear your thoughts, so let us know which one of our three new looks work best for you!

We’ve been flaunting the first of our three new home pages for about two weeks now and gave you some time to get used to our new look.  Now (after much anticipation) it’s time to, as promised, reveal the next two outfits in our newly re-modeled look, home pages 2 and 3:

We think of this one as ‘Home – Start Today’ and, as you can probably guess, the aim is to give you a GraphicMail quick start. 

Now we know you may be an old hand at this email marketing thing, but think of all the poor, unfortunate souls out there who aren’t.  We feel it is our duty to reach out to them and include them in this exciting, speedy, efficient and effective marketing world of ours!  And what better way to pick up new relationships than with a bit of flirting…
Designed to flaunt, the top banner features links to articles that will provide you with reasons to incorporate email marketing and teach you how get started.  Of course our free trial and tour of GraphicMail are still there and probably even more in your face! 

We didn’t let all the design improvements we made pass you by on this one either:  You can still find the same features as on our classic new home page, such as the clear Member login, horizontal navigation, the improved search function and the links to our social networking sites.  It’s just as easy and efficient, but is aimed at all the email marketing newbies out there, giving them quick access to all the information they need to get them started. 

What do you think?  Post your comments.

1 -Set up your addresses

Set up your address book: If you would like to personalize the emails you send to subscribers, and store extra information about each subscriber, then you need to set up an address book.  Personalization is useful and a more targeted approach as it allows you to address your mailers directly to the recipient, for example, “Dear Sue”.  If you would like to capture more than just a recipient’s name, then you can use your subscription form to do this.

Your Address Book can be associated with more than one mailing list.

Once your address book is set up, you can edit your address book, delete contacts or even add single and multiple new contacts to your address book.

Note:
In Advanced mode you can have multiple datasets, one of which is your Address Book. In Advanced mode, you could have the dataset called 'Address book', and another dataset called 'Balances due' that way you can personalize an email from two different datasets…

If you don't want to personalize your newsletter and only want to collect email addresses:

Create a mailing list

Upload your email addresses from Csv, xls, xlsx, txt (with or without additional data),  import directly from online email accounts or manually type input email addresses by copying, pasting and typing.

2 - Set up your subscription form

We give you the code for a sub form that you can add to your site, blog etc.  First, choose your own design or use our default design. Select the image you want to use as the logo, pick a background color, choose text attributes, choose the style of your links in your sub form (for instance, subscribe, unsubscribe and forward to friend links)

3 - Create your newsletter
Give your newsletter a name, select a folder to store your newsletter in, upload templates from our templates library and then select it from the drop down menu on the “create newsletter” page.  Click on next and begin editing the newsletter template we have provided you with, you can change content, links and add your own images by simply using the editing tools at the top of the page.

If you don't want to use one of our templates, you can insert your text directly from Word to our editor, or insert your own HTML template into the code view of the editor.

If you want to insert images to your newsletter - into your blank newsletter or replacing the images in the templates, use our Advanced mode. To do that, you must first upload the images you want to use to the images folder.
In Advanced mode, you can also import a Word document with images. Don’t forget that if you do this, you need to upload images from your Word document separately. Images can be uploaded individually or in a Zip file.  Remember, if you are uploading images, the maximum file size is 200kb.

4 - Send yourself a test email

Best you send a test email to a variety of email browsers to see how it looks. Also, check the spam score button to make sure your subject line, content and images are legit.

5 - Edit your newsletter

If you still need to edit a few things, simply click on Edit Newsletter in the menu, choose the folder and the newsletter you want to edit. Make your corrections, save and get ready for sending.

6 - Send your Newsletter

Choose your mailing list, add a from address, from name, and subject line.

Choose your newsletter from the folder and choose NL name. Double check all data. Once you hit the send button, you can still make emergency editions to the newsletter content, links or images while the newsletter is in the send queue, but this is not ideal.

7 - Check your send results - Reports and Statistics

In the reports overview, you get amount of emails sent, delivered, opened, clicked, fwd and unsubscribe data.
If you want more detailed info, click on the + sign which opens a newsletter report. In here, you'll get exact metrics, such as the reasons why emails were not delivered, or all the email addresses of those who clicked on a link in your mail. You can export these reports as pdf.

Now try out Advanced Mode!

• Set up TriggerMails (autoresponders like anniversary dates, follow up trigger emails to subscribers who click on a certain link in your email etc)
• Segment your subscribers for targeted communications and marketing
• Advanced reporting - check out reports per send, mailing list, recipient
• Upload and manage images and files
• And much more!