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Regards,
Tom
A lot of the decision depends not on sending out the auto-response itself (that's a relative no-brainer), but on what kind of data you want to capture to keep a record of the event. And again, that data is easy enough to capture once you've made the business decisions of what you want to do.
Bulk email for sending out newsletters is a whole other animal. The challenges involved in getting even legitimate, double opt-in newsletters through spam filters are major.
My recommendation to all my clients is to outsource this function to one of the many services that are dedicated to maintaining lists and sending out bulk email. It's a full time specialized job to stay ahead of the spam filtering, and these service are IN that business full-time.
Otherwise you may think you're getting a lousy click-through rate from your newsletter -- but in reality, your message is not getting through to 40% of your mailing list or more.
But then a funny thing happens. Since you've already got an outsourced service for sending the bulk email, they often throw in the auto-reponder and stats package as well. That makes the whole thing easier.
I don't recommend wading into these waters yourself as part of setting up an entire online business. It's one of those things that is MUCH better done by a 3rd party. Otherwise, you end up spending hours on thephone with AOL trying to get off their blacklist.
I just moved one client to a 3rd party service from a relatively complex bulk mailer (it really had the bells and whistles, including "tuning" the outbound frequency by ISP and all that).
Their response rates jumped almost 30% immediately.
What 3rd party mailing management companies do you recommend?
Thanks
Tom
I also don't want to recommend someone I've had good results with and then get blamed if someone else then has a bad experience. Maybe somthing just changed in the last month, or whatever, you know?
There are a lot of good services out there. Any of the major search engines will uncover a pile of them and just the littlest bit of digging will soon show you who has the goods you need. Look for things like
1) knowledge of ISP whitelists/blacklists
2) ability to "tune" the frequency of your messages to the requirements of the major email services, such as AOL, Hotmail, etc.
3) help with writing good subject lines and body copy that gets through the spam filters.
I appreciate that recommendations can mean "something" for people, but they can only ever mean just a little bit. Recommendations should never absolve anyone of doing the research and making their own decision. So I'd rather point to the important factors that can help you make a decision, rather than promote any particular service.
I also don't want a thread here that ends up being an invitation for people to promote. And how would you or anyone know if I had a vested interest, or if any poster had a vested interest, in a particular recommendation?
So that's the direction I want to see this thread take - what features make a good bulk emailer or service. Rather than plugs for specific programs. Those I will remove out of a sense of fairness.
I don't want to hand out fish, I'd rather give fishing lessons.
