The bundled templates also have a thumbnail preview for quick viewing.

GroupMail Email Templates

Read more about the latest GroupMail release notes.

If you don’t already have a GroupMail license, now is a good time to buy one!

If you do have a GroupMail license, but the Upgrade Protection has expired, now is a good time to renew it!

At the time of this post we have raised above and beyond our target with a current figure of €3020 (€2910 at mycharity.ie/event/infactahair and €110 through another page)!

More to come tomorrow so check back and if you haven’t donated yet, there is still time, http://www.mycharity.ie/event/infactahair

Thursday 18th…

This morning we were back in Salon 2 getting for the big shave.  Excellent results with the fund raising with a current figure of €3485 from Infacta and an incredible €330,000 plus raised by everyone involved with the TodayFM event!

There are still two more of us to send pictures (from Wexford and Washington State) but hopefully we should be able to get those up soon!

Thanks to everyone who sponsored us, enjoy the photos!

Just added more photos! (Thanks to Darren for taking some great photos)

On February 18th we will be offering up our hair either to be shaved or dyed and will share the experience here for everyone to enjoy!  Special thanks to Salon2 in Sligo where we are having our hair shaved or dyed on the 18th.

Before, during and after photos (maybe video as well) will be uploaded for everyone to enjoy and/or poke fun at!

You can sponsor us by visiting our mycharity.ie page, http://www.mycharity.ie/event/infactahair

First, follow their instructions for exporting your ACT contacts.

Then, follow our instructions for importing a .csv file into GroupMail.

Voila.

*** Holiday Support Hours ***

24 December 2009 - available until 1300 GMT
25 December 2009 - closed
26 December 2009 - closed
27 December 2009 - closed
28 December 2009 - email support only
29 December 2009 - email support only
30 December 2009 - email support only
31 December 2009 - email support only
1 January 2010 - closed
2 January 2010 - closed
3 January 2010 - closed
4 January 2010 - normal hours resume

Thank you, in advance, for your understanding.

We wish you all a wonderful holiday season and an especially good New Year!

So, what kind of html should we use in our email campaigns Ryan?

Number 1: Do use nested tables to create your HTML email layout.

This may seem counter intuitive for modern web designers but you should look at HTML email as being several years behind the current web standards.

Sample Code:

Nested tables Code

Number 2: Also include a plain text part with your HTML email message.

If you send a HTML only message, some spam filters will block these messages, and some other recipients will only receive a blank message (those who have email clients configured not to view HTML emails). Therefore it is important to also include a text only part. GroupMail (and I’m sure other email clients) allow you to send text only and html emails together [more].

Adding Text Only Version to GroupMail:

GroupMail plain-text

Number 3: Define styling in your HTML email using standard HTML attributes

Standard HTML attributes include height and width for images, font style etc. If you use CSS it should also be defined directly within the HTML tag.

Good advice, anything else that might be useful?

Number 4: Test test and test some more.

The more testing you can do the better idea you will have as to what works for your needs.

What about images, should they be embedded or linked to?

Hmm, this is a little tricky. Personally, I use embedded images, but I ensure that the images are small and optimized to a web resolution of ideally 72ppi [That looks like another blog post to me!].

However, this is really is a personal choice and there are pro’s and cons for both, you can view some of these here.

Would you recommend any software for creating the html messages?

Well, GroupMail includes it’s own wysiwyg html editor which works pretty well, but if you want to go with something a little more robust, I’d recommend Adobe Photoshop for manipulating images, and Dreamweaver for the html.

Any final thoughts?

It’s a good idea to either create email accounts with as many of email clients as possible - create both web-based and desktop clients, or alternatively use an email analysis tool in order to test your html email across a number of popular clients (Email on Acid is really cool & free).

So there you have it .. some practical html tips for your email campaigns. If there is anything you feel we’ve missed, leave a comment!

Image by Beatrice Murch

As a marketer it is sometimes too easy to get tied up in your own little world and forget about your overall goals and objectives. Be warned though, in the context of email marketing, forget about the recipients at your peril. While you might have your targets and deadlines, forget to communicate and engage with your audience and your efforts could very well result in the opposite of what you want to achieve.

The thinking of a typical email recipient

- I am not an email address on your list, I am not a potential conversion, an additional open or click-thru, I am a person, I want to be entertained, I want to see something useful and relevant to me right now, I am selfish and self centred - disappoint me - I may never take the time to open your messages again !

- If I don’t recognise a name/company/brand in the From or Subject Line there is a high chance I’ll ignore you.

- Pretty much every waking hour and most places I look I’ve brands stuck in my face and I’m bombarded with ads, they’re usually bundled with things I consume - TV, newspapers, web sites … even so most of the time I actively ignore the ads - so you sending another one to my inbox, and worse, if there is nothing to accompany it for me to consume - what do you think your chances are ?

- If I don’t know or remember you - in my world you’re a nobody - if your a nobody I probably won’t listen to or trust you - no trust - no sale

- Tell me “do not reply”, I may be petty about it, if you won’t read my replies - I won’t read yours.

- If the message content is pretty much the same as the last 100 messages you’ve sent me maybe just worded a little different, I stopped reading them a long time ago.

- My definition of spam is I don’t want to see your emails in my inbox any more, as such I’m just as likely to click This is Spam as opposed to using your Opt-Out link, regardless of how I came to be on your list !

The moral of the story ?

Bugging or boring your target audience doesn’t make for good marketing, simply avoiding this pitfall could in fact put you head and shoulders above most of those you’re competing with for attention !
Oh yeah and there is no such thing at the typical recipient !

GroupMail rated 8.3 Excellent

Happy to see Service & support getting a high score, it’s something we put a lot of time and effort into.

There were a number of areas in GroupMail they highlighted as “could do better” (a favourite teacher comment on my school report cards from the past) - in summary

GroupMail isn’t the prettiest Windows application, but the interface is clean and uncluttered …

The user interface has not had a facelift since the release of Windows XP so I guess it does look a bit dated, it’s not in our immediate plans to update this, making the interface even cleaner, less cluttered and more useable is probably a higher priority from the feedback we’re getting.

GroupMail Business Edition provides 20 HTML templates. They’re basic …

Email templates are something we are working on, all going well we should have a fresh batch of new design templates available with the next release - here is a sneak preview to the fruits of Ryan’s work to date (he was also good enough to make some of his own photos available for use)

GroupMail Email Templates

The only niggle was that GroupMail introduced redundant column data that wasn’t in our Outlook database; it also renamed column fields — for instance, ‘Web site’ in Outlook was renamed to ‘Business home page’ in GroupMail, and ‘Mobile phone’ was Americanised to ‘Cellphone’.

Microsoft Outlook is good enough to not show those ID columns to the user, GroupMail should do the same, we are planning to do some further address book integration work with GroupMail in the next couple of weeks, should be able to make those unsightly columns disappear too.
On the Americanised terms -or is it Americanized ? despite GroupMail being born and brought up in Ireland, historically we have tended to go with US English by default (as its our biggest market). Now that GroupMail is available in a variety of languages, it would be pretty straight forward to offer both US and UK English options - would it be ironic if one of our 2 American team members offered to do the translation ? Go on Tom or Ryan you know you want to

Anyhow, ZDNet UK editor’s overall verdict:

GroupMail is good value for businesses of all sizes. The software isn’t exactly pretty, but its interface is clean and, above all, presents all the essential features. GroupMail allows you to create newsletters, while its impressive list handling handles issues like subscribe/unsubscribe, removals, bounced email address deletion and so on.

Cheers guys for taking the time to check out our product, it’s always interesting for us to see it from a fresh/non-biased perspective, check out the full review here.

GroupMail support for Windows 7

Well tomorrow is the official launch date for Microsoft Windows 7 and from playing around with beta versions since April and more recent releases it appears to be a much less troublesome animal that its infamous predecessor that shall remain nameless (don’t mention the war).

We have a new release of GroupMail (version 5.2.0.80) that supports Windows 7, for people using GroupMail Personal/Business Editions or Marketing Pack the new version is available for download from the customer system.

The GroupMail :: Free Edition is available for download here.

Any problems you come across using it with Windows 7 or otherwise, as always let us know.

Aside from the new OS support not an awful lot to shout about in the new version, a few bug fixes including an update that resolves a number of problems when deleting recipients / processing opt-outs when your mailing list is stored in an external database (e.g. SQL Server/MySQL etc).

So unless your upgrading to Windows 7, not too many reasons to upgrade your version of GroupMail. We’re aiming to have a more substantial release out in the next few weeks with a number of exciting additions/improvements - I’ll post more details on these separately.

This is possible by adding multiple addresses, separated by commas, in the Reply To: field in the User Information screen of GroupMail’s Account Properties.

Note: When a recipient replies to your message, they will see all of the addresses you have listed in the Reply To field in their reply.