Graphic Email set to skyrocket

A South African-based company called GraphicMail (www.graphicmail.com) aims to drive the new trend that's fuelling the growth of the Internet's mightiest application.

Cape Town, South Africa Feb 1 - The simple email remains the mighty Internet's most powerful application. Jupiter Media Metrix projects massive growth, with spending on email marketing forecast to reach $9.6 billion in 2006.

Driving the new trend is email that is graphically enhanced,or content-rich. The new buzzword is GraphicMail, which describes how the simple email is becoming a multi-media interface.

The South African company to coin the phrase, Quattro, with offices in Brussels and Cape Town, uses a tool called GraphicMail (www.graphicmail.com) to empower small and medium-sized businesses with the ability to create well-designed graphic communications as professional as those of multinational corporations.

GraphicMail is accessible online, where users insert images, animations, colors and fonts into their designs or preformatted templates. The system automatically sends emails and manages subscribers and distribution lists, including bounces and user statistics.

"Email is the great equalizer" says GraphicMail Marketing Director Nick Eckert. "The future trend of mass marketing is electronic". He should know. In the fiercely competitive dot com days, he co-pilated www.all-hotels.com through choppy waters filled with hundreds of thousands of competitors. In 1999, All-Hotels became the number one independent travel website.

Eckert says, "The ongoing evolution of the Internet will see even te smallest companies and individuals becoming producers of their own multimedia."