Mailout/Newsletter app

[EventsArmoury]

I'm looking for a good application to send a e-mail to our database of customers. A normal mail client won't allow you to send an email to many people at the same time. I'd like to give the clients an option to automatically unsubscribe from the newsletter if they wish too.

We are all Mac based, so would have to be an OSX application. Preferably free too!

Can anyone suggest something?

 

[Mike Lewis]

Hello again John,

A normal mail client won't allow you to send an email to many people at the same time.

Are you sure about that? Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird and most other Windows-based emial clients allow you either to maintain a mailing list or else to store recipients' addresses in a designated folder and then to bulk mail the entire folder. I assume it's the same with Mac-based programs.

That said, perhaps what you really need is a way of extracting the email addresses from your database and importing them into the mail program. I can do that easily under Windows, but unfortunately can't help with doing it on the Mac. But I feel sure it's do-able.

Mike

 

[Mike Lewis]

Hello again John,

A normal mail client won't allow you to send an email to many people at the same time.

Are you sure about that? Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird and most other Windows-based emial clients allow you either to maintain a mailing list or else to store recipients' addresses in a designated folder and then to bulk mail the entire folder. I assume it's the same with Mac-based programs.

That said, perhaps what you really need is a way of extracting the email addresses from your database and importing them into the mail program. I can do that easily under Windows, but unfortunately can't help with doing it on the Mac. But I feel sure it's do-able.

Mike

 

[Mike Lewis]

Sorry, I seem to have posted the same reply twice.

How do I delete a post? (Doesn't say much for my IT skills.)

 

[jimbairn]

John

I use icontact for sending out my weekly cartoon to a database of clients. It gives the option of unsubscribing and you can monitor who's opened your email, when and how many times. I"m on MAC OSX too and it works very well. It's not free but is very reasonable.

 

[stuarty]

A normal mail client won't allow you to send an email to many people at the same time.

It's not so much your client but your hosting company. 99% of hosts wont let you send mass emails due to spamming - I'm no hosting expert though.

You will most likely need an email marketing app. Avoid dotmailer - they're hideously expensive and lots of hidden costs. Google "email marketing". You can get a free 30 day trial account. You will get tracking of all your emails, auto reply bounces, click throughs etc - all very valuable stuff

Look for a UK based company too. From uk IP addresses get better responses.

I'd like to give the clients an option to automatically unsubscribe from the newsletter if they wish too.

You will need an app to let them unsubscribe or manually add a field in your database.

ps - you don't need to have the app osx compatible - any web app will do.

 

[stugster]

Stuart's right on the host side of things - most web-hosts and ISPs wont let/want you sending mass-mailings out from their email servers without permission first.

Assuming you can get your web-hosts permission to send out marketing emails from your hosting account, have a look at phplist.com : Homepage : home - it's an open-source freely available software solution you install on your hosting and manage on a web-based environment.

 

[TomB]

Another thing you should watch is that outlook has a timeout function on it for sending emails.

I sent an email out to 1800 people a few years ago and some poor woman got the email 1500 times I was very popular you can imagine!

A good one I use is Campaign Monitor.

Or Mailchimp allows you to send to 100 people (i think) for free as long as you don't mind a little mailchip on the bottom on the footer.

Both are web apps.

T

 

[Canary Dwarf]

We resell Campaign Monitor to our clients. Very flexible with many templates that have been tested in all the common email clients.

We have also used MailChimp in the past which is equally good.

Both are paid services.

If you want to send from your own computer, use something like SendBlaster, which installs locally, but pulls down your subscribers from your POP3 email. You will need to subscribe to an external SMTP service (available as a third party service for a charge) or open. up your own SMTP service on IIS if you're on a Windows OS, which will be free.

As has already been said, your host will not take too kindly to bulk emails, so ask them first. They may give you a prescribed limit which is adequate for your needs, or they may give you an SMTP service free of charge if you are a good customer.

 

[Jack Kane]

I use iContact as well (thanks to this forum ) and I've just sent out my second lot of emails, all very useful tracking info. I wish I had gone this route earlier!

I used to use the free Mailman application, which incidentally was installed by my web host. It worked for me for nearly 5 years without any issues, and it had automatic unsubscribe options.