A few months have gone by since our 6-part series of blogs highlighting the launch of our TriggerMail feature and our recent case study  about the benefits available, I thought that we should maybe take a look at the usefulness of autoresponders (AKA TriggerMails).
If you’re unsure what TriggerMails are, checkout our video or the blog series.

The benefits of sending automated emails are very clear; timesaving, strengthening customer relationships with such things as an annual ‘Happy Birthday’, but there is something else which was shared with you in our segmentation blog article ; Triggered (or Prompted) emails provide a way to target your readers – much the same as segmentation.

So, where do I start ?

If you’ve decided to give it a try, and I strongly recommend that you do, begin by setting up a couple of triggers; if you’ve captured the dates of birth for your subscribers, simply setup an email to be sent to them say, 3 or 4 days beforehand giving a list of items that you will happily discount during the week in which their birthday falls. It is a fact that Birthday email messages generate a very good response and conversion-to-sales ratio.

Basically you are able to integrate your segmentation and TriggerMails, allowing you to monitor a customer’s past purchases, their account anniversary, any reviews that they may have posted on your site, payment reminders, even their wedding anniversaries and then set TriggerMail to automatically send them an email relevant to that occasion.  It can be anything from congratulations and best wishes, to product information or discounts on something they might find of interest.

If the response from your subscribers is positive you can always find more ways of integrating evermore TriggerMails into your campaigns.

What reason would I have to set these TriggerMails? 

Think of this as just another way for contacting your customers and develop the relationship between them and your brand, it tells them that you understand them and their interests. The result is that you email them more often and, because your emails have more relevance, they respond in a more relevant manner.

Isn’t this likely to result in my readers thinking that I’m bombarding them?

No, although you will be keeping in touch with more frequency, it’s a more relevant contact and these contacts are prompted by your subscriber’s response to a date or product specifically relating to them. Not all the contacts in your list will have received the email, as you only sent the emails to small proportions of your list.  Also, because these emails are more targeted, the result will be a greater ROI than your untargeted bulk email sends.

But doesn’t this mean that I should stop sending out mass emails and newsletters?

Of course not!  Bulk sending your newsletter is the way to spread your message and to gather more subscribers.  After all, it is the one that all your subscribers initially signed up to receive.  Using TriggerMail is your way of refining those relationships more and pushing potential customers into becoming actual purchasing customers, or existing customers to make further purchases.  Autoresponders are there to complement your email campaigns by balancing your bulk broadcast emails with relevant, targeted emails sent to a specific, small portion of your subscribers and, because they’re automated it releases you to focus on other things – be it a reviving cup of tea or an in-depth promotional strategy.

Put simply, TriggerMails added to your campaigns help you to send the right message at the right time to spur your subscribers to action.

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!

No doubt you’ve been waiting for this – a further improvement to the Graphicmail email newsletter software – in fact, not one! but TWO great new additions to the Subscriber Segmentation feature- so now, when you’re using numerical values, you can select either the “greater than” or the “less than” option. 

Really handy if you want to capture all of your subscribers who are, for instance, over 21 or over 40 or, perhaps all subscribers who are less than 65.

Maybe a small addition – but it offers great potential – give it some thought !

Is it your responsibility to manage the job applications within your company – or are you currently seeking a job change yourself ?

Job applicants are left with a feeling  of being in limbo as with no follow-up after the interview whilst employers complain that they do not have sufficient time to respond to all of the applicants who were not successful. Although applicants do not want rejection, it is a vital part of the recruitment process to keep all of them; successful and unsuccessful, informed and the way you do this has a direct effect on your company’s reputation. So, how can you keep everyone informed in a time efficient way ?

I think we may be able to assist. GraphicMail offers an email marketing solution that gives you the ability to automate your communications using personalised emails. You can also keep a close watch on the communication flow with the free reports and analytics tool available on each account.

It works !

Just post your job advert online and add a subscription form which will capture all the vital data, such as email address, name, surname, educational degree and area of expertise. This information is then sent automatically to your GraphicMail account where it is added to your mailing list, with all the additional data collected. You can organise it so that the applicants instantly receive a thank-you note using a triggered-email setup and scheduled beforehand.

Having done that, you can screen the information according to education and area of expertise. You can set up an mail campaign for those who you are further considering, and one for those who have not been successful. In the email to the suitable candidates, you can ask them to then submit their CVs to you - which is a much more efficient and time saving way than obtaining CVs from every original applicants and then having to labour through them as attachments! You can then send an email of rejection to the rest of the candidates. To maintain a high level of respect and to keep the communications personal in spite of the automated process, you can personalise each mailer and, furthermore, send it from your own personal email address.

Why should you consider using Graphicmail in this process ?

Reputation, reputation, reputation; because, not only are today’s candidates selling themselves to you, you must also sell yourself to them in your response. Your company image is never more in the spotlight! You can never be sure that today’s rejected applicants are not going to become tomorrow’s new employees, and even if they don’t, it’s your company’s reputation that is at stake. In a time when consumers rely heavily on the testimonials and recommendations of other consumers, it is imperative to communicate timely and in a highly professional manner. Remember that we live in a world, where everything can be published in an instant - and by anyone – there are ever-growing social networks and blogger sites !

So you thought GraphicMail was all about bulk email messages?

Well, think again! Your campaigns can now be send to a segmented list. Our new subscriber segmentation tool is fresh from the GraphicMail lab and allows you to target a segmented group of clients who fit one or more specific profiles. This means that you can send to, for example, only divorced men who love motor Racing and are aged between 28 and 38 years old. All that you need to do is to setup your subscription form to capture the relevant information, or send out a survey to which requests them to complete all the details. It’s useful to remember that some people change habits and hobbies like others change their socks, so make sure that you spring clean your segmented list on a fairly regular basis. Learn how relevancy drives better responses plus the various different ways you can split up your email list to ensure that you hit your target much more often.

Segmentation is simple with GraphicMail.  You profile your subscribers and group them together according to their various common denominators (how you profile them is up to you). By using our ‘subscriber segmentation’ tool you can create as many segments as you wish and also save each one as you wish. You can then use them across one or more mailing lists. The Graphicmail application gives you the opportunity to create a highly targeted and effective email advertising campaign which will be of great benefit to your email marketing efforts in the longer term.

So, what are you waiting for?

Sign up for a free trial account and check it out - or sign in to your GraphicMail account.
Need some email marketing pazazz? Our support team will help you with a smile.