Huge distribution lists with Exchange

Y

YeOldeStonecat

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jul 19, 2004
Messages
11,330
I'm a small business guy, commonly Small Business Server..smaller networks without huge needs.

I have an SBS2K3 server at an insurance firm, approx 12x staff. They seem to really be using e-mail heavily, and one girl there has a bunch of distribution lists.

She ran into a problem, or shall I say, limitation a while ago with distro lists in her Outlook. Apparently Outlook<==>Exchange can only handle a distro list up to a certain size in characters. So, since she's at nearly 700 addresses total so far..she has it broken up into 7x distribution lists.

She's expecting to get into the thousands soon. What do people to when distro lists are needed and outgrow what Exchange can support?
 
I'm going to say e-mails to existing clients of theirs. I don't believe they do anything like "mass marketing"...I'll check on this.
 
There are services that are for large scale email distribution. Constant Contact is one that I have been hearing more about recently, but there are probably better/more trusted ones out there.

CRM software sometimes has this built in. I use SugarCRM, and it has an email marketing feature. This uses Exchange for the delivery, but use it's own database for the list. Plus, a CRM has a ton of other features that they may like. The community version of SugarCRM would be a place to start, and for a free product, it is very robust.
 
They run on WinTAM...a common insurance program. It piggy backs on Outlook for mapi, but I don't believe it has its own additional contact list feature. I'll have her check with their support though.
 
They should be using some external company for this as mentioned, mailing that many people at once will probably bite you in the butt as you'll start getting blacklisted, we've had it happen a fw times with some clients.
 
I nested the lists. Make list ContactsA-M and list ContactsN-Z, and put them inside the Contacts-ALL list, and then send your emails to the Contacts-ALL list.
 
Sp00n said:
They should be using some external company for this as mentioned, mailing that many people at once will probably bite you in the butt as you'll start getting blacklisted, we've had it happen a fw times with some clients.
Click to expand...

They're sending/recieving e-mail via an SMTP smart host...not directly, I never setup Exchange servers directly via DNS.
 
Fint said:
I nested the lists. Make list ContactsA-M and list ContactsN-Z, and put them inside the Contacts-ALL list, and then send your emails to the Contacts-ALL list.
Click to expand...

Very interesting....sounds like a viable solution.
 
Here's a reply from her..

"I send monthly newsletters, E-Blasts of other useful information, press releases etc. Also, I issue our customer survey this way each year. I also plan to use it for direct marketing to take the place, in some instances, of direct mail. My main use is for existing clients.

However, we also use emailing for prospects. I have two full lists of prospects that I also mail to in the same way and would like further capabilities and to be able to grow these lists as well."
 
I would highly recommend using a third party marketing group at this point. My company uses E-dialog http://edialog.com/ and it's very good for what it is, and they are very helpful and support is pretty good. They pretty much provide and do everything and have excellent BI tools and reports. Unfortunately I do not know how much it costs but I would recommend them just from my experience.
 
W use constant contact at work for newsletters and email blasts. We hit up about 5k customers/prospects a month with this. It also gives you the ability to see who opens the emails, what links they click, etc...

http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp

Prior to this, it was broken down into groups within outlook.
 
Constant contact is web based.

Not sure what they are emailing, but, if you are interested, I'll forward you a news letter.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Do any of those two somehow integrate with Outlook/Exchange?
Click to expand...

I believe you import your distribution list into Constant Contact. From there, it manages the list. You build your emails using their app and they send it out for you. My printing company uses it to reach customers and I have received several emails from them generated by Constant Contact.
 
MorfiusX said:
I believe you import your distribution list into Constant Contact. From there, it manages the list. You build your emails using their app and they send it out for you. My printing company uses it to reach customers and I have received several emails from them generated by Constant Contact.
Click to expand...

If I recall correctly this is required as they provide opt-out services in the email footers. If you manage the list on outlook/exchange then they can't honor your clients request and would therefore be sending spam to the client.

If you want outlook integration you might try looking into http://www.swiftpage.com/ as I think it integrates in some manner. I can't say much about this service as I don't work with it directly, but the guy I work with uses and likes the system.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top