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.

We talk to Ryan Doe our guru in creating html for email campaigns (and all round nice guy), about the issues marketers face in creating html for email marketing campaigns.

In this first post, Ryan will look at some of the things to avoid when creating html emails. (In a follow-up post, Ryan will also take us through some good practices).

So, why are we having this conversation in the first place Ryan?

When creating a HTML email there are a number of points to consider. Not only must you contend with spam filters that are becoming tighter by the day, you also need to contend with the lack of standards with regard to support for HTML across 100’s of different email clients.

That sucks, what email clients are we talking about here?

Fortunately most people use only a few email clients whether they be desktop email clients such as Outlook or Thunderbird, or web based clients such as Gmail, YahooMail and AOL. The site, http://fingerprintapp.com/email-client-stats, provides statistics on email client usage both on a business user level and a consumer usage level and as you can see, there are only a few major clients that feature.

Ok, so what do we need to avoid?

We start here with what we need to avoid, as these are pretty important and can be the most frustrating part about designing HTML email.

Number 1 - Don’t use background images in your email.

With the introduction of Outlook 2007 as well as a number of web based clients, support for background images has been removed. If you know that your contacts are only using clients that can render background images then go for it, but as a general rule don’t use background images (using CSS to call background images won’t work either.)

In this example - how the email and background image should look like:

This is how the same email looks in Outlook 2007 (Oops!):

Number 2 - Don’t use externally linked CSS.

Again some clients will be able to render the external CSS, however most web based clients will either strip out the external CSS link or ignore it.

Here is an example of how the externally linked CSS should display normally:

However, this is how the same message appears in Outlook 2007:

And how it appears in Gmail (Araghhh!)

On a similar note it is generally not a good idea to use CSS defined in the header of your HTML either, as this can also be stripped out or ignored by web based email clients.

Ok, so what else can’t we do?

Number 3 - Don’t use a single image for your entire message.

Spam filters are wise to this trick and on top of that, your message size could end up quite large.

Number 4 - Don’t design your HTML email like it’s a web page.

Web browsers are much more sophisticated than email clients when it comes to rendering HTML. If you use DIV tags to define the layout of your HTML email message don’t be surprised if the layout is completely broken when received.

So there you have it - all good practices when designing for the web, but provide major issues for email.

In a follow-up post, Ryan will take us through some good practices, when designing your html emails.

Email Marketing Report Grid

GroupMetrics 2.0 is now alive and kicking, here we take a quick look at some of the new features:

Redesigned User Interface
The GroupMetrics User Interface has been redesigned from scratch. We’ve listened to all you had to say on the old system and tried to come up with a new interface which is both simple and powerful.

Email Marketing Report

Client Access
Your clients can now be granted read-only access to their email marketing reports from the Accounts page.

Flash Reports
We’ve replaced our reports with a new set of flash based reports which can be zoomed, scrolled and interacted with. They allow for far more dynamic reporting than the old GroupMetrics. It also allows us to show some new reports, such as the Map report and interactive campaign timeline.

Email Marketing Report - Map View

Safety/Security
The new system is far more robust…if any gremlins should appear, your links still redirect to your url and your stats will be updated after the system plays catch-up.

Overrages / Credit Protection
We’re introducing an overrage system which will track additional opens, even after your credits have elapsed.

Custom Currencies
Custom currencies can now be set within your account page for the goal and PDF reports.

Group Export
It is now possible to export a list of all the unique email addresses who have clicked on a link or opened an email. This feature allows you to create custom lists of recipients who are more likely to click links or open emails. These lists can be directly imported into groups within GroupMail.

We’re already working on some pretty cool new features, but if there’s anything you hate/love, or would like included, let us know here.

Hardware and Software Reviews

E-mail marketing has proven very successful for those who do it right, but you need the right tools to do it. GroupMail is one such program.

Even though he thought having 4 different editions of GroupMail was over the top (and I tend to agree to a large extent), he did do a good job summarizing the breakdown in functionality in each and suitability for varying requirements.

Whether you are a small, medium or large business and you want to run an e-mail marketing campaign, GroupMail would be an ideal choice. The software looks nice, is easy to use, and has all the essential features.

In concluding he pointed out some of the pros and cons of GroupMail versus going with a web based solution, but overall a pretty fair assessment of GroupMail and its capabilities, but don’t take my word for it go over and read his review.

For instructions on doing this please visit http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd296719.aspx

1. You can create an HTML message in GroupMail’s own WYSIWYG message editor. This is similar to standard email client editors and allows you to insert tables, images, hyperlinks, attachments and text/page formatting.
2. You can use one of GroupMail’s email templates and add your own content. To use a template, click on Messages in GroupMail and click the Templates tab to select your template. For more information, read How to Use GroupMail’s Email Templates.
3. You can create your HTML message externally using an HTML editor and import it into GroupMail. To import an HTML Document, open a new message in GroupMail and click File/Import/HTML Document. Here is a list of HTML Editors. Avoid using MS Word or other Word Processing software to create HTML for use in email as some of the formatting won’t be retained when it is used in different environments. Also, ensure that the image paths used in the HTML document that you are importing are either full, local paths on the computer where GroupMail is located (i.e. c:/image.jpg) or full, remote paths (i.e. http://www.yourdomain.com/image.jpg). You can check the image paths after importing the document into GroupMail by right-clicking on the image and selecting “image properties”.
4. You can embed a web page in the body of your message. Again, open a new message in GroupMail and click File/Import/Web Page.

You can also add a plain text message part for each of the message types above. To add a plain text part to your HTML message, click the Plain Text Message Part tab at the bottom of the message editor in GroupMail and add your text-only part here. Adding a text-only part to your message will help to improve delivery rates and lower your spam score. For more information, read How to Create a Text-Only Part of Your HTML Email.

If you want to share your GroupMail message with other GroupMail users; open the message and click on File/Save As/A Document. This will save your message in GroupMail format which can be sent to another GroupMail user. When they click on the attachment, the message will launch in their GroupMail message editor.

You can also save your message as a draft or a user-generated template to use again. Just click, File/Save As/A Draft or File/Save As/A Template respectively. You can also edit a copy of previously sent messages in GroupMail. Just highlight the sent item and click the Edit Copy of Message link from the left side of the screen.

Pretty flexible, eh?

Open and Click-through rates with GroupMail

Here is a sneak preview of the new interface, showing opens over time, overall campaign results and the clicks on individual links.

The numbers are based on an actual campaign sent, so for me it is interesting that a couple of months after the send there are still people opening and clicking on links in the message - at least I’m not the only one behind on my email !

Once the new version of GroupMetrics is completed and put live (in next couple of weeks), we intend to have an update of GroupMail available shortly afterwards that will make it really easy to optionally incorporate open and click-through tracking in your campaigns (up to now this involved having to manually insert the open and click tracking code in your messages which is a PITA).

I guess even if incorporating open, click-through and goal tracking in your email marketing campaigns is not important to you at least it will help you brush up on your world geography !

Email Marketing Reports Click-throughs

So what do you think ?

We’ve been doing some testing with GroupMail, and we don’t seem to be having any such problems - however if you notice anything strange after IE8 is installed, let us know.

Aside: It seems to be a big improvement on IE7, but still not nearly as quick as Chrome in my opinion. You can download IE8 here if interested:

Download IE8

Happy Easter!