Most users of email marketing software will experience at some point that their emails can reach their subscribers’ inboxes faster or slower than with previous sends which is the reason that we often are asked how long it takes for an email to be delivered.

 To provide the answers, we asked our delivery expert, Sean Swanepoel who advised us ….. ‘The speed of our sending is dictated by how fast the recipient server can accept . Because of these limitations, caused by network issues, full mailboxes and invalid addresses, there is a strain created by retrying. Without those, delivery would be almost ‘light speed’! ‘

As Shawn highlights and as we have stated in past blog articles emails go through many steps to reach their target consequently affecting the delivery time of your campaign and here we list a few of them :

•    How busy the ISP (Internet Service Provider) is
•    How fast the recipient email server is able to accept it
•    The anti-spam techniques employed by the recipient server to block SPAM from getting through to the recipient.

As with all other services, ISPs have their peak periods and slow periods and it is at the really busy periods that email sends are likely to be delayed. It may be useful to keep this in mind when planning your sends.

How fast the recipient Server can accept the incoming email

Every email is dispatched from the sending server to the recipient server.  It is not, however simply a matter of getting from one end to the other.  With Spam being everyone’s major annoyance, ISPs are being ultra-serious in their attempts to ensure that their users don’t receive hundreds and thousands of SPAM messages to their in boxes, so they set up certain rules that every email must go through in order to be delivered to the inboxes of that particular ISP’s clients.  The settings can vary widely from each ISP although they will all usually include a limit on the number of recipients for each message or connection, or a rate limit, such as a limit on the number of messages permitted to be sent out over a certain period of time.  This is their outline of how many emails they are willing to accept over a given period.
If your sends do not comply with these specifications, your emails are more likely to bounce.  This is not a big worry however, because bulk email service providers call upon the assistance of Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs) whose task it is to arrange their sends according to the various specific limitations of each individual ISP, thus ensuring that their sends are in compliance with these regulations.

Anti-spamming techniques

ISPs apply a wide range of anti-spamming techniques as a strategy to combat spam.  (Sean suggests that you read more about them here).  A common example of this is Grey Listing; This is when emails are required to retry over a specific period of time before they will be accepted by the ISP.  This is a really efficient anti-spamming device, as spammers do not generally retry sending their messages.  However, it does have an impact on you, as your legitimate bulk emails also have to undergo this process before they can be  delivered.

So there you have it - predicting an exact delivery time is a highly technical ‘piece of string’  – and, as there are so many factors involved, nearly as impossible to estimate. However, As members of ReturnPath, the EEC and Truste, GraphicMail does try to ensure timely delivery.  To find out more about deliverability issues, read this blog article or watch our video.

Are you experiencing problems with your deliverability?  If so, the header can often shed some light on the issue. The header is basically a tracking record of all the route the email you sent took and all the stops it made along the way to get to the inbox.

Just like sending something across the country by post emails also need to stop off at various points, the headers show you this exact route and reveal these stops. They also show the details of the sender and the recipients. Headers also reveal more about the different ISP's through the information they chose to include

Every email landing in an inbox is given a header. So why haven't you seen one? This is more than likely because each email client (that's the service or program you use to read you emails - like Outlook, Hotmail, Googlemail etc) hides these headers in a different way. They are hidden from view because unless you're an email marketer trying to find out more about your email deliverability, the header is not that interesting to see. So with each email client hiding them differently and being tricky to find we thought we'd ask our own deliverability guru, Shaun Swanepoel, to assist you in the search.  True to form, he immediately pointed us in the direction of this guide to finding the headers in popular email services, clients or programs. 

If you’re still in the dark as to what deliverability is or how it works, you can watch our YouTube video.

Everyone tells us that using Graphicmail is as easy as ABC – well here’s another slant on that …… it’s called A / B testing. It’s here to help remove most of the guesswork out of “What to say, what to send “ and to get you some feedback BEFORE you send – how’s that for a great feature ??

Before A / B testing you had to send out your mailing, then check your reports & statistics in order to analyse how the opens/ click throughs compared with previous sends so you could work at improving your next mailout. After all, your newsletters are all designed using a similar template layout aren’t they? Well you now have a friend in Graphicmail = the split test feature

A/B split testing has been developed to help you to assess which strategies and techniques work best for your email marketing campaigns, which, roughly translated, means that you can now test what your subscribers like best.

It works like this; you draw up different variations of your newsletter, then you send each of these different newsletters to separate percentages of your contacts.  This allows you to see how each of those percentages reacted to the different newsletters. You can then select the one that worked the best and send that particular newsletter to the remaining subscribers in that list. 

So, A/B split testing gives you two options:  The first one allows you to select 5 newsletters to compare – maybe they have the same content, but each having a different image or subtle changes in the layout/design or content.  (You don’t need 5 different newsletters in fact, you can just do a couple if you prefer.)  You can, as an alternative, test up to 5 different subject lines for the same newsletter – using different tones or varying the length.

So, if you choose to send the test to 10 % of your mailing list and you want to compare 2 newsletters, then 5 % will receive Newsletter-A and 5 % will receive Newsletter-B.  When you’ve checked which one was most effective/successful, that’s when you send the ‘winning’ newsletter to the remaining 90% of your mailing list and, as the system keeps note of those who received which version of the test, nobody receives your newsletter twice!

Wondering how to assess which one worked the best? 

It’s really easy, and it’s also your choice!  You decide what is most important to you and to your business:  You just check how many recipients clicked to open your newsletter, or how many clicked the link to your website.  The A/B split test automatically assesses according to your settings and you receive a report showing the statistics and the status of your send.

There are no restrictions, you can use A/B split testing as often as you like, in fact, the more you use it to test and improve, the better will be the results of your campaigns, increasing the likelihood that you will stay on top of subscriber trends.  The more, the merrier!

There are 2 very important things that a restaurant needs to do in order to increase its revenue and that  is to reward it's regular customers and to ensure every customer becomes a repeat customer. This may seem obvious however the question is how does one go about this when every day is hectic and it's impossible to become an overnight advertising specialist

Many business analysts agree that mobile marketing (SMS) will indeed become the mass advertising of the future. According to forecasts, mobile marketing and advertising spends will increase from only a few one hundred million U.S. dollars in 2008 to $ 3 to 5 TRILLION by 2012. The so-called 'Gen Y' generation (people aged 18-29) have already made it clear that their mobile phone is the most important device that they own (Smallbiztrends.com March 3, 2010).

What does this mean for the hospitality industry? Reduced marketing cost, targeted group communication, immediate availability of the customer, personalization, interactivity, user friendliness, and rapid implementation.

The applications for the hospitality industry are far reaching. For example, imagine it's going to be a quiet evening in your establishment with very few reservations. One mobile marketing campaign message sent to your customers can change that. Customers all over the catchment area receive your message just at the time they are thinking about what they may have for dinner.

Alternatively you may wish to target those who have already made a reservation and immediately increase their antisipation of the evening ahead, sending them details of your appetizer menu or tonight's specials

You can even send coupons to selected restaurant guests that can be redeemed on quiet evenings. Your guests take this coupon around with him in their mobile phone and are constantly reminded of you ensuring that your establishment is always at the forefront of their mind when considering dining out. The success rate of mobile coupons is above average, especially in restaurants and cafes with an increase in success of 5-15% over that of its traditional paper coupons. (Marketingrestaurantonline.com, March 3, 2010).

Another way in which mobile marketing can successfully influence your restaurant, Bistro or cafe is to announce any special nights you may have eg movie nights, theme nights, live music and other special events. You can then accept advanced reservations via SMS.

The possibilities of mobile marketing are endless, but how easy is it to implement?

Of course, you could do all of this by sending your mobile marketing campaigns from your own mobile phone, however, this is not only expensive but also very time consuming due to the many contacts it would need to be sent to.

There is software available to do this bulk sending for you. GraphicMail offers its customers a compact, user-friendly e-mail and mobile marketing solution.

And here all the advantages of GraphicMail's SMS at a glance:

- Graphicmail is a web-based software which means there are no installation or advanced computer skills required

- Mobile Channel ID: You select the sender's number. Your mobile marketing campaigns are sent from your chosen mobile phone number which means that the recipients can easily identify your organisation and can reply directly to this mobile with their response/reservation

- If you already have existing address books held in other applications such as Outlook,Hotmail, Gmail etc these can be imported very easily and very quickly

- There is functionality and statistics available to analyze the campaigns sent

- The prices of bulk SMS are significantly lower than that of standard Network Providers.

Step One -  Set up your address Book

 Before you can personalise your emails, you need to collate the information  that you hold on each of your subscribers - just as you would do for all  your family and friends; you do this by setting up an Address Book. The reason for personalising your emails is to get your message read by as many  recipients as possible and personalised emails, for example; Dear Steven, carries, by implication, an underlying note that is seen by "Steven" and is translated as being of personal value to him. It is also possible to capture more information about "Steven" by using your subscription form to invite him to  give you more information.

 Because your Address Book holds all the personalised information on your subscribers, it can be linked to more than one mailing list

 Once you have setup your address book, you can edit contacts, delete contacts - you can also add additional contacts either individually or in blocks.

Note:

In Advanced mode you can setup multiple datasets. So, one can be your Address Book and another dataset could be (Possibly ) 'Unpaid Accounts'. You can therefore use the system to personalise a single email using these two datasets

 It may be that you don't currently want to personalise your newsletters but you do want to gather more email addresses

This is also easy - you just need to create a mailing list and setup a subscription form:

To create a mailing list - Click on > Mailing list, click > Create, give your mailing list a name and click to import. Then browse for the file to upload - this can be  Csv, xls, xlsx, txt (the import can be done with or without additional data). You can import directly from online email accounts, you can manually type individual email addresses or you can copy/paste a list.

Step Two - Setting up your subscription form

 ( This is ever-so easy - and following these actions generates the HTML code to create a subscription form that you can add to your website, Blog etc.)

First thing to do is choose your own design - or you can use our default design. Then Select the image that you want to use as the logo, next a background colour, then choose the text and attributes. Then choose the style of the links in your subscription form (for instance; subscribe, unsubscribe & forward-to-a-friend links)

Step Three - Create your newsletter

Click  > Newsletters - then > Create - then give your newsletter a name and select the folder where you are going to store it. You can select a template from the 100+ that are in your account's Templates Library, then click > Next and begin editing. Graphicmail Templates allow you to change the text, import images and add links using the simple editing tools at the top of the editor screen.

If you don't want to use a template you can insert your text directly to our editor from Word, or upload your own HTML template into the editor using the 'Code view'.

To insert images into your newsletter – either into your blank newsletter or to replace the images in one of the Graphicmail templates, simply click into Advanced Mode and proceed as follows.

A)     Browse for the images that you want to use and upload them into the Images Folder.

B)     Click into the editor and having placed your cursor in the newsletter cell where you want the image to be placed, click the > insert image icon, browse for the image, click insert and voila !

In Advanced mode, you can also import a Word document with images. However, if you do this, you will need to upload the images from your word document separately. This can be done individually or in a Zip file.

Remember when uploading images, the maximum file size is 200kb.

Step Four - Send a test email to yourself

We recommend that you send your test email to as many different email browsers as you can – just to see how it looks. It’s also a good idea to click the Spam Score button – this gives you a chance to check out the legitimacy of the subject line, the content and the images.

 Step Five - Edit your newsletter

It may be that you want to go back and edit parts of your newsletter – if so, just click >> Newsletters  >>Edit Newsletter choose the newsletter you want from the folder where you saved it, make your alterations, save them, exit and you’re ready to send

Step Six - Sending your Newsletter

Click >> Send and, in the screen that appears, select your mailing list from the drop-down menu, input your selected From Address, then the From Name, and insert the Subject Line.

Choose your newsletter from the drop-down.

IMPORTANT =  Double check everything!!

Discovering an important omission just after you have hit the send button is not a good feeling !!

Step Seven – Checking the send results – Your Reports and Statistics

You click on the Reports & Statistics and you see the mailing in a line across, click on the magnifying glass on the left and this reveals an overview which displays how many emails were sent, how many delivered, opened, clicked, forwarded and unsubscribed.

A single click on the + sign exposes exact metrics explaining why the email was not delivered, or a list of all the email addresses of those who clicked on a particular link

These lists can be exported as a PDF

Now take a look at Advanced Mode!

• You can set up Trigger-Mails (autoresponders useful for anniversary dates, follow up trigger emails to subscribers who click on a certain link in your email etc)
• Segment your subscribers and you can send targeted communications and marketing emails
• Advanced reporting - check out the Reports and Statistics following each send; you can do this per Send or per Mailing List or by individual recipients
• Upload and manage your images and files
• And much, much more!

The GraphicMail mobile marketing tool has now been made even more powerful by giving you the ability to receive responses from your SMS subscribers direct to your mobile phone. 

Previously your mobile campaigns were only ever sent from a default number. You can now send your campaigns from a number that YOU specify, enabling direct and personal responses from each subscriber.

We have named this new function SMS Sender ID and it can be found within the application under Setup & Options >> SMS Setup & Options. It's really easy to use, just supply us with the mobile number you wish to send from and we'll SMS you a verification code that you can then input in your account to activate it

If you do encounter any problems, it may be because your network does not support Sender ID. We have a list of these networks in the help centre which can be used for cross referencing. 

Sender ID is a fantastic new feature that will give flexibility to your mobile marketing campaigns!

Even before the sound of those New Year Bells has subsided, people in their millions have already begun to break one or more of those resolutions that have become a familiar part of the season’s activities; the resurgent desire to improve upon the past year, be that our health, wealth or emotional standing. To be fair on ourselves, maybe some of those ‘promises’ were just too unattainable to be called ‘Resolutions’ but, at least the good intention was there. On that same theme, here is a short list of email resolutions that you may want to sustain. Hopefully, unlike the ones we’ve just talked about, you will find these easier to follow – mainly because they are more a recap of important email marketing advice

1. Wealth – cleanup your mailing list and save money

Don’t continue wasting your send credits on those recipients who don’t read your email. Some can’t be bothered to unsubscribe, others have forgotten their subscription and now consider you as spam. So now’s the time to check your Reports and Statistics and make that decision about which of those ‘offenders’ to delete. If you delete any that haven’t read your newsletter for 6-months but are truly interested, you can be sure they’ll track you down and re-subscribe
If you have become too attached to any and can’t let them go then send them a nicely worded email asking if the still want to receive your newsletter and if they don’t ask them for reasons that they don’t – you’ll probably pickup some great tips + hints – you may also retain some of them.

2. Emotional - make use of the advanced features and Save time,
Take full advantage of the powerful advanced features on the GraphicMail system - they’ll save you time and make your life a great deal easier.

Some of the advanced features are :
a)  Subscriber Segmentation: A powerful tool which allows you to profile your customers according to criteria you have set. Use the tools that allow you, for instance, to send a newsletter about animals to just subscribers who are interested in animals. You’ll need to test it to find out more!

b)  Connecting to an external datasource: This allows you to link to your database and pull out information needed for your email campaign. With this function you don’t need to upload your datasets and maintain your data in more than one place.

3. Emotional - Stay "cool" - integrate your email newsletters with social media
For those of who you do not have a social media strategy in place – now is the time to get one! You can start with the two most basic & popular websites – Twitter and  Facebook. With GraphicMail you are can easily integrate your subscription form onto your Facebook page. By Including social media links in your email marketing message you can gain subscribers through your own social media pages.  These are two free reach extenders that will yield fantastic results. The rumour is that 2010 will be the year of the application and social media, even more-so than 2009 so now is a good time to start and tweak your current campaigns.

4. Emotional - Save face, monitor your Reports & Stats, check for hard bounces and make improvements

Being marked as a spammer will get you get a bad reputation. To avoid this nasty label spend some time deleting old subscribers from your mailing lists - they could be marking you as spam. Time spent analysing your stats carefully and studying ways to improve your open rates is never wasted. Personalise your subject lines making sure you avoid using use key spam terms with words such as "free", "bonus" or "order now". The only way you could possibly get away with using these words is if you combine them with strong keywords – or maybe create an image to display to word instead of text. And NEVER, NEVER put your subject line in capital letters. I also advise that you ensure that your recipient/s know who the email is from. Do this by amending the “from” line.
Analyse the design of your email to improve click-through rates. Do your links stand out? Are they clear? Do they look like links? Do they give your reader a reason to click them – use words of encouragement, even enticement!

5.  More Emotion - Check your image, engage your subscribers

There are lots of ways to engage your subscribers – you just need to think outside the box! Focus on the content. Is it well written and funny? Or is it long and dreary? You need to grab your audience straight away – your readers will not waste time reading a newsletter that is uninteresting or boring, so use bold headings in articles and use bullet points as they’re easier on the eye and more simple to read. When using images, use strong and emotive ones; a stretched, pixilated image looks very poor and unprofessional – also ensure that you have a good balance of both text and images.

Conduct a few tests. Send out one newsletter with a quirky subject line and look at your stats. The next time you send, use a longer subject line and cross compare the two.

Think about other aspects : the time of day you send your newsletter. Are people going to open your newsletter at 5 pm on a Friday? No! The most faithful of your subscribers is probably halfway out the door by then - and come Monday morning your newsletter is lost amongst the hundreds of emails that have made their way onto his monitor screen ( probably to be deleted on the basis that “If it’s important they’ll send again” ) they won’t have the time to read a newsletter. Any later than that and they have forgotten about it!

So - spend some rewarding time working on that subject line!

6. Wealth – Make savings - use new metrics such as the ROI calculator

Use GraphicMail ROI calculator to determine the Return On your Investment from each campaign. All you need to do is fill in the fields in the calculator; and the more accurate your numbers, the more realistic and meaningful will be your result.

7. Wealth - Retain your popularity - Get more subscribers

Offer competitions, promotions and viral campaigns to draw in the masses. Promote these on your website to build your own brand awareness.  The result will be an increase in your readership !

8. Health – Save your sanity – set reminders
This is a really good idea ( which also works well for other lifestyle activities ) - Enter an aide-memoire notes within your diary– at 3-month intervals, “Re-read my email Resolutions list” – this will just give you a nudge which will make sure you at the top of your game with these ‘Resolutions’ 

Good luck - Make 2010 your year!

Our email practices have been audited and approved by Return Path.

We are part of the largest, most respected whitelist program in the industry.

As a program member, we are part of a network of trust that covers more than 1.3 billion mailboxes!

Along with concise content and good timing, choosing a good subject line for your email is one of the most crucial things to consider. Email marketing is a convenient, yet problematic way of promoting your website or product.

The email subject line must grab the reader’s attention and keep retain it - meaning it has to be catchy and interesting enough for the recipient to take time to open and read your mail. On the basis that ‘You only have one chance to make a first impression’, the subject line is very often the only impression an email makes upon a customer - so mastering the magical one-liner is essential.

Some of the important points you should consider when writing your email subject line for a marketing campaign are:

Use the Recipient’s Name
Try to observe your own reactions when you’re reading the subject lines of emails that you’ve received, the ones that are sure to grab your attention are the ones with your name in the subject line.  Adding the recipient’s name gives conveys the impression that the email was sent personally to the reader. It’s important to note, however, that appending names on every email that has nothing else personalised in it, is a little too gimmicky. So be sure to include something personalised for the customer in the body of the email, otherwise don’t use their names to personalise the subject line.

Solution-Oriented Subject
Rather than using a brand or product name on the subject line, consider writing your subject to propose a solution. For instance, a website that sells and is promoting, antivirus software could have the following subject line; “How to get your computer protected from all viruses” rather than a product oriented subject such as “Brand New Antivirus software released”.

Keep it Intriguing
Leave the customers hanging by putting ellipsis on the subject line(...). This suggests that there is a continuation on the topic, thereby arousing curiosity.
Restrict information to Top ten lists

There is something interesting and attention grabbing about a top ten list because readers tend to like to see valuable information in scannable, bite-size chunks. A concise, informative list delivers more value than endless paragraphs - even if they contain the same amount of information.

KISS – Keep it Short and Simple
The ‘KISS Principle’ is well known in the field of marketing but seems harder to achieve in email marketing. Try to get your message across in two words rather than half-a-dozen as this will allow it to stand out from the rest of the content in the customer’s inbox.

The above points are just some of the basic guidelines you need to follow to create an email marketing campaign that is effective and won’t end up on the recipient’s trash folder. Try to keep in mind that choosing and using the right combination of words is vital in creating that all important, attention-grabbing, email subject line.

Picture this - you have everything in place - a good marketing campaign, you’ve built up a subscriber list, formed the perfect subject line with irresistible content and you even have the click tracking software in place to monitor results. You’ve tested it to a small group of people and received a positive response. These efforts however, will be wasted if you don’t successfully deliver it to the recipient. Email deliverability refers to the success of actually getting your emails delivered to the right person. In the world of email marketing, ‘almost’ is just not enough. Unless your email gets to the recipient, then your job is not done.

If you’re new to the world of email marketing, then you might wonder what the problem of email deliverability might be. You make an email and enter an email address and expect it to be delivered successfully. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way in email marketing; you send to hundreds, even thousands of recipients but not everyone will get your email. In fact, 10% will most likely not.

There are various reasons why your emails are not reaching the intended destinations. The email boxes of the people you’re sending are first assessing your emails and then classifying if it will be sent to your inbox, marked as spam, or automatically deleted.

In order to ensure a high rate of email deliverability you should not try to beat spam filters but rather learn how to work with them.

If you’re hiring the services of a company to manage your email marketing solution, then they must be able to monitor the number of emails that went out and the ones that bounced back due to issues such as full inboxes or bad email addresses.

Aside from these, there are organisations that follow blocking policies and all emails from blocked IP addresses are automatically deleted. Some use blacklist software to identify emails that need to be blocked. There is nothing you can do when your emails are blocked or deleted,. However, there are methods to improve your email marketing campaign in order to reach a far greater number of targeted readers. This is where an email tracking service comes in handy.

This can tremendously help improve your email marketing campaign and can identify other issues that affect email deliverability - such as Content Filters where certain phrases must be avoided so as not to be tagged as spam - and Permission Filters where all emails that didn’t originate from an authorised source are blocked immediately.
All your hard work creating an email marketing campaign and establishing your contact list will be wasted if you don’t track and monitor the deliverability of your email.