email software & tips

[Gurtie]

I have a mate who's trying to do very small scale (150 people on list at present) email marketing in a niche.

Any recommendations on free email software? (have pointed him at graphicmail for the moment but if anyone has any decent longer term free options it would be great to know about them). He only needs the basics, his company know nothing about t'internet and nor do most of his customers so it doesn't need to be overly sophisticated, but it would be nice if it had decent tracking and analysis so he can actually optimise what he's doing.

I'd also like to point him at an up to date spam trigger list, and a copy of (EU) email marketing regulations, if anyone has any good links?

[ukgimp]

I still think Graphicmail

Mailchimp I also hear decent things about

There are some that do free stuff for low numbers.  I will try and remember the name.

[Rumbas]

I've used Awweber. Testing Ubivox for their better support of non english characters. 

[ASPD]

you may find some useful information on European directives about unwanted communications here

hxxp://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:02002L0058-20091219:EN:NOT

[PaulH]

Have used Graphicmail and is fairly good for small lists. However, they are creating a mess for themselves by allowing free trials.

I'd stay away from anything that was dirt cheap or free - going to be a spamfest, delivery rate will be awful.

The better services provide better delivery rates - will warn when you have content that may trip spam filters, will have white listed IP's with the big email providers like AOL etc

http://www.pure360emailmarketing.co.uk & http://www.smartfocus.com/ are were awesome, but no idea where their pricing starts

http://www.emailmarketingsoftware.co.uk/ << excellent resource

[dougs]

We run

graphicmail - good for small listsl
pure360 - medium lists, but analytics get limited
smartfocus - big lists, masses of analytics, can write lots of tools to interrogate the data

[Cowley]

I use Interspire Email Marketer.  I've also used Mailchimp, it's good for small / medium lists.

[PaulH]

Quick update...

An email from graphic mail "GraphicMail Christmas Closing Times" just landed straight into spam folder

Probably worth staying away from graphic mail if they cant even get their own emails through. 

[ukgimp]

lol, funny

[Gurtie]

heh. Reminds me, I must check and see how he's doing with it.....

[PaulH]

Just remembered, did some research in to email providers


Taken from spreadsheet... Prices are per email sent. Didn't get price for all and are about 18 months old.
High end providers are ones with exceptional delivery rates, followed by high send rates.


High End Email Service Providers   
http://www.smartfocus.com/ << our current choice                   
http://www.pure360.com/   $0.0015   High setup cost, bandwidth and monthly fees.
http://www.silverpop.com/
http://www.madmimi.com/ $0.0007   Charged by recipients, not by emails sent
http://www.bronto.com/   
http://www.benchmarkemail.com/   $0.0009   $200 one off setup fee
http://www.cakemail.com/ $0.0012   Awesome API
http://www.contactology.com/ $0.0061   Great API: http://www.contactology.com/email-marketing-api/index.php
http://www.dotmailer.co.uk/ $0.0017   Awesome... but £1,245 setup fee!
http://www.newsberry.com/                  API doesn't meet our needs
http://www.emailcenteruk.com/ $0.0018   Case Study: http://www.emailcenteruk.com/blog/automating_emails_simply.htm
http://www.emailvision.co.uk/                  
   
            
Medium Level Providers                  
http://www.graphicmail.co.uk/   
http://www.mailchimp.com
http://www.cheetahmail.com/                  

Low End Email Serivce Providers                  
http://www.aweber.com/                  
http://www.emailexperience.org/                  
http://icontact.com/                  
                                                

[dougs]

I would create a premier league of players too

smartfocus -
ecircle
emailvision
plus the top 20 us players by delivery size

From 3 people I know who consult in this area they reckon smartfocus and unica have the best data analytics

Doug

[dougs]

SmartFocus is who we use to send 20 million emails per month, quick overview

relatively cheap for what you get, but expect to spend £50K plus to get the deals
our techies reckon their tech is awesome
they seem to care and have had meetings with all our staff to sort issues
speed is an issue as they can only do 100K per hour if emails are complicated....can be sorted by segmenting lists
negative - they have an issue to over sell what they can deliver


We have been with them for 6 months and overal they have been very good.


Doug

[eurotrash]

If it is only looking for something in the low 00s why don't they just put a wordpress installation up - no techie stuff needed for that and use a plugin like Newsletter (http://www.satollo.net/plugins/newsletter) to send their emails out.  In theory then the deliver-ability should be fine.

They don't even need to use the wordpress installation