GraphicMail Year End Function: Limited Support Today

It’s that time of year again when the GraphicMail team takes a small breather and actually has conversations with each other that are not work related.  Today, 2 December, is our Year End function and we will be taking time out of the office for the day. 

This means that GraphicMail ‘s Support won’t be available for online chats or by telephone from 11am GMT +2 today until Monday 9am GMT+2 but please feel free to open a ticket if you are having any problems and we will attend to you on Monday.

Friday Corner: Facebook's Phone Revealed!

Original image found here

How to add Holiday Embellishments to your Christmas Emails

Christmas is knocking at our door and it's time to prepare our holiday mailings accordingly.

December brings great opportunities to warm up relations with your clients by sending them beautiful Christmas greetings or promote seasonal special offers and discounts by email.

Giving your holiday email marketing campaigns an appropriate look and feel for Christmas is easy with GraphicMail’s 2011 Editor.

This can be done very simply with the range of embellishments and smart elements we have built into our product.

If you’re starting from scratch, log in to the application and create a new newsletter. Select your usual template from the menu, or browse to the “Holiday” section to see what else we have and try something different.

For now, we won’t be discussing the other normal parts of content creation, so once you’ve taken care of your images, text, links and so on; you’ll be ready to add some finishing touches in the spirit of the holidays.

Part 1: Adding Embellishments

Step 1: Click on "Images" in the left menu and in the drop down, select "Embellishment".

Tip: For speed and convenience - before adding an embellishment, it’s easier if you first click on the area of the email newsletter you want to add it to, since this is where the editor will be placing it. For example, if you want an embellishment underneath a paragraph, click somewhere on that area. Or if you want to place it within an image, double click on that image first for the image editing screen to open up, and then follow the same procedure.

Step 2: Once you’re done that, an embellishment pop-up menu will appear with lots of categories to choose from. Of course for now we'll be focusing on the Christmas theme, so select the "Holiday" option.

Step 3: Here you’ll see large a range of icons; everything from a snowman to Christmas stockings. Browse around, select the embellishment you like and then click “Insert”.

Tip: You can add as many embellishments as you want, so don’t worry about having to pick just one favourite!

Step 4: Your embellishment will now appear on the page. From here you can resize and place it at the desired location by hovering your mouse over and dragging it around. If you're not editing within an image, then you can click on "Format” in the left menu to align any embellishments that you add to "left", "right" or "center".

In this example, we’ve added a Santa, mistletoe, a gift box and some golden bells.

Step 5: Now start having fun. Experiment and add a few embellishments until you're satisfied that your mailer has enough of a Christmassy look to it.

Part 2: Adding SmartElements

Step 1:  Next we'll be adding in a SmartElement or two. These are similar to embellishments, except that they are more for sign-posting or calls to action; such as special buttons, bubbles, captions, seals & guarantees etc.

Step 2: To add a SmartElement, again click on the images tab and select SmartElement. A pop up menu will appear where you can choose from an equally great variety.

Step 3: Once you've inserted, resized and placed your SmartElement, double

click on it to open the “Edit SmartElement” screen.

Step 4: Here you can do any of the usual customisations, such as adding or changing the text on the element or giving it a drop-shadow.

Step 5: For more options - from the image edit screen itself you can also add alternative text for the element (in case your subscriber has image display set as automatically off in their webmail client or email program) and add a URL to link it to your website.

In this case we've added a "Merry Christmas" tag to the top right and placed a "Mail Us" button within.

And that's it!

It’s really just all that’s simple to spruce up your bulk email marketing for the holiday season with our 2011 Editor.

Try it out and comment on this post to let us know how this feature works for you.

How did your emails do in 2011?

It’s that time of year when we give our email stats a gander to see how well our campaigns have performed over the past 12 months; gauging successes and failures, and gaining insights into emerging trends and challenges.

So how have your 2011 email campaign efforts measured up against other people’s worldwide?

Benchmark email marketing statistics offer a glimpse into the broad performance of various industries and industry sectors. These studies usually go beyond traditional metrics reports to provide top-level observations which enable companies to gain a better view of where they stand.

Our metrics on delivery, open and click rates are based on results from over 200 million emails sent by 3 590 of a major international ESP’s users in the period October 2010 to October 2011, and are probably the first in-depth metrics of their kind to be produced for South Africa.

The average metrics across all senders and regions for the time period were:

Delivery Rate: 89.34%

Open Rate: 12.75%

ClickThrough Rate: 2.15%

The average metrics for each region show South African senders achieved around three percent better delivery rates, three percent better open rates and 25% better click rates than their US colleagues in 2011.

In general, metrics for senders in South Africa are slightly better; however South African senders are inevitably mailing to a smaller audience, and as we know, smaller lists tend to produce better results. Every country is different, so it's important to interpret these results in the right context.


Delivery Rates for 2011

About 1 in 10 emails are automatically rejected (bounced) by the recipient’s webmail or internet service. Most industries are actually achieving higher delivery rates and the average is pulled down by the relatively poor performance of one or two sectors. In the USA, for example, 3 in 10 emails sent by the advertising and marketing industry bounced back as undeliverable. In South Africa, the transport and shipping sector performed the worst, with a delivery rate of just over 78%.

Delivery rates by industry — USA and International vs South Africa

Overall, South African email newsletter senders outperformed their international counterparts, with two sectors even achieving over 15% higher delivery rates (advertising and marketing, associations and clubs).

Delivery, however, is just a gateway metric. Once an email is accepted for delivery it may not actually reach the someone’s inbox. It could still be classified as spam and deleted, or rerouted to a spam/junk folder. So delivery rates as a success measure are not necessarily the most telling.

Open Rates for 2011

As with delivery rates, there is considerable variation between sectors. In the USA, International region, for example, senders in the agricultural industry were averaging over five times the open rate of those in financial services and insurance (27.13% versus 4.84%). In South Africa, manufacturers get three times the open rate of those in the transport sector (17.95% versus 5.98%).

Open rates by industry — USA and International vs South Africa

Again, as with delivery rates, South African senders perform slightly better on average than their international colleagues. However, there is more cross-industry consistency in the South African results.

Open rates are useful for simple, basic comparisons and higher open rates generally indicate that the sender is doing a better job of getting people to pay attention to their messages. But there is much variation within the open rate results, and ultimately it’s the value you provide through your email marketing campaigns that draws attention.

Click Through Rates for 2011

Differences between industry sectors are equally marked with click-through rates. In the USA/international results, senders in manufacturing averaged over 13 times the click-through rate of those in transport and shipping (4.43% versus 0.32%). Transport and shipping was also the worst sector in South Africa, with an average CTR of 0.23%, compared with the 4.18% average reached by retail and ecommerce senders.

Click Through rates by industry — USA and International vs South Africa

  

Click through rates in South Africa are an average 25% higher than in the USA, International region. A notable exception to this pattern is government campaigns, where click-throughs for US senders are almost eight times higher than those of their South African equivalents.

The basic value you offer through your emails is critical to getting a response. As with open rates, any improvements to strategy, tactics, offers, content and copywriting inevitably lead to more clicks. Equally, those practices that lift open rates should also have a positive impact on clicks; which are hard to get without first capturing the person’s attention.

Many benchmark reports include information on best practices, based on the authors’ understanding of the factors behind the benchmark numbers and trends.

And although email performance metrics depend greatly on the purpose, audience and basic value of each email campaign, send or series, there are many specific actions senders can take to lift results, as there is always potential for improvement in areas such as quality of address lists, subject line optimization and the calls-to-action.

GraphicMail's 2011 email industry metrics white paper is packed with more details on the year’s emailing performance for the USA and SA; as well as quick tips on how to get more out of your metrics and optimize email marketing campaigns based on your reports.

 

Article originally published on Memeburn.