Mass mailing solution - advice needed

[skimo]

Hello,

I have been researching a solution to allow us to mass e-mail our 10,000+ members on our website. However, I am extremely overwhelmed with all the available software and was hoping I could get some advice.

Ideally, we would like the solution to:

1) send 10k emails on a monthly basis.
2) pull the email addresses from our SQL database based on a query we define. (Ex: new users, users with x-transacitons..etc)

3) Have opt-in/out capability that we can integrate with our site (users can select email preferences from their profile)

4) personalized. Again the names are in the database.

5) track statistics (opened emails, bounce back, retries..etc)

6) The prices I have seen range from $40 - $200. We are ready to throw down a couple hundred more to make this happen.

We are running a .Net website (vb/asp) with MS SQL. We have full access to our servers.

Today, we are running manual scripts that are extremely time consuming and we have to go through mail server logs to get our stats! Terrible.

We prefer a solution that a non-technical person can use. Write email, select group, hit send.

Any pointers would be highly appreciated. It is actually quite embarrassing that we have so many members and are unable to effectively communicate with them!

Thanks!

[vincevincevince]

This is an IIS server I presume?

[skimo]

Yes. It is an IIS server.

I was thinking of using a 3rd party like "constant contact". However, I am worried about deliverability issues. Since it looks like they have to add an "authentication" header. This addition makes the From line say: from BLA on behalf of BLA.

Thanks