Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from GraphicMail!

As the year comes to a close, the GraphicMail Staff would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

We're glad to have given you the best of service during 2011 and that you've been following all our updates so keenly.

We hope you'll keep coming back in 2012, and that we can provide you with all the email and mobile marketing tools and information you'll ever need.

Thank you very much for your support. We hope you have a safe and joyful festive season.

- The GraphicMail Team                            

6 Email Marketing Predictions for 2012

As 2011 draws to a close, our thoughts race ahead to the campaign plans of tomorrow. What should the forward-thinking email marketer be considering as part of their bulk email programs for 2012?

To help with this question, here are some predictions for email in 2012:

1. More emails will be sent than ever before in 2012

Consumers are signing up to receive emails in larger numbers. Everyone in email marketing should continue to focus on relevancy to ensure that they're building quality mailing lists and, in doing so, maintaining a healthy sales conversion per audience ratio.

2. Subscribers will be demanding greater respect for their privacy

Consumers became more aware than ever this year about the amount of information available online related to their purchases and interests. Behavioral targeting via cookies has become the norm.

Perhaps the biggest impact on privacy and deliverability in 2011 came from changes to laws relating to consumer permission and protection. In 2012, you'll need to show your subscribers more than ever that you're trustworthy. It will be paramount to review your privacy and email marketing policies to be sure they meet all legal requirements for every country that you send emails to.

CAN-SPAM and the new CASL stipulations need to be adhered to or you’ll be facing grave financial penalties. It’s important to clearly display how opt-in subscriptions will be handled and to what extent user data will be stored and shared.

3. It’s time to make sure email campaigns render well on mobile screens

An increasing amount of people started reading their emails on a mobile device in 2011, and smartphone prices are predicted to continue to drop. Readers will begin to demand that all messages are legible on their mobile devices. Therefore, email needs to continue to be mobile optimised.

Ensuring that both your email and website landing pages render properly is a top priority. As smartphones become smarter and more capable of rendering HTML cleanly, there will likely be less of a need for such specialised mobile markup.

4. QR codes will become more commonplace and rewarding

You should see new list-building possibilities open up once potential subscribers are able to opt in to email communications by simply scanning a QR code. Although technically speaking it's already possible, most email service providers aren’t using QR code reading features.

5. The lines between email and social will blur even further

We witnessed many indications that email is still alive and well this year, and there's no doubt social media is here to stay. Over time it will drive the traditional inbox to become more social. After all, social media marketing is a very effective medium to engage with prospects, drive traffic to a website and build lasting relationships. Looking at it on a superficial level, email will allow for social connections.

Social platforms will include messaging systems that are basically email with a different face.

6. Email reigns supreme

Email continues to be the single most effective marketing medium for small businesses despite efforts from some who claim that social media has taken over.

ForeSee Results’ Report on Social Media Marketing shows that 64 percent of consumers prefer to receive promotional information from retailers via email rather than social media. It's a solid argument that emailers who were considering it to be the year to convert entirely to social media marketing should stick to their guns in 2012.

Email marketing has a healthy outlook for 2012 if marketers continue with the progress they've made this year. Whether managing and optimising existing email marketing programs or enabling integration with social media and mobile, there's a real opportunity for emailers to up their game and achieve more in 2012.


Article originally published on eMarketing & Commerce

GraphicMail Closing Times for the Festive Season

GraphicMail would like to wish you well this festive season! We hope it's filled with family, friends, good food and holiday cheer!

This time of year South Africa takes a well deserved break! This means that our Support team will be running on skeleton staff from 23 December until 6 January.  During this time support will only be available via email and online chat between 1pm and 3pm GMT +2.  We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Kindly note that GraphicMail will be closed on the following days:
Monday, 26 December 2011
Tuesday, 27 December 2011
Monday,  2 January 2012

Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to another great year with you!



 

GraphicMail Email Newsletter of the Year Award

During the past few days, the GraphicMail marketing team searched far and wide through our database and looked at what certainly must've been some of the best, most expertly produced emails sent during the last 12 months.

And, after long and careful deliberation, we've selected a winner.

So without further ado,  we'd like to announce our choice for the 2011 Email Newsletter of the Year:

Some say that it if you print it upside down it will smell of magnesium - and that if you hang it in a Ferrari it glows red during the full moon... all we know is, it's the Top Gear Festival newsletter!

This newsletter was sent by the email marketers at digital brand solution Create Online. Our team had many words of praise for the captivating use of images, the savvy font alternation and the text-lean top-down layout; which makes the newsletter both easy to read and mobile friendly.

Congratulations! Stunning job!

Five Mobile Marketing trends to look out for in 2012

The mobile landscape of 2012 is ripe with possibility. Globally, it’s estimated that 5.3-billion people have mobile phones. This means that there are more people picking up a mobile phone every morning than lifting a newspaper. Increasingly, it’s not only to make calls and send texts either - mobile data traffic is trebling every year.

Mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones became the highest-selling consumer electronic device category in 2011, amounting to 115-million units in Q3 alone - according to one report, beating out PC, laptop, and netbook figures combined.

With the growing popularity of smartphones and the increasing dependence on mobile devices, it’s only natural that everyone will want to take their mobile marketing strategies for next year to a whole new level.

The world has gone mobile, so be prepared.

Mobile commerce is undergoing rampant change. Retailers and consumers are racing for devices and applications with capabilities that they’ve never had before.

As the year-end looms, many of us are left prognosticating about future trends and seeking expert forecasts to help guide our campaign strategies for the next communications cycle.

So, with only a few weeks left until 2012, here are some key stats to think about:

• The CTIA Wireless Association recently said more than 250-million Americans now have mobile phones, with 57% of teenagers believing that their device is the center of their social universe.

• Biz Report predicts that more than 10-trillion text messages will be sent next year. Text messaging programmes will account for about $14-billion of the over $19 billion it says will be spent on mobile campaigns in 2012.

• A recent AT&T report suggests that 88% of marketers will increase their spend on mobile based campaigns.

• Renowned research firm Gartner predicts mobile email users worldwide will see pronounced growth next year, increasing from 354 million in 2009 to 713 million by 2014.

Mobile Advertising

• Mobile advertising networks have delivered 350-billion global impressions in 2011, generating $800-million in media spend, and earning $275-million in revenue. The US market generated 50% of gross media spend, with Europe and Asia both at around 25%.

• In a Juniper Research report titled “Mobile Retail Marketing, Advertising, Coupons and NFC Shopping, 2011-2016″, the authors predict that the value of mobile retail marketing (a sector still in its infancy when compared to traditional advertising outlets) will hit $15 billion next year - a 50% leap up from 2011.

• Mind Commerce estimates the world market for mobile marketing and advertising revenues will reach nearly $54-billion by 2020.

Mobile Coupons

• According to a new survey commissioned by AT&T, mobile barcodes are the biggest area of potential for innovation. 66% of respondents agreed that mobile barcodes will drive new mobile marketing campaign concepts in the next year. The majority of executives surveyed said they rank mobile barcodes the second highest mobile marketing priority for 2012.

• Said Nicole Skogg, CEO of SpyderLynk and co-chair of the MMA mobile barcode division: “Mobile barcodes will continue to evolve rapidly worldwide. They offer unmatched opportunity to increase brand value by adding measurable interactive functionality and richer consumer engagement."

• One obstacle so far has been that QR code scanning capabilities have not come as standard on mobile phones, but marketers are expecting to find the required 2D barcode readers being issued as part of the original equipment on smartphones in 2012.

Mobile Web

• More than 90% of mobile phones going out onto the market today have access to the mobile web through a browser.

• The mobile web will be a leading channel in 2012. Mobile search will be the dominant activity for engaging people with branded communications, according to Google. Mobile search could become as big for Google, if not bigger, than desktop search. This holiday season, the search giant expects that 44% of total searches for last minute gifts will be from mobile devices.

• According to Forrester research, while 13% of the U.S. population searched with a mobile device in 2010 (90% with Google), mobile searchers will account for 28% of the U.S. population by 2015.

Mobile Commerce

• Mobile point-of-sale technology is an area that will see accelerated growth and innovation. However, it’s doubtful that it will become mainstream until 2015, since payment solution providers still need to address use and implementation ease without compromising security.

• International banks are developing a mobile transactional capability called “Swipe to Pay”, which is set to completely replace credit cards within a few years. This technology allows an enabled mobile phone to be swiped past a merchant’s reader to pay for goods.

• According to PayPal, global mobile payment volume increased by 516% on Black Friday and 552% on Cyber Monday this year.

• There are lots of potential mobile shoppers out there. About 43% of Americans own smartphones, according to Nielsen. Amazon says that the number of American customers who shop via their mobile device has nearly tripled since last year and almost 10% of all electronic purchases made in October 2011 came through mobile devices, according to research from IBM Coremetrics.

Mobile Video

• The arrival of HTML5 in email and on the web has given brands a lot to work with in terms of the capabilities that can be built into a mobile newsletter and a mobile site. HTML5 has enabled rich-media environments that will help brands achieve the creatives that they envision and reach people more uniformly across various mobile devices.

• Designers of mobile interfaces are continually improving their platform to maximize on the commercial aspects of mobile connectivity. Says GraphicMail designer Clint Eksteen: “Discussions are currently in place to transform our master page to HTML5. We have been doing tests on the new markup and are seeing great results, especially in Firefox and Chrome. We are definitely looking to bring HTML5 into the fold in 2012.”

• As technology advances, consumers demand more bandwidth. Current development sees the simultaneous introduction of the speedy 4G networks by operators while programming is shifting to the mobile-friendly HTML5 language. Together, this will put mobile-user experience in line with traditional internet delivery.

With the increased activity we’ve seen this year, the mobile web will become what desktop internet became in the 90s: the standard platform for anyone doing business.

Article originally published on Memeburn.