Comments on: Small Biz Corner: Email Campaign Software

By: Justin

Justin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:25:21 +0000

This Small Biz Corner column has been very helpful. The links to these apps and the BusyCal calendaring program have saved me days of trying new, mediocre software and led me to some gems.

Thanks!

By: msirr2

msirr2 — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 08:53:06 +0000

After years using MaxBulk Mailer I can say it works very well. The last version 7 solved some stability problems.

By: Pam

Pam — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:41:04 +0000

@Craig: Agree 100%. I started out using desktop software and quickly found it’s a nightmare. Email delivery is a service well worth paying for. And really glad to see you put Send Pepper in the same class as Aweber — I’m evaluating both right now. Thanks, Craig.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:43:54 +0000

I think that the days of email being legitimate for ANYTHING are over.

I rarely get any email from a business that is actually legit. Almost every piece of junk I get, goes to the Junk mail.

Anything these apps do, whether legitimate or not, will most likely get the same treatment. Junk/Spam.

Sorry, but so much spam comes into my house on my email addy’s that it is a task every 15 to 20 minutes to empty the junk folder because I got another 20-30 emails I have never requested and are basically about bigger junk in my trunk or how I can sf 87% on my meeds.

There are plenty of ways to get to people for sales. But email to a customer, most likely will be met with the same reaction I have. Spam it.

By: Chris Stevens

Chris Stevens — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 23:03:06 +0000

Direct Mail is absolutely brilliant, I got it as part of a macheist bundle and have found it so useful ever since. It nearly always gets through, the stats functions are amazing and to build great HTML emails you just build the mail in rapidweaver using boxblocks, upload it to your website as a hidden page and then give Direct Mail the web address. I’m sure if you are more technically competent than me you can also do a lot better!

It is a simply awesome program- I am neither in marketing nor web dev but I do use it a lot, especially when you need to know that a mail has gotten through.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:17:02 +0000

As an alternative to paying a service, Mailings (by Limit Point Software) lets me to use my shared hosting company to send email campaigns by throttling the volume to stay within shared hosting policy email guidelines. I like it because it let’s you create an html page using any application you want (including iWeb), and automatically sets the correct links to your linked images online. You also get a plain text alternative for the html impaired, and has nice list management and reporting as well.

By: Craig

Craig — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:29:05 +0000

The biggest problem with sending business email is not the software, it’s getting it delivered and not getting blacklisted as a spammer.

And some Internet Service Providers won’t permit large amounts of email to be sent if you have Shared Hosting, which many small businesses use to put up their website.

As someone who consults on Internet Marketing I NEVER recommend a small business send bulk email from their own email address. One-to-one and personal messages are fine, it’s bulk email that can cause problems.

There are low cost Email Service Providers (ESP) who are much better suited to handle the bulk email and auto-responder email for a small business.

They do all the work to maintain a clean reputation with email services like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc. to make sure any email coming from their systems gets delivered.

A good ESP will provide software to build and send the messages, check if they will pass spam filters (you would be surprised what words flag you as spam), and make sure you are fully CAN-SPAM compliant.

The really good ones also have video training on best practices for sending email and telephone support to help you with any problems.

Services start at $20/month and range up to $70 per month for a system that will also send postcards as part of an automated follow up system.

The top 2 I currently recommend are:

1. Send Pepper (www.SendPepperTrial.com)
2. Aweber (www.Aweber.com)

There are others such as Constant Contact, but I found these to be a bit too limited in what you can do for my tastes, though some people like them for just that reason.

Cheers,

Craig

By: Matthew Bookspan

Matthew Bookspan — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:21:48 +0000

Barry – thanks for the comment. The focus of the series is on Mac-based, not web-based software. So, these applications are both options for those who prefer desktop (Mac) software.

By: Barry

Barry — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:11:41 +0000

I use mailchimp.com almost daily- however not really to market my business so much as to keep up communications within my cub scout pack and church. The tools you get are very nice and the web interface is very well done. You can design the emails from scratch, use a template (and easily alter it), or upload a custom designed template.

Free if you have a mailing list of 500 or less and send less than 3k emails per month. Paid plans are very affordable.