It has been a busy year at GraphicMail, bringing lots of growth and change.

Have you kept up to date with all of the new developments, or have a few of them slipped past unnoticed?

Here are some of our 6 most newsworthy announcements for 2011 that you really shouldn’t miss:

1) Free Email Marketing Account Launched by GraphicMail

GraphicMailers and potential GraphicMailers everywhere jumped for joy when we brought out our free email marketing account; enabling you to use our full range of email marketing features at no cost. You can list up to 500 subscribers in your free account and send up to 5000 free email newsletters per month. Also, for the first 60 days of sign-up, you're given full access to our advanced features and customer support desk.

2) GraphicMail Releases New Email Newsletter Editor to Simplify Email Marketing

We also released our powerful 2011 Editor, giving you new features such as in-image text editing, a simplified interface and about 300 new templates to choose from. Haven't you switched over yet? The new editor will help you get your email newsletters out faster and better looking than before. Even novice email marketers can now create studio-quality campaigns without any HTML knowledge or skills.

3) GraphicMail Partners with Social-Data fireball Janrain to enable Social-Email Marketing 

In 2011 we tapped into the power of fusing email marketing and social media, making it possible for new clients to sign up to GraphicMail using their their social logins such as Facebook and Twitter. With the Janrain partnership, we expanded on the social widget selection that can be added to your newsletters and the social share tool; and it's all been so successful that we're planning to bring you new social-data mining and reporting features next year.

4) Mobile Innovation: GraphicMail Offers SMS + Link to Mobile Site Marketing

Halfway through the year we finished the development of an innovative new mobile marketing platform that marries mobile websites and push marketing by way of a personalized web-link send within bulk SMSs. With this, GraphicMail revolutionized the way businesses communicate with their clients - enabling messages to be delivered directly to subscribers’ phones with a simple click-through from an SMS, channeling viewers to an image-rich, personalised mobile site.

We also took the initiative to go cellular with our very own mobile site http://m.graphicmail.co.za/m/index.aspx, optimized for viewing on any internet-able phone. 


5) GraphicMail Mobile Campaign Case Studies Prove Effectiveness of SMS / Text Messages with Links to Mobile Sites

Not long after the launch of our new mobile tools, we published 3 mobile campaign case studies as a proof-of-concept. To showcase the product's potential, GraphicMail selected two suitable candidates based on our call for non-profit organizations to submit mobile marketing proposals, as well as an enterprising student-run fashion start-up. Our case studies provided in-depth coverage about what the campaigns involved and how well they performed.

6) GraphicMail Launches Salesforce and OpenCart Integrations

This year GraphicMail made it an integral part of our strategy to integrate with other platforms to help our clients get the most out of their email and mobile marketing efforts. Some of our best email marketing integrations have included Salesforce; a cloud-based lead-generation platform and OpenCart; a powerful open source application that allows users to create their very own online store.

Do you have suggestions for any other integrations you would like to see at GraphicMail? Comment on this blog to let us know!