Remember the blog article that I posted about the power of social media?  Well maybe, as a result of that and the speed at which social media has grown in the online marketing world; you’re wondering ‘If that can be accomplished with just Facebook and Twitter, why do I need email Marketing?’

eMarketer recently reported that social media usage is on the increase and the new Marketing opportunities that are presented go a long way to explaining the attraction of Social Marketing. That said, it was less than a month ago when Marketing Sherpa’s weekly chart was indicating that marketers are still impressed by email marketing and believe it to be as rewarding as ever. Which begs the question; ‘Which is the most effective?’

Some find that it’s not the easiest question to answer, but this case study by MarketingVox, illustrates perfectly the effective differences between email and social media marketing.



Email marketing has the ability to convert twice as many sales as social media.

When all is said and done, the benefits gained from marketing a healthy brand and keeping it highly visible and well-recognised across all marketing channels, are not as useful as converting that interest into sales – that, after all, is where the money is!

How do they compare?

Mary Spio is a partner in Gen2Media, an agency in the music industry working with such big names as John Mayer and The Black Eyed Peas.  She studied two of their music artists, (she referred to them as A and B, so I’ll stay with that). She compared their different marketing approaches and how that effected their individual sales.

Artist A, got over 20 million views on the social network, YouTube - but showed no real interest in email marketing campaigns.  Artist B began by implementing an email campaign to enable direct contact with fans. Using a list of 2 million subscribers he launched a personalised email campaign over a full weekend which offered his subscribers exclusive tracks through iTunes.  In just those two days his email campaign raised $ 700,000.

When it is properly managed, Social media is a fantastic tool for attracting an audience of existing and potential customers to your brand but it is a mass-communication tool.  Yes, it’s also true that email is a mass-communication tool, but it is more personal! With email you take your communication to an individual follower, addressing them by name and through their own inbox. 

Which is the winning strategy?  As a firm believer in ‘Having your cake and eating it’, I prefer to have the best of both worlds.  The art is in knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each tool and using them so that they complement each other.

As highlighted by this case study, it’s great to broaden your reach using social media but we must never lose sight of the fact that consumers respond much better when they are treated as individuals.

With email marketing you can target your subscribers individually, creating the foundation to build your own loyal customer base.  Not to mention, converting those sales.

Are you one of the many Graphicmail users who diligently follow the links to our blog that we post on Twitter and Facebook? If you are, you may have already seen the blog article about the online revolution. If not, it’s worth checking out as is this video which contains some social media statistics that you may find interesting. It’s becoming more obvious every day that email is recognized as the top performing direct and online marketing channel so, it makes sense that combining email and social media is going to have a massive impact and to help with this we have released a new way to compliment them both.

Social share

This tool lets you publish your email newsletter straight to your Twitter account.  The newsletter title together with a link to your full newsletter will then automatically appear as a tweet – with no manual intervention form you!

As Twitter each Tweet to 140 characters, you will be delighted to hear that The Graphicmail Development Team have created another helpful gadget called GMtiny which is our very own URL abbreviator – it shortens your newsletter link, reducing that overlong and unsightly URL to just a few characters. How handy is that?

Not content with that, we have already begun work to extend this feature so that you will be able to publish across even more social networks. Next one; Facebook! Keep watching, we’ll notify you when this happens.

But, if you’re not already involved, don’t wait for that, start now by using our new social share tool to enhance your brand exposure online. Expand your subscriber audience and give your sales a boost by engaging more fully with these potential customers.

And, don’t forget – Graphicmail is also on Facebook and Twitter. Go there now, be a friend and follow us. We really enjoy reading about what our followers are doing.

Whilst you’re at it, check out the Graphicmail tools which you can use to insert social widgets in your footer – then, after your newsletter goes, check the social widget statistics section in your reports.

For those of you still unaware or unconvinced about the benefits of Social Media, here’s a really good article by Chris Moerdyk of BizCommunity reviewing Erik Qualman’s book; Socialnomics. Chris does an excellent job of summarising many of the important aspects regarding the development of  social media, some of which will maybe make you consider, as they did me………………..

If Facebook gets more traffic every week in the US than Google - and YouTube has become the second largest online search engine, then it’s more likely that your customers will locate the product they are seeking on a social site like Facebook or YouTube than they will on Google. Which begs the question………..” What happens if they can’t find your product when they are searching their social media? ”

Social media is the online version of what has traditionally been referred to as ‘word-of-mouth’ : Qualman states that, “whilst 78% of consumers trust recommendations from their peers, only 14% place their trust in advertisements”. So what happens when your peers aren’t recommending you through their new word-of-mouth (social media)?

Social search has grown to become the new online phenomenon: Search engines are now giving preference to companies based on their social mentions.  In Qualman’s opinion we will not, in future search for products or services as they will find us using social media.

But how does this link with email marketing?

Graphicmail have for some time now, been providing a variety of ways to integrate your email marketing with social media because we want to help you and your business to be prepared for each new wave of online expansion.  Last year we provided social widgets for your email footer, allowing your subscribers to share your newsletters through their social network accounts. Now we’ve added a new social widget reporting tool allowing you to track those who shared what  with who and through which network they shared it.  Finally, we released our new social share feature in our newsletter

We’ve added to our reporting tools so you can now see reports on your Social Widgets activity

As you are by now aware, you can add social widgets to your email footer and link to social networks so your subscribers can now share your newsletter with their friends and connections using their own social profile – just by clicking on the widget.

So what’s in the social widget report?

The decision by your subscribers to share your newsletter within their profile on any of the social networks means that all of their friends and followers can view it too. This means of course that your newsletter and your brand are gaining exposure within an entirely new contacts network.

The report tells you the number of your subscribers who have clicked the widgets to share your newsletter, who they shared with and which network it was – providing you with an easy way to track the level of exposure that your campaigns are getting through social media and this media gets more and more in the spotlight, it is definitely one ‘bandwagon’ to climb aboard.

After you do, let us know your thoughts

As we are regularly providing you with hints, tips & features which we hope you will use to enhance your email campaigns, we thought you may be interested to see a case study from a major media company who optimised the entertainment email that they send out every week, with a series of small changes that they found showed incremental lifts in key metrics, including four tactics that were aimed at simplifying the overall template look and clarifying the calls-to-action. 

•    They reduced the number of articles in the newsletter.
•    They moved the images and the calls to action so that they displayed above the email fold.
•    They added a navigation bar so that it appeared at the top of their newsletter.
•    They applied A/B split testing so that they could test the effectiveness of differing subject lines – one against the other.

If you would like to see how they implemented these changes and the results that were yielded for their campaign click here. Once you have done that, why not try implementing some of the changes yourself using the GraphicMail tools and features? 

Here are some ideas to help and inspire you:

•    Conduct A/B split tests
•    Read the blog article on forward-thinking email design
•    Create a call to action by adding social widgets
•    Learn how to become an email marketing pro

 Click here to read the full article

MarketingSherpa's Email Marketing Benchmark Report 2010 has reported a massive increase in inquiries for social sharing features, which allow subscribers to post email content to their social networks.

As an immediate response, we here at GraphicMail are now giving you the option to have your subscribers share email content through social widgets which you can now place in your footer.

It’s easy, it’s simple and here’s how to do it :

In your Graphicmail Account, click into >> Advanced Mode >> Setup and Options  >> Header/Footer settings >> Set the ‘General Settings’ (at the top) to “Advanced Settings “Click “Email Footer” to expand it. Select “Add social media links on all emails” and you’re done. It’s as simple as that !


For now, there are the 6 major social sharing networks. As GraphicMail designer, Ruan Benade says : "We have limited ourselves to these six major networks, as it is not advisable to clutter your email design with too many social sharing buttons, the buttons we have chosen represents the five most popular social networks at present." As the social networking landscape is a constantly changing, we expect to add a few more in the future!
Have your subscribers share your newsletter on Facebook, Twitter, DiggIt, MySpace, Delicious and Google Bookmarks.

GraphicMail is again proving to be one of the innovative email marketing people! Setting our lab rats free to mingle with the social crowd has paid off; they’ve found out that email marketing and social networking are the very best of friends!
As best friends always step out together, our developers are showing their newly found relationship through our footer.

What do we have on offer? Social widgets for the footer of your email campaign!

Maybe you are a member of a social network; maybe you are not, the fact is that most of your readers very probably are. Being members of virtual social groups such as Twitter and Facebook, gives them the ability to interact with “friends” and to exchange ideas, personal notes and review products, etc. It works like this : you add social widgets to the footer of your newsletter – then, when you send it out, your readers can forward it to their friends through their social network chosen from the following:  Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, DiggIt, Delicious and Google Bookmarks. They do this by clicking on the social network link in the footer, which then takes them to that network site. They then receive a prompt to sign in to their social network account, and the newsletter link (URL) can be pasted into their news headline or status line automatically – that’s it!

It’s a simple tool that will have a massive word-of-mouth effect for your business and products. What better way to advertise than to have your own clients recommend you to all of their friends, virtual or not!

Sounds great – but how easy is it to setup in your GraphicMail account?
It’s simple! Follow this route >>> Setup and Options >>> Header/Footer settings >>> from the dropdown, select “Email Footer” >>> click on the “Add social media links on all emails” and you’re done!

The major social network platforms are there now, but we will be adding more in the future.

Social networking is doing wonders for our brand. We now announce our promotions, new features, email marketing tips and more on Facebook and Twitter .

Because we want to assist you in building your reputation in the social sphere too and help you to experience additional online success, we have added this extra feature to the list of your footer customisation choices.

So……… Tweet away, join “The Book”, and Digg your article.

How do I link my GraphicMail email newsletters to my Facebook page?

Facebook is a great way to communicate with friends, family and general followers, so why not invite them to read your email marketing newsletters?

It's easy too! Simply, copy the hyperlink of your email newsletter and paste it in to your Facebook profile.  You can find the link to the newsletter on the top of the Preview Pane in the Edit menu.  Adding this link to your profile will also add the link to the News Feed and Mini Feed of you friends on the Facebook network.

You can also take this a step further!  If you’ve set-up your free GraphicMail microsite with your archived newsletters, containing all your past email newsletters that you've sent out, you can simply get the link from the microsite page and add your entire back catalogue into your Facebook profile too!

What's the point in having a great email newsletter with nobody to send it to? That's like being all dressed up for a party with nowhere to go. So why not take your email newsletter campaign to where the best parties are congregating, on Facebook? All you need is your own Facebook Fan page and your GraphicMail subscription form code.

STEP 1. Ensure that your subscription from is correctly customised
Once you’re happy with your customisation, go to the Embed Form menu and copy the non-javascript code into NotePad or a TextEdit.

STEP 2. Adding the FBML application to your Facebook account
Facebook has it’s own code - called FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and you’ll need to have the Facebook FBML application if you want to add widgets to your Fan Page.  To add it, simply search for Static FBML and click on ‘Add to my page’. 

STEP 3. Creating the Facebook Subscription page
When you have added the app, go to your Facebook page and click on ‘Edit Page’.  Find FBML in your list of applications and click the pencil icon.  In Box Title give your tab its name like ‘Email signup’ or ‘Email updates’.  In the FBML section just copy and paste the HTML non-javascript code from the Embed Form section of GraphicMail. 

STEP 4. Adding the Subscription Tab to your Facebook Navigation
Under the Add a New Tab dropdown in the FBML application you will see the custom name you just gave to the subscription page you created in Step 2.

STEP 5. Try it out
Go to your Facebook Fan Page and do a test subscription to make sure it’s all working.