Hi Group Mailers!

I was reading an article on About.com Email today and noticed a call to nominate my favorite Windows Email Program for the 2012 About.com Email Readers Choice Awards.

I immediately started to daydream about how cool it would be if all GroupMail customers rallied and nominated our GroupMail Email Newsletter software as their favorite Windows email program for 2012.

GroupMail has won a many awards over the years, but the thought of it beating Outlook or Outlook Express as the favorite Windows Email Program was fodder for a pretty awesome dream.

“I remember being lifted onto the shoulders of thousands of people in the crowd, accepting the award and addressing the massive crowd; thanking everyone who voted, and especially all of our customers who make GroupMail as great as it is…”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful?

As dreamy as it all might seem, it actually is possible. I mean, statistically, it’s a heck of a lot more probable than any of us winning the lottery. If (and that’s a big If) everyone (or even a motivated percentage, representing everyone) who loves GroupMail just took a few minutes to…

Nominate GroupMail as your favorite Windows Email Program for 2012.

Wake me up when it’s over…

(by the way, from what I remember about my daydream; my speech was pretty awesome!)

So, without further ado….

Here is a quick tour of our new GroupMail Email Newsletter Software website

1. The new, Front Page of our GroupMail Website!

2. Review GroupMail Features and Technical Specifications on the Features page.

3. Check pricing on our different GroupMail Editions and place an order on our Pricing page.

4. Find support articles on our Support page. Search article by category or by keywords.

5. We love to hear from you. Contact us on our Contact Page.

If you have any links to GroupMail articles, pages, or products; you might double check them. We tried hard to minimize disruption with the redesign, but sometimes, link structures and paths can change as a result of these things.

Thanks to everyone who helped to move this project forward — and for everyone who stops by to check out the result of our hard work!

If you didn’t notice, then you need to start reading our blog more.

To summarize the disappeared posts, they included incredible tips, novel insights, original Christmas poetry and best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year.

If you were dependent upon, moved or even somewhat entertained by any of the content that vanished in thin air from this space recently, I most humbly apologize on behalf of the web server whereupon this blog resides.

Oh, I almost forgot. We also had two rather significant GroupMail updates during this time.

GroupMail v. 5.3.108 was released on December 6th and included an awesome new feature that makes it easier than ever before to track who opens your email and clicks on the links in your message.
[release notes]

GroupMail v. 5.3.110 was just released a few days ago and includes a much requested new feature. GroupMail will now automatically store the date someone is added to your group. From feedback we get, this is very important for maintaining and segmenting contact lists for many of our customers.
[release notes]

What else?

Well, as our friend Garrison Keillor would say: That’s it from GroupMail, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at GroupMail!

Turkey dinner
With all the veggies
Makes you ’rounder
Around the edgies.

- Tom O’Leary

…and now for something truly entertaining

Only several days after the king of Black Friday, Wal*Mart, announced that they would be manning their cash registers at 10pm on Thanksgiving Day to kick off their Black Friday deals; Toys ‘R Us decided to one up them by promoting their 9pm opening on the same turkey day.

Traditionally, many retailers open their doors at midnight on Thanksgiving night to signify the start of the holiday shopping season.

Perhaps one day, the term Christmas in July will be a literal reference.

Over $648 Million dollars were spent on Black Friday in 2010, up 9 percent from 2009.

The National Retail Federation predicts that 152 million Americans will work off their Thanksgiving Day dinner by shopping on Black Friday 2011. That’s 14 million more than last year.

Even more promising for American retailers is that 33% of consumers surveyed in 2011 say that they will “definitely” shop on Black Friday, up from 27% last year.

“32 percent of consumers will specifically keep track of email coupons that they receive from their favorite retailers.”

“Though many retailers are already touting select Black Friday ads, there’s no doubt we’ll all be blown away by what retailers still have in their bag of tricks for shoppers,” said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay. “We fully expect to see excited shoppers as early as midnight at stores around the country, as many holiday shoppers would rather stay up all night to take advantage of retailers’ Black Friday deals rather than set their alarm to wake up the next morning.”  continue reading

What will Americans be shopping for on Black Friday 2011?

From the National Retail Federation Black Friday 2011 Press Release:

NRF will release the results of its Black Friday weekend survey by 1:30 p.m. EST on Sunday, November 28 and will hold a special media briefing at 2 p.m. EST. Information will include what time people started shopping on Black Friday, where they shopped, how much they spent, and what they purchased. NRF will also be releasing findings from a new survey on the number of people expected to shop on Cyber Monday.

NRF’s offices will be closed on Black Friday and throughout the weekend, so please use the communications team’s direct lines to set up print and broadcast interviews with NRF spokespeople. (This is the only way to contact the PR team over the holiday weekend):

- Kathy Grannis: (202) 626-8189 or cell (202) 821-7513 or grannisk@nrf.com
- Ellen Davis: (202) 626-8127 or cell (703) 474-3446 davise@nrf.com
- Kara Goehring (202) 661-3055 or cell (318) 918-8830 or goehringk@nrf.com

Have you sent your own Black Friday email promotions yet?

Get them out this week with our award-winning newsletter and email marketing software.

Here is an example a customer sent in yesterday.

So what the heck causes this HTML email horizontal image splitting and how can it be fixed?

The problem occurs when images are juxtaposed without space in an HTML table. Because there is no HTML standard for email, the issue surfaces periodically and varies from email client to email client. So, basically, it could happen to any image in an HTML email, and particularly to juxtaposed images embedded in tables in the HTML.

Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome users are the ones most often reporting the “mysterious gap” or horizontal break in images. For some reason, there don’t seem to be many reports from IE users.

How can I fix this mysterious gap or horizontal break in images?

Here are a few HTML Coding Tips for Broken Images in Email

1. The fix for most people is to add <style>img {display:block}</style> at the top of their HTML coding.

* Hotmail and Gmail have the same problem rendering  juxtaposed images, but Gmail seems to require an additional, inline “img” tag step to resolve it.

2. For Gmail, just add style=”display:block” into the “img” tag for any broken images that appear to have this horizontal gap.

example:

<img style=”display:block” src=”myimage.jpg” alt=”HTML code to fix horizontal image gaps in email” />

3. Another fix is to add “line-height: 1px;” instead of “line-height: 0;” to the table cell containing the image. This seems to fix the problem in most email clients.

4. A final option is to set line-height to 1px in <td> cells within an HTML table and to set display:inline; border:0 in the img HTML. This approach seems to work for displaying images in FireFox, Chrome, Safari and Outlook 2007.

Do you have any HTML coding tips for broken images to share?

In the Email Control Center, you can view the number of SMTP relays your account has used.

To View Your SMTP Relays

1. Log in to your Account Manager.
2. From the My Products section, click Email.
3. Click Manage Account next to the account you want to use.
4. For the account with the email address you want to use, click (Show addresses).
5. Click the email address you want to use, and then go to the Advanced tab.
   The number of SMTP relays you have used displays.

If you want to send more than 250 emails per day from an email address, you can purchase more SMTP relays.

To Purchase More SMTP Relays

1. Log in to your Account Manager.
2. From the My Products section, click Email.
3. Click Manage Account next to the account you want to use.
4. Click Buy More SMTP Relays, and then complete the purchase process.

After you purchase more SMTP relays, assign them to your email address.

To Assign More SMTP Relays to Your Email Address

1. Log in to your Account Manager.
2. From the My Products section, click Email.
3. Click Manage Account next to the account you want to use.
4. For the account with the email address you want to use, click (Show addresses).
5. Click the email address you want to use, and then go to the Advanced tab.
6. Select the number of SMTP relays you want to assign to the email address, and then click OK.

After adding more SMTP relays, use our newsletter and email marketing software to send more messages!

Volume Licensing for GroupMail Newsletter and Email Marketing Software

GroupMail Personal Edition volume licensing and/or site license pricing

1 to 4 licenses/users: $139.95/ea
5 to 9 licenses/users: $99.95/ea
10 + licenses/users:   $89.95/ea

GroupMail Business Edition volume licensing  and/or site license pricing

1 to 4 licenses/users: $349.95/ea
5 to 9 licenses/users: $254.95/ea
10 + licenses/users:   $219.95/ea

Volume licensing and site license pricing for our newsletter and email marketing software appears automatically on our GroupMail order form when such quantities are entered.

If you have any special volume licensing or site license requirements that are unique to your organizational needs, please contact sales@infacta.com.

BACKUP CONTACTS

SLEEP BETTER AT NIGHT

“Can I backup contacts in GroupMail?
I just spent two days importing contacts
and I think I would do something bad
if something happened and I lost all of my data.”

Not only CAN you backup your contacts. You SHOULD backup your contacts.

HOW TO BACKUP CONTACTS IN GROUPMAIL

GroupMail makes it really easy to backup contacts, messages, drafts, templates and sent items, sender accounts and even options, settings and Add-ons.

The GroupMail tutorial library has complete instructions on how to backup contacts and also how to restore a backup of your contacts.

My recommendation?

Backup contacts and sleep better at night.

Download our newsletter and email marketing software today and backup your own contacts!

Are you using Halloween to cast a spell on your customers?

Just like a good witch will add a variety of ghoulishly good ingredients into her cauldron (eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog) smart retailers add Halloween and other popular holidays to their Marketing Mix.

Halloween cartoons, like the one below that I created back in 2006, use Halloween as a way to share some humor about marketing.

But while Halloween cartoons might be funny, Halloween marketing is no laughing matter. This year, 161 Million People Plan on Celebrating Halloween, according to the National Retail Federation

“…Ghouls and goblins galore, Halloween celebrations will be BOOming this year as more people than ever are expected to partake in traditional festivities. According to NRF’s 2011 Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey conducted by BIGresearch, seven in 10 Americans (68.6%) plan to celebrate Halloween, up from 63.8 percent last year and the most in NRF’s nine-year survey history. Those celebrating are expected to spend slightly more too; the average person will shell out $72.31 on decorations, costumes and candy, up from $66.28 last year. Total Halloween spending is expected to reach $6.86 billion…” keep reading if you dare

So if Halloween is not included, along with eye of newt, as part of your current marketing mix, you might ask yourself why?

Don’t be scared.

It’s not too late to trick or treat your customers. You can download our newsletter and email marketing software just minutes after placing your order! Get your Halloween campaign out this weekend!