Mass mailer program

[Red Squirrel]

Someone I know who helps run a dance academy needs to send a regular newsletter to their members and is in need of a mass mailer and wanted me to research that since I mentioned about them. Our ISP here does not allow mass mail due to lot of people who get viruses that send out spam, so it would need to have the option to send a bit at a time.

I googled and there's tons of em, but this is kinda a shady type of software and I don't want to be randomly installing stuff not knowing it could have viruses or spyware. These days it's risky to just google for software, not knowing what's good and what's bad.

So wondering if anyone has first hand experience with either a free application, or a free web service, that can mail out newsletters.

I could easily write something like this, but I'm sure there's some decent ones out there already made.

 

[KillaChaos]

Im not an expert on this subject but I don't think there are free mass mailers because of the reason you mentioned above. Any program you download will probably need an SMTP server (which you will have to pay for because your ISP doesn't let you mass mail).

What is the domain you are sending the mail from? Most free email service providers limit the number emails you can send a day, I know gmail only lets you email 500 people at a time.

On another note, I know there are newsletter services out there that you can gave people at your dance academy sign up for. Google Groups does it (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=22839) and its free.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The domain is their own I believe, not sure how they are hosted. They'll most likely use our ISP's mail server. It allows mass mailing but there has to be delays, so a program that supports delays will work.

I will check out google groups though, that might be a good option.

 

[Whatsisname]

Use a hosted web server to do it.

 

[Virtus]

How many people are on the list?

We tried doing it ourselves for a year. I even wrote my own automated email sender. Last year we started using www.mailchimp.com - I think it's free if you have under 500 email addresses (they put a logo on the email). It's $30/month for up to 2,500 addresses and scales up from there.

We have around 3,500 people on our list(s). It tells us who opened the email (unless their email client blocks downloads), where they are, and what they clicked on. It also automatically cleans itself if an email bounces or if someone unsubscribes. They have decent email templates and handy code for your webpage to allow people to add themselves to the list. We just started playing with their auto-emails that send emails to individuals on specific dates, so now everyone gets an email from us on their birthday.

I hate to sound like a commercial but we cut our mass postcard mailings in half because of this (which saves us $2k a pop). An alternative is www.constantcontact.com, but I've never used them.

The only downside is that they are a bit strict about making sure that people really did sign up to receive your email. If you have more than 1 - 2% of your recipients complain to their ISP, they'll suspend your account. So you can't buy lists or harvest emails for your campaigns. I wish they had a different name because I get funny looks when I recommend it to other business owners. I even recommended to a small non-profit group and they use it for their list even though they only have about 70 email addresses, so maybe it will work for the dance academy.

 

[Red Squirrel]

How many people are on the list?

We tried doing it ourselves for a year. I even wrote my own automated email sender. Last year we started using www.mailchimp.com - I think it's free if you have under 500 email addresses (they put a logo on the email). It's $30/month for up to 2,500 addresses and scales up from there.

We have around 3,500 people on our list(s). It tells us who opened the email (unless their email client blocks downloads), where they are, and what they clicked on. It also automatically cleans itself if an email bounces or if someone unsubscribes. They have decent email templates and handy code for your webpage to allow people to add themselves to the list. We just started playing with their auto-emails that send emails to individuals on specific dates, so now everyone gets an email from us on their birthday.

I hate to sound like a commercial but we cut our mass postcard mailings in half because of this (which saves us $2k a pop). An alternative is www.constantcontact.com, but I've never used them.

The only downside is that they are a bit strict about making sure that people really did sign up to receive your email. If you have more than 1 - 2% of your recipients complain to their ISP, they'll suspend your account. So you can't buy lists or harvest emails for your campaigns. I wish they had a different name because I get funny looks when I recommend it to other business owners. I even recommended to a small non-profit group and they use it for their list even though they only have about 70 email addresses, so maybe it will work for the dance academy.

Hmm interesting, I think they may be willing to pay (not sure how many users they have). I will have to bring this up to them.

If it were me, I would just use my own web server which I host myself, but for them, I'm not sure what type of setup they have. This is a tricky thing to do too as it's fairly easy to fall in blacklists and stuff.