EMAILING TO CLIENTS.....WHAT PROGRAM IS BEST??????

[CAYENNE2005]

Looking for email software suggestions. There are so many out there! I am looking for one that I would be able to send out to recipients with no limit. If I want to send out an email to 1000 people, it will go through.
I downloaded EZ batch and it doesn't give the option to send BCC!! I am also playing around with Mach5.
Any others out there to suggest?

[CAYENNE2005]

I'll take a PM if you don't want to share your secrets?? There HAS to be an easier way to send out all these emails!

[Neon Beach]

You're doomed. Give it up and get yourself a box of pens. And some stamps.

[CAYENNE2005]

[Tommy]

I don’t think you want to send BCCs, it trigger spam “filters” on ISPs. You want to personalize each email using customer information like First, Last, FirstVisit, and LastVisit so each email you send to a customer is personalize for them (more effective) and each email you send to an ISP is different. This makes it easer for the ISP to tell the difference between legitimate customer communications and spam. It’s also why you see spammers inserting gibberish into email bodies and subject lines.

These “filters” are programs that scan incoming email for duplicates being sent to numbers of their customers and automatically block email these programs VIEW as spam, they’ve been known to “throw the baby out with the bathwater”.

Sending BCC has a legitimate purpose but spammers use it to save time when sending batches to millions of addresses, BCCs have no place in legitimate customer communications, sending a couple thousand emails personalize one by one to each customer in your database should take less than an hour.

If you’re evaluating mailers I recommend that the most important features you look for is:
Connecting to your database. (for customer information like that listed above)
A field merge ability. (the ability to replace place-holding tags with data from your customer database in both the email’s body, and subjust line)
Handling Out-outs and Bounces. (if you don’t handle Opt-out from one of the ISP’s customers, the ISP may block you from sending to any of their customers. If you don’t handle bounces you can trigger more spam “filters”)
Good Luck.

Tom

[CAYENNE2005]

So, when are you driving up here Tommy!! That was doctor talk to me.
Guess there isn't a magic program that I can install all clients emails and assume it works?? lol. Wish it was that easy!

[Tommy]

Quote:
On 2005-11-18 23:54:00, CAYENNE2005 wrote:
So, when are you driving up here Tommy!! That was doctor talk to me.
Guess there isn't a magic program that I can install all clients emails and assume it works?? lol. Wish it was that easy!

I’m a notorious home-body and drive maybe 1500 miles a year, I think a trip in your direction could give some of my friends a heart attack and friends are too hard to come by. There are some “High-End” set and go commercial mailers, but “High-End” = “Big Dollars”. The “Mid-Range” commercial mailers share most of the features, but there’s a lot more configuration.

If you narrow your evaluation search down to a mailer you like, but have some configuration question, give me a call and I should be able to help.
Have Fun.

Tom

[wildfire]

While I agree with Tommy's assessment of the negative aspects of email via BCC, I guess I would disagree with its importance in this context. The fact is that the spam filtering process is on the recipient's email server end and not on the sender's end, so there is little more you can do to guarantee you email's arrival than what has already been discussed. However, most email services do not completely purge the suspected spam message or should give the recipient the opportunity to determine if it is indeed spam before it is marked as spam and then the sender is sort of 'black-listed' for future emails. The responsibility lies with the recipient to periodically review their Inbox and evaluate who is sending them the email. It is really no different than thumbing through the stacks of postal mail we all get every day... bill, bill, ad, ad, ad, ad, bill, ad, ad, ad, late birthday card, ad... we make a quick pass through and unload much of it into the trash can without even opening it because it's obvious junk mail. Emails can be handled the same way - do you recognize the sender's name? Does the Subject Line sound pertinent to you specifically or generic and addressed to a wide audience? These are things you as the sender need to take into consideration as you prepare your email before you send it.

The BCC field is invaluable if your email is more mass-marketed than personal because it will make the email appear to each recipient individualized and exclude the email addressses of the other recipients. This is a dead giveaway to me when I receive emails that the sender simply blasted that bad boy off to everyone in his or her address book and I can see all of their names and email addresses - as can they see mine. Next thing I know, I am receiving like junk from them. Sometimes its harmless - jokes, funny photos, mildly-interesting news articles - but nothing I solicited to receive and obviously nothing I can opt out of now that my email address is publicly-known.

If you elect to extract from your client list a group of email addresses and then send each one a personalized email, that would seem to take an inordinate amount of your time. I think this was Tommy's point, that you want to find a program that can access your client list and not only extract the email addresses but also insert pertinent personal information that will address each client individually. For example, if you were going to follow-up on clients who have not been in within the last month, you would want the email software to address them by first name (which it would retrieve from the client database) and announce their last visit date (which it would also retrieve from the client database). It could also be included to remind them of their package balance or their membership expiration date (again, the client database). This is all part of the miracle of technology, however you will need to have a practical understanding of how to apply it or it will not be useful to you at all.

To get back to your original post, I don't think I could recommend one single program to you, simply because I have not evaluated enough of them to know the full range of what is available. There are inexpensive and simple solutions such as EZ Batch Mail and there are much more expensive and complicated ones. Be aware that with features and options is where the price usually increases. Depending on your salon software, some of them have a solution in place or available that can already access your client data to provide many of these benefits discussed in this thread.

Be aware also that the program you choose will likely not be the limiting factor to your ability to send 10 or 10,000 emails. This will more likely be a limitation imposed by your email service. If you are using a free mail service like Yahoo or Hotmail, I can pretty much guarantee there is a pretty low limit like 100 email recipients or so. They do this for two reasons, one is to reduce the likelihood that a spammer will try to setup a free email and do their dirty work and the other is because it is a free service they want to use this as a revenue source so they will want to offer you a paid commercial email service to release the limitation. If your email is hosted through a company that is also hosting your website for example, then it may just be a matter of asking for a higher limit or it may incur a mildly higher monthly expense for the web-and-email hosting package they are already offering to you.

I hope this helps you know what to look for even if it didn't give specific products to evaluate. If I come across any decent products out there to meet this need I will certainly re-visit this post and provide details.

Peace out!

[Tommy]

Quote:
On 2005-11-19 04:51:00, wildfire wrote:
The BCC field is invaluable if your email is more mass-marketed than personal because it will make the email appear to each recipient individualized and exclude the email addressses of the other recipients.

BCC and personalized are mutually exclusive, you can send BCC, OR you can send personalized, but you CAN’T do both at the same time! AOL and other ISPs REQUIRE personalization, WildFire, you’re welcome to do what you want, but for TSOs following this thread, do NOT use BCC for sending to business databases, EACH email must be personalized for each recipient. BCCs have no place in legitimate customer communications.

http://postmaster.aol.com/tools/whitelist_guides.html
Good Luck.

Tom

[suntanhut]

huh ? too much info for the ole thinko......this has given me a headache....good luck cay !