While most of us drag our feet back to work this week, some of you return with a big smirk on their face and a spring in their step. As for some of you, Father Christmas has put in an extra round - in order to deliver your presents from GraphicMail!
Congratulations to

Lee Chilvers, Simon Page, Kathy Knight, Linda Ellis, Luke Chisholm and The PixelZoo

who have all won fantastic prizes in the GraphicMail xmas competition 2009 which we ran both on Facebook and Twitter during the month of December.

The first prize is an iPod Touch which goes to Kathy Knight and The PixelZoo.

Additionally, we gave all our winners an email marketing boost this year with a free 6-months account and those who came second won a custom-made designer newsletter template, yay!

We'll give away more free stuff in the future, so watch this space and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

NB: The Pixel Zoo is a South African company specialising in creative communications. So if you need some home-grown solution in 2010, speak to the Zoo! They'll take care of all your website design and hosting needs, they do interactive digital media, corporate identity design, SEO, advertising and much more.

We’ve finally developed a feature that bridges the gap between social media and email marketing. This is the first time the development lab have released a feature that allows your subscribers connect to their social media networks via your email newsletter.

It's simple. All we have done is added an extra field to the customize footer option which allows you to add social widgets at the bottom of your newsletters. When your subscribers read your newsletter, they can share it throughout their social communities opening you up to a world of new clients.  The ever changing landscape of the internet sees a rise in internet users wanting relevant information that is conversational rather than formal. Internet users want recommendations from people "just like them".

To encourage your subscribers to share your newsletters, all you need to do is navigate your way into Advance Mode >> Settings >> Header/Footer Settings.  Click on the Email Footer heading and select "add social media links on all emails". Let your subscribers share your newsletter, and benefit from the exposure to new audiences! Don't forget to start your own social platform - it will do wonders for your brand. It’ll give you an opportunity to announce promotions, specials and inform people of new developments within your company. 

For now, we’ve only added the major social network platforms (Digg, Myspace, delicious, Google share, Twitter and Facebook), but we will be adding more in the future.

Do you Digg it? I do!

Santa Claus delivers, and so does GraphicMail!
The GraphicMail  Santa is giving away some great prizes to a random selection of our Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Stand a chance of winning an iPod touch, free accounts and custom-made templates with the GraphicMail Santa: simply follow us on Facebook or Twitter before 24 December 2009.

Good Luck!
The fine print ...