Thread: Email Marketing - need software/service suggestion

We'd like to start sending out emails, either an advertisement or newsletter or combination of both. We've never done this before but I have demo'd a software download or two that are supposed to handle this. I'm not yet using the storefront so I am interested in first hand recommendations of various email "marketing" software or service providers. I think we would probably be interested in a monthly but also maybe a way to instead of just send out my whole list at once stagger it so only so many are sent out each day. I don't know what if anything is considered standard so I would definitely need automated unsubscribe and sign up.

I've searched and found a few service providers and software downloads but would rather decide on user recommendation.

Thanks

I can give you one thumbs down on Mail Communicator.
The demo made it look great, but of course the demo had a limit imposed on its capacity.
When the company I had worked for decided to buy it, we discovered it ran the cpu to 99% and bogged down with large mail lists.
After patiently sending 4 emails for support over several weeks, they rudely responded when I sent them a flaming fifth.

My other advice is to use a different server (i.e. IP/Hostname) to perform this function. Do not use your web server or regular mail server.
If this mass mail server gets blackholed, then you won't be affecting your other services that send email.

Constant Contact has worked well for us.

2nd vote for Constant Contact......the emails actually get through to our customers/prospects !

I setup our web server pop/smtp so i'm a familiar with relaying. Most isps have a smtp send limit and block port 25 but right now my time is better spent when I'm not figuring out that kind of stuff so hosted seems more appealing. Plus I haven't researched what it takes to do it in house, at least from a server management perspective. You know, staggering your list vs blasting the whole thing all at once and keeping yourself off isp blacklists. It just seems like something I don't have time for right now.

CC says their price is based on list size not volume of emails/campaigns. Any hidden fees? Have you ever had trouble getting your email to look the same way you designed it? One time, quite some time ago actually I designed an html email with CSS but for some reason the periods in front of my css tags got stripped from the source code in transit so the email didn't display properly. I couldn't figure out what the problem was.

This site might be of some use:

http://email-marketing-service-revie...enreviews.com/

Also download this guide from MailChimp. Give several helpful hints on how to design html newsletters so they don't get stripped of design elements. CSS is not supported and stripped by most ISP's.

http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/e...ng_guide.phtml

Thanks for the chimp guide I'm definitely interested in that. I did happen to find that other chart you linked so I'll be checking out icontact too.

Seems like we can sync ASPDNSF customer opt in database with mailchimp using their API. To me that is the biggest factor to go with mailchimp as dont have to worry about transferring data back and forth.

Any thoughts or comments if anybody has done that or if its doable with constant conact or other vendors too

Thx
Amit

Originally Posted by seasonalsin

This site might be of some use:

http://email-marketing-service-revie...enreviews.com/

Also download this guide from MailChimp. Give several helpful hints on how to design html newsletters so they don't get stripped of design elements. CSS is not supported and stripped by most ISP's.

http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/e...ng_guide.phtml

I have used iContact for awhile now and the deliverability is remarkable. They have a zero tolerance spam policy and the interface is so easy to use. We have many clients using it as well, and are about to integrate with it using their API.

I just signed up for MailChimp and was amazed at how easy it was to create a signup form that I added in a topic. Was also easy to add the signup to the left nav and they give you all the code right on the site. They also have an API available that can be integrated into the carts sign up for so you do not have to move addresses manually. That is the next an final step for me. Best of all, you can sign up for FREE until you start sending emails. Then they have flexible pay as you use or monthly plans that are in line with everybody else.

Sorry I didn't see this thread sooner. Might I suggest you take a look at the Enhanced Mail Manager for ASPDNSF (EMM).

This is an add-in product that rides alongside your ASPDNSF website and allows you to do targetted marketing to your customers, your affiliates or a database of externally collected addresses if you wish. The system

Best of all, you pay one low price for the license and you can use it as much as you like, regardless of the number or frequency of messages you send. And you can now download a copy and try it out on your store before buying. You can create and send all the test messages you like before registering the software.

http://exhibita.com/EMM/

Hope one of you finds this useful.

MJG

Has anyone found a service with a 'plug-in' for ASPDNSF besides the EMM posted above? Anyone successfully integrated MailChimp, Constant Contact, iContact, etc? The lack of simple integration is the one thing that makes all of these services a no-go for me. Also, anyone found a mail server that allows sending of bulk mail? That would be the next best thing I suppose.

SilverPop. Very good stuff here. Might be a little expensive but you can really do a lot with it as far as figuring out marketing segments and such.

We've been using Enewsletterpro for over 10 years. I highly recommend it.
The support is great and the program does everything you will want.
The latest version uses ASP 2.0.
We are having them write a SQL program that will sense when a customer signs up or changes the email settings to directly update their SQL database.
We also use their affiliate and ad serving software.
http://www.enewsletterpro.com/
You own the software running on your servers. Much less expensive than the per email charges. We are able to afford a weekly email to 40K+ subscribers.
If you have any questions call Joe, the owner, and he will be most helpful.

We, the new owners of AspDotNetStorefront, hope to introduce our own email campaign manager very, very early on our roadmap. For those people who are considering other options, then I would love it if you could just be patient until we hold (and post a recording of.....) a webinar later this week to unveil some of our plans.

I have looked into mailer services and given up so many times. I want to find a service that will use the native mailing manager built-in to ASPDNSF or vice-versa, but it seems to be a lost cause. I miss using the mailing manager since our mailing list grew too large for our mail hosts sending limits.

Also, can someone clean up those spam posts? that is pretty ridiculous

We have setup xigla absolute newseltter, its pretty nice and no monthly fees:
www.xigla.com

Integration with the aspdnsf database takes about 2 hours to setup a simple database trigger No code mods are needed on either storefront or xigla.

It retails for about 250.00 and has support for multiple email subscriptions, email throttling and more.

I'm with Richnyc30...
eNewsletter Pro is great. Not cheap, but pays for itself pretty quick and you own it. They listen to users suggestions, comments and implemented a few we had.

Is it possible to 'throttle' the built-in mail/newsletter function to only send xx number of e-mails per hour or something? This would hopefully eliminate the need for an outside mail server/host altogether.

Any news/updates on this?

Does Vortx have their solution ready yet?