Email marketing tools

[catchmeifucan]

Hi,

I have a yahoo store and I have around 20000 customers, can anyone suggest a newsletter tool? is an online one better or a desktop one better?

thanks

Kevin

[POR-15 Depot]

First for the desktop one you need to make sure your ISP lets you use your dial-up as a mail server to send out emails. Most now block PORT 25 due to spam issues. SO unless your pointing to your ISP mail server it isn't going to work. Alot of ISP also have the dial-up I of most ISPs blocked from sending mail to them. Unless you can send your newsletter through your ISP mail server you may have problems.

[catchmeifucan]

suppose send emails out is not a problem, would you recommend desktop based or online?

what's the advantages and disadvantages?

whoever had used something and can give a review?

Thanks

Kevin

[FGTH]

I've used a program called HTML Broadcast Wizard.

It's free and is ODBC, so you can create custom mass e-mailings using Word, Outlook, and Excel.

It's very flexible allowing mail-merges with personalized addressing by name or company.

I use it to send out weekly newsletters to 50,000 clients who opted in for weekly bulletins.

Hope that helps!

[RonHollingsworth]

What about using a list such as Lyris. You have a lot emails so that may be of use to you.

[thebassman]

Originally Posted by FGTH

I've used a program called HTML Broadcast Wizard.

It's free and is ODBC, so you can create custom mass e-mailings using Word, Outlook, and Excel.

It's very flexible allowing mail-merges with personalized addressing by name or company.

I use it to send out weekly newsletters to 50,000 clients who opted in for weekly bulletins.

Hope that helps!

Interesting... how does it work exatly... do you have a link?

[FGTH]

The Developer is MsExchange.org.
File: htmlwizard.zip
File size: 375K (if you need a copy, just e-mail me).

I think they removed the download because too many spammers were using it.

You can try http://www.snapfiles.com/get/htmlbroadcast.html

If you plan to mail merge Outlook and Excel, you'll need to name and define column names within Excel.

If one of your Excel columns contains first names, do the following:
1) highlight the first name column
2) Insert --> Name --> Define
3) Enter the label of the column, something like FIRST_NAME (no spaces)
4) Save the Excel sheet, something like "opt-in-contacts.xls"
5) Run HTML Broadcast Wizard, setup and configure the program.
6) Select ODBC data source (xls)
7) Create a file for the HTML body or text body
From the 'Database Table' field select a valid table from the database file specified earlier. Clicking on the Filter button, will allow you to specify Filter rules to restrict the record selection.
9) In the To: field you can specify either a particular address or otherwise you can set a particular field from the specified record table which contains the addresses you want to broadcast to (FIRST_NAME). In the From field you can set the From display of the email message and in the Reply-To field you can enter a reply to address for all your messages, that will be appended to each and every mail sent. In the Subject field, you can specify a subject entry for all mail. In the Priority field, you can set the Priority for the messages relevant to your particular mail server.
10) the rest is configuring your STMP settings

Hope that helps.

[RonHollingsworth]

I've also used a program called e-Campaign although it's not free. It lets you customize your email with HTML or text.

[mercuri]

My company has a product called ebizmailer which allows you to send any kinda content and even make it with dynamic content with embedded forms and tags and also merge HTML/AOL/TEXT. It is not free but the operations being offshore make it comparatively cheaper than most available products!!

[maxim]

good link from fgth! some good software there!

thanks

[catchmeifucan]

fgth,

does the software you mentioned has some kind of reporting function?
can user unscribe from it?

Thanks

Kevin

[JohnG]

Originally Posted by catchmeifucan

Hi,

I have a yahoo store and I have around 20000 customers, can anyone suggest a newsletter tool? is an online one better or a desktop one better?

thanks

Kevin

Kevin,

Let me give this one a go. A couple of questions.

When people purchase something from your store:

* Does the buyer agree to receive further email from you, by clicking an opt-in link, or

* Is the buyer confronted with a pre-clicked link, in which she acknowledges your right to send marketing email messages to her, or

* Have you merely collected the information from people who have purchased items from your store?

What type of items do you market? Are they information products allowing for upgrades or follow up information?

I ask these questions, because the nature of the relationship will dictate to a certain extent the type of mailings you can do to your existing customers.

(For more on the implications and how you may wish to structure your affiars in the future, you will want to read The Federal Regulators Are Coming To Town, The Guys And Gals In Blue Have Arrived and The Commissioner's Guidance.)

Speaking of questions, do you reside in the United States? Is the Yahoo store hosted in the United States? And is the data stored in the United States?

Again this has potential implications as to the nature and extent of the mailings.

The Europeans and Canadian have passed legislation dealing with privacy and use of data. At present in the United States, subject to specific rules dealing with children and information provided during the course of financial transactions, has left the matter open - meaning it is self-regulation time.

So, do you have a privacy policy on your site for example indicating when people provide you with personal information what you are entitled to do with the information, including sending the person commercial email?

The issue is important to the extent email you send to your data base may or may not be construed as unsolicited commercial email. This does not mean you have to throw the data base away. It just means you have to take certain precautions in how you make first contact to introduce your customers to your newsletter.

Having said all this, let's go forward and answer your specific question.

In choosing a service to manage your lists, while running sequential responders, you have essentially two options:

* Host a script on your own or shared web hosting; or,

* Use a third party web based service.

First of all there is material you can I purchase to gain a better understanding of the use of a sequential auto response systems with list management features. Glenn Gordon has published a book on the subject which is quite good.

Apart from taking you through the basics, included is a comparative listing of all the major services with their features, allowing you to make an informed choice. Glenn keeps this up dated, as companies change their product offerings. Also, Glenn issues a bulletin service on new products hitting the market.

Glenn also includes a number of excellent "bonuses" to aid you in your marketing efforts. Well worth the money.

I own the product myself and find it a useful resource even though I made my choices quite some time ago. To find out more about Glenn's product, use this.

In deciding whether to go with a server side solution (hosting the script on your own server) or using a 3rd party web based service, given today's email marketing environment, I would be more inclined to go with a 3rd party service.

Why do I say this? If you are technically inclined and feel comfortable in dealing with all of the potential headaches involved in running your own server side solution, go ahead. However, if you are not so inclined and simply want to focus on using the service to achieve your business objectives then you are better off using a 3rd party service.

In looking at 3rd party services, at least in the North American market place, although there are quite a few companies offering sequential autoresponse systems with list management capabilities, most people speak highly of only a handful of companies as to service, support, features and ensuring delivery of your messages.

(Some people are critical of using a 3rd party service, because you end up sharing space with others and if there are a couple of rotten apples in the barrel, this may infect the whole bunch. Good services are quite adept at dealing with these problems.)

One other point in choosing a service. With some segments of the market moving away from email, for a variety of reasons and real simple syndication (RSS) starting to catch fire, it would be nice to use a service which offers you the ability to set up RSS for the benefit of your subscribers.

At least one internet browser, Opera is now including an RSS feed with its email client software. This allows surfers, upon visiting your site to pick up your RSS offering, instead of subscribing via email. No hassle, no fuss. (To my understanding the product is in the testing stage.) It is likely other browsers with email client software will offer the same features in the near term.

To the best of my knowledge, at present, the only 3rd party service offering a sequential auto response system, with list management features and the ability to set up your own RSS channel is Aweber.

(I suspect other firms will start adding this feature in the near term, if for no reason than to remain competitive. I should add the link I have given you is an affiliate link.)

For those who don't want to deal with the technical stuff, this is a nice addition and Aweber offers first class service and support.

Two points:

* There are a number of list management services on the market which price based on volume of e-mail. Personally, I could never understand the pricing model, especially with the flexability of services like Aweber.

* Some people may suggest to you to use a free service. Don't do it. The issues range from professionalism (most free services include adverts) to lack of features to deliverability of your messages (free services tend to find themselves being blacklisted as people use them to send spam and then throw the service when caught.)

The 3rd party service I use is found here.

A good choice as it includes an integrated suite of tools, including the ability to run a shopping cart, affiliate programs, unlimited autoresponders, list server, voting both, contact center, marketing co-op, site rotator, site tracker, recommend it tool, voting booth (allowing you to take polls), survey creator, pop up creator, keyword tracker, search engine position reporter, run a discussion board, link tracking, domain wizard, meta tag generator and ad tracking, plus additional resources. (So, it is very convenient.)

The service fees will turn out to be about the same as Aweber, given the potential size of your list, but you can't really compare the two services, as UMR is a complete suite of tools rolled into one service.

Trusting these comments are of assistance.

Kind regards,

John Glube
Toronto, Canada
http://www.learnsteps4profit.com

[FGTH]

Originally Posted by catchmeifucan

fgth,

does the software you mentioned has some kind of reporting function?
can user unscribe from it?

Thanks

Kevin

I'm not sure what you mean by "reporting." Could you elaborate on what you mean? If you want to know how many of the messages were actually opened by the recipients, you can include an image within the newsletter -- place an image from your webserver that's soley used for the newsletters in a dedicated folder. The image could even be a transparent GIF. After mailing your newsletters, look in your web server's log file and read the number of "sites" or "IPs" that call this image. The number of calls will correspond to the approximate the number of recipients who opened the newsletters.

HTML Broadcast Wizard is an HTML/TEXT broadcasting application with ODBC (Open Data Base Connectivity).

If you have an opt-in system, you should also provide your subscribers with the ability to remove themselves from the list. In your newsletters, include a link for your readers to remove themselves from the subscription list.

[gizorn]

Hi, been reading the board for awhile and I finally have something to add!

If your using a Yahoo Store why not just use the "GotMarketing Campainer" that is tied in with your Yahoo store? You can get 25,000 emails a month for $150. 150 may be a high price I don't know, but then again I don't have to worry about my ISP turning off my account. Less stress is worth money to me.

Some of the pluses I like about it are: (and I'm not a salesperson)
1. Gotmarketing automatically imports your email addresses from your yahoo store.
2. It also allows you to add a "Do you want to be contacted" check box to your check out page.
3. Keeps all kinds of stats such as who opened the email and when, if they clicked on a link and what emails bounce.

I hope that helps.

Laura

[John Scott]

Welcome to the forum, Laura.

[gizorn]

Thanks John, I've enjoyed reading the forum and thought it was time to add my 2 cents.

[bcyber]

I haven't had a yahoo store for about 2 years now but if I remember right, they have something in their admin site that lets you e-mail your customers and all that good stuff.

[gizorn]

Yahoo actually has 2 options for email marketing the GotMarketing I talked about earlier and an area that lets you save your email addresses into Microsoft Outlook (not real handy if you have 20,000 like catchmeifucan does)

[pcs802]

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[Kyle_Katarn]

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