E-brochures/Newsletter software?

Any suggestions?

[Eljaybe]

I am interested in creating e-brochures or newsletters that will include links and information about our web site that will be sent to hundreds of email addresses in our database of clients. This would not be spam but to inform current clients of updates, news or other services.
I have seen some software that you can purchase specifically for creating email campaigns, but I wondered if anyone has done this before and what software you used?
The more simple the program, the better. Thanks.

[Eljaybe]

Does anyone even use email marketing?

[bakedjake]

Your question was a bit unclear, I'm not sure if you were asking for software to generate the newsletters, or to send the newsletters. We use HTML and plaintext multipart messages. No proprietary software needed for newsletter generation.

To send the email, we have a custom mailer we wrote in house to suit our purposes. It includes tracking functionality, etc. There are many, many services out there for doing bulk emailing. Google for "bulk email software" or "bulk email services".

[hcstudios]

One of our clients has had good luck using an outsourced service provider doing html email distribution. You can find who they used by looking at top results in this search:
[google.com...]

We designed a custom template for the client (they didn't like the ones provided by the service provider) and they have had a pretty good open rate and decent click through rate on links. There are a few things I don't like about this specific provider's interface, but overall it seems easy enough to use for a small mailing list, and I think it's free if you're under a certain # of users (also has a free trial).

We used the free trial a few months back ourselves when there was a big DNS mixup with our emails that had everything bouncing (since messages from an outsourced provider aren't through our email system/DNS server they got through) and a few clients even commented on the nice look/feel of the message.

I think an outsourced service like this is a good way to do the first couple of issues of a newsletter to see what type of response you get -- that way you can test how the content and your mailing list responds before you spend time learning software or setting up systems in-house. I usually recommend clients go with the "outsourced services" route for trial runs and testing of anything new, just because I've spent a few too many hours uninstalling crappy software from client systems (sigh) and listening to clients whine about how much time they put into learning software that doesn't do what they realized they really want once they got into doing the project (double sigh).

[shasan]

Autoresponse Plus is what I use. It's pretty good, but web-based (CGI/Perl/MySQL) so I'm not sure that's what you're looking for.

I like the fact that it can send timed messages, i.e. you already have a queue of message lined up, and as soon as someone signs up for your newsletter it will start the sequence, i.e. one promotion, then another 3 weeks from then, and another a couple of days from then... whatever intervals you want to set up.

Alternatively you can send broadcasts to imported emails whenever you want, which is what i use for the newsletter.

Really quite good.

[Eljaybe]

Yes, I'm looking for a software program that will create newsletters/promotions and email them automatically to a list of addresses we will put into a database. So far, I've looked into Intellicontact Pro and Constant Contact but I'm not sure if these programs are any good? It would be ideal if the software was simple to use so even someone who doesn't know much about HTML can create and send a newsletter.

[sem4u]

Well Constant Contact is easy to use (no HTML knowledge needed) and it does the job.

[divaone]

i would recommend G-Lock EasyMail Pro. its price is reasonable for the product and community support you get. upgrades have been free as well. you can import and export as many db's as you'd like, do tag merging, send in html format and optional text format, plus many other features. after a year of use i've come to rely on it for mass mailings.