Email Campaign Management

Recording which marketing emails have been sent to which addresses

[twang]

Hi

I'm running a website where people give us their email address when they register one of our products. We have been collecting them for ages and have about 20,000 in all. We are just beginning to run email marketing campaigns to them.

Some marketing emails are general and need to go to all the people in the list, others are only appropriate to some of them. Also, we want to promote special offers to some people but not to others.

Keeping track of which emails have been sent to which people is proving to be a management headache.

Ideally, I'd like an email address to be automatically tagged when it is sent a particular campaign. I would then like to be able to create a list for a new campaign by querying based on the previous campaigns they have received.

Does anybody have any experience of software which helps to manage this side of things?

Thanks

[Travoli]

I personally do not have experience with this type of program, but others might.

*bump*

[martinibuster]

Mach5 Mailer has some filtering functions that work with your Excel, Access database. Not sure if it does everything you require.

I myself don't use those functions, but among other things, it can also track and process bad email addresses.

[rogerd]

I don't have a commercial product name, but it sounds like you need a relational database. One table should be updated with an account identifier and campaign code each time a mailing is sent. Over period of time, one customer could have many mailings, so this approach won't limit your tracking.

Alternatively, you could store the last six mailings in the customer file, and each time a new mailing is sent you could drop the oldest and add the newest.

[Learning Curve]

Check the "site search" for email software. There have been several threads you may find useful.

"Keeping track of which emails have been sent to which people..."

With that feature you've entered into a very expensive tier of email software - a few to several thousand dollars.

Desktop software, however, has come along amazingly in recent years so you may now be able to get by without the expensive stuff.

One company that I'm keeping an eye on, although I haven't used them yet, is infacta and their product Group Mail.

Other companies mentioned in previous threads besides Mach5 Mailer that have impressed me are Pensawork's Spd E-Letter and PromaSoft's AutoResponder. They may or may not work in your situation. Also, Net Atlantic hosts lists surprisingly inexpensively using one of the now very expensive softwares, Lyris. I haven't used any of these (except Lyris) but I try to stay current on email software.

Moderator, please feel free to delete if too much name dropping.

[DeCal]

Personally i would use a program called Mail Loop. The new one is the best but quite expensive!

[twang]

Thanks for your help guys. I'm going to investigate the relational database option first.

[cfx211]

Database is the way to go on this. MS Access is probably the easiest if your email addresses are not sitting in a database already. If they are in a database, then brush up on your SQL.