Email marketing

[nige1968]

I like the idea of email newsletters to keep our hordes of fans engaged, and over time we've built up a big enough mailing (700-odd) list that we're way past the Outlook mail merge stage.

 

So I've been looking at 3rd party email solutions and wow, what fresh hell is this? It doesn't help, of course, that the bandleader has given me a budget of £0.00. Still, there are a lot of free packages out there, so I've been trying them out, generally with very poor results (0% deliverability, anyone?). It turns out that the better the free deal, the more appealing to spammers, who then get the sending IP addresses a bad rep.

 

So to anyone who has actually had success with any of theses systems, who do you recommend? And is there anything at all to be said for self-hosting?

[BigRedX]

If you can wait a week for when I can type on a proper computer, I can give you all the details of the system I used. However expect at the very best a 15% reported engagement and probably 10 people asking to be unsubscribed each time you do a mail out.

[nige1968]

37 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

If you can wait a week for when I can type on a proper computer, I can give you all the details of the system I used. However expect at the very best a 15% reported engagement and probably 10 people asking to be unsubscribed each time you do a mail out.

 

That would be great, thank you. If just some of the emails arrived it would be an improvement.

[Cliff Edge]

Many if not all ISP’s will restrict the number of emails that can be sent from a single account in one sending. Often none of the emails will be sent if you go over the limit.   For obvious anti spammer reasons. And that will also apply to whoever you use for emails from a hosted domain name.  To get around that some of my clients used Mailchimp in the past,  but that is not cheap. And most of the options I see these days are similarly priced. The way round this is find out what the maximum is for your ISP and split the sendings to just under that number over several days. Not ideal but free. 
I’m not in the industry any more and some things and options may have changed. 

[nige1968]

1 hour ago, Cliff Edge said:

Many if not all ISP’s will restrict the number of emails that can be sent from a single account in one sending. Often none of the emails will be sent if you go over the limit.   For obvious anti spammer reasons. And that will also apply to whoever you use for emails from a hosted domain name.  To get around that some of my clients used Mailchimp in the past,  but that is not cheap. And most of the options I see these days are similarly priced. The way round this is find out what the maximum is for your ISP and split the sendings to just under that number over several days. Not ideal but free. 
I’m not in the industry any more and some things and options may have changed. 

 

Mmm. The band leader tried this and ended up locked out of his (cheap/free) email account for a couple of days. It seems there was a daily limit plus a monthly limit, which he unwittingly hit. Not sure anyone got their newsletter in the end.

 

That's when I ended up with the job. It doesn't seem a practical solution unless I can persuade him to change email provider on his personal account, which is also going to cost him.

 

(My Mrs, who is in the computer boffinry trade, gets ever so upset at folk who expect everyone to do stuff for free, but as BL hasn't got any money it's a moot point. Wonder if they'd do it for "exposure".)

Edited August 26 by nige1968

[Cliff Edge]

48 minutes ago, nige1968 said:

 

Mmm. The band leader tried this and ended up locked out of his (cheap/free) email account for a couple of days. It seems there was a daily limit plus a monthly limit, which he unwittingly hit. Not sure anyone got their newsletter in the end.

 

That's when I ended up with the job. It doesn't seem a practical solution unless I can persuade him to change email provider on his personal account, which is also going to cost him.

 

(My Mrs, who is in the computer boffinry trade, gets ever so upset at folk who expect everyone to do stuff for free, but as BL hasn't got any money it's a moot point. Wonder if they'd do it for "exposure".)

Ah monthly limit, yes, I had forgotten about that. To be honest it will be very difficult to to do any kind of bulk email from a personal ISP account. I regularly had clients who used BT Internet complain about their email accounts not working when BT’s IP addresses were all over the black lists because of spammers using their systems. 

[TimR]

I use mailchimp.

 

There's a free limit of 500 contacts and 1000 emails a month that if you're clever set up multiple accounts in the name of each member you might be able to circumvent. 

 

People can also easily unsubscribe so it's GDPR complaint. You might find that 700 people just haven't found a way to unsubscribe so you may be breaking the law there. 🤔

[nige1968]

On 26/08/2024 at 20:30, TimR said:

I use mailchimp.

 

There's a free limit of 500 contacts and 1000 emails a month that if you're clever set up multiple accounts in the name of each member you might be able to circumvent. 

 

People can also easily unsubscribe so it's GDPR complaint. You might find that 700 people just haven't found a way to unsubscribe so you may be breaking the law there. 🤔

 

Well, it's a moot point since to my knowledge they haven't had an email in years! Will have to have a look at the 'separate accounts, same email' thing.

[TimR]

In that case keeping people's emails without their consent for that long and probably without a GDPR statement is definitely illegal.

 

You'd probably want to delete them all and start again. In which case Mailchimp would do you fine. Just start over again. 

[nige1968]

18 hours ago, TimR said:

In that case keeping people's emails without their consent for that long and probably without a GDPR statement is definitely illegal.

 

You'd probably want to delete them all and start again. In which case Mailchimp would do you fine. Just start over again. 

 

Thanks for the tip about multiple accounts -- will let you know if it works -- but you're just being daft now. They're all opt-ins and can opt out whenever they choose via the website. But feel free to call the ICO if you're worried.

[BigRedX]

Sorry to make you wait, but I was away on holiday and there was no way I was going to type this reply on my phone...

 

I ran The Terrortones' email list and designed their monthly emails for 5 years. We used a desktop application called Direct Mail which is Mac OS only but it operates under the same principals as MailChimp except you can do everything apart from send the actual emails off-line without an internet connection. These days if you don't want to pay anything, the free version of MailChimp is really the only serious contender. Direct Mail has very useful spam count indicator, where it will tell you how likely your email is going to be marked as spam and highlight  any obvious "spammy" wording or design so you can change these to something more likely to allow your email to land in your audience's in-boxes. It's a while since I used MailChimp but I would hope it would do something similar.

 

The biggest problem you will have is that what is supposed to be one of the most useful features of any decent marketing email tool - user engagement reporting - is of very limited accuracy due to the never-ending war between the marketing email services and email providers privacy features. We had a mailing list of just under 1000 addresses and at best we'd get reports of around 100 of those actually looking at what we sent. The number of links that appeared to be followed was on average 10 per email split between everything in the email. This is for an eye-catching email design that was easy to ready and had all the links well marked. The reality will probably be that the actual number of people who look at and engage with your email will be closer to 150% of the reported figures but that's still a woefully low audience number for the amount of effort you will need to put in.

 

So assuming you want to proceed you'll also need the following:

1. A "return" email address that is not a free webmail service. This normally means the band having its own domain name and an associated email address. You might be able to get away with a Gmail or similar address but it does massively increase the likelihood of your emails going directly to your audience's spam folder.

2. You must include an actual postal address in the email contact details. This is legal requirement for many countries.

3. An obvious and easy way for recipients to unsubscribe.

 

Your other big problem is getting your email reported as spam. The strike count for spam reports is very low - under 1% for most email services, which means for your email list of 700 you'll only need more than a couple of spam reports for a single mail-out and you'll be suspended or banned. Use any features you mailing service supplies to ensure your email is less likely to trigger spam filters, and even more importantly ensure that the email addresses you have are from people who have specifically signed up to receive the kinds of emails your are sending out. We used to get audience members to fill in an email sheet at gigs. e could guarantee that at least 25% of these were completely illegible and another 25% resulted in bounced emails. Of the remaining emails there would nearly always be one that resulted in a spam report. These day my advice would be, if in doubt don't add it to your list. Use an on-line form provided by your email service to get new email addresses.

 

HTH.

[simisker]

23 hours ago, nige1968 said:

 

Well, it's a moot point since to my knowledge they haven't had an email in years! Will have to have a look at the 'separate accounts, same email' thing.

In that case, if you ARE going to be sending an email out to that list, it absolutely needs to be a message along the lines of:

 

"You probably won't remember us, but here's a reminder of who we are, and why your details are on our mailing list.

 

If you still want to be on our list, CLICK THIS SHINY BIG BUTTON.

 

If we don't hear from you in the next week or so, we'll take your details off our list and we won't contact you again. Love, light and peace etc..."

 

Even so, it's going to be a bit of a gamble if your list is old. You're almost certainly going to invoke some spam reports, as erroneous/unfair as that may seem. Some people will have forgotten that they ever signed up for anything.

 

 

 

 

[nige1968]

14 hours ago, simisker said:

In that case, if you ARE going to be sending an email out to that list, it absolutely needs to be a message along the lines of:

 

"You probably won't remember us, but here's a reminder of who we are, and why your details are on our mailing list.

 

If you still want to be on our list, CLICK THIS SHINY BIG BUTTON.

 

If we don't hear from you in the next week or so, we'll take your details off our list and we won't contact you again. Love, light and peace etc..."

 

Even so, it's going to be a bit of a gamble if your list is old. You're almost certainly going to invoke some spam reports, as erroneous/unfair as that may seem. Some people will have forgotten that they ever signed up for anything.

 

 

 

 

 

Again thanks, but I really am au fait with the legal and regulatory frameworks of email marketing, cookies, competitions and the like. I was really only after recommendations for services that might succeed if I try to send mail on behalf of my skint/skinflint BL. Obviously, thanks on behalf of those for whom this is new and useful.

[BigRedX]

57 minutes ago, nige1968 said:

Again thanks, but I really am au fait with the legal and regulatory frameworks of email marketing, cookies, competitions and the like. I was really only after recommendations for services that might succeed if I try to send mail on behalf of my skint/skinflint BL. Obviously, thanks on behalf of those for whom this is new and useful.

 

In that case use the method above to prune your mailing list down to under 500 addresses so you can take advantage of the free MailChimp service. IME all of the other free services simply aren't worth bothering with.

[Dazm66]

20 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

In that case use the method above to prune your mailing list down to under 500 addresses so you can take advantage of the free MailChimp service. IME all of the other free services simply aren't worth bothering with.

A big plus 1 for Mailchimp. 

[nige1968]

Thought y'all might not be able to sleep until I updated on this one ...

 

Turned out there were some domain-level issues that needed sorting ('from' address with a different domain) and things were looking pretty fixable. But I've now quit the band so it will alas remain unsolved.

 

Thanks all for your suggestions, though! Genuinely helpful.

[TimR]

1 hour ago, nige1968 said:

Thought y'all might not be able to sleep until I updated on this one ...

 

Turned out there were some domain-level issues that needed sorting ('from' address with a different domain) and things were looking pretty fixable. But I've now quit the band so it will alas remain unsolved.

 

Thanks all for your suggestions, though! Genuinely helpful.

 

Oh yes. Google and other ISPs are now insisting Name, SPF and MX records etc being bullet proof to stop spoofing etc. 

 

Your ISP should have been keeping you updated on those requirements. 

[Greg Edwards69]

EDIT: Whoops, just read last OP's post above that this isn't required anymore. But I'll leave the below in place in case anyone else need a similar solution.

 

Take a look at Brevo (formerly SendInBlue). Lots of customisable templates and can also handle SMS and WhatsApp campaigns. The free tier lets you send up to 300 emails a day (so you should be able to break your 700 recipients down into smaller groups spread over several days via a workflow).

 

We use it at work just as the SMTP server for our more complex MarketDirect CrossMedia solution (it used to be called Direct Smile - you may have heard of it). But Brevo seems to be a very capable solution for a project the size and scope the OP needs.

 

We went with Brevo for SMTP has it seems to get through spam filters more than some of the other providers, although Hotmail/live accounts still seem to be quite aggressive.

 

FWIW, most SMTP servers need to be 'warmed up' before sending loads of emails out. But if it's something you do regularly, and the numbers you're saying it shouldn't be a problem, which you can break into smaller chunks as I said earlier.

Edited September 20 by Greg Edwards69

[simisker]

3 hours ago, nige1968 said:

[...] But I've now quit the band so it will alas remain unsolved.

 

As someone who spent nearly a decade in and around email marketing, I can confirm that this is the optimal solution. Played, sir!

Edited September 20 by simisker

[nige1968]

14 hours ago, simisker said:

 

As someone who spent nearly a decade in and around email marketing, I can confirm that this is the optimal solution. Played, sir!

 

I feel your pain