mailing list help

[blakjak]

hello all,
am new to this community..
i've a new client whose site i'm upgrading and they need me to send out newsletters to their mailing list.
they have 9000 people on the list and i have an excel file of this..
havent done this before.
can anyone tell me how i should go about this??
thanks
blak

[oeimarketing]

check hotscripts.com for email management scripts. There are a few frebies out there. Or mayb buy a decent script for $50. We send out 20,000 every week with 2 programs we found there.

[benricho]

You could try our software that will make the process pretty simple for you. Importing the list will be a snap, and you can even have detailed reports to show your clients on who opened the email, clicked links etc. Plus all the unsubscribes, bounces etc are handled automatically.

And if you need any help designing the newsletter you might want to check out our Email Newsletter Design Gallery for some ideas and inspiration.

[Ravedesigns]

hello all,
am new to this community..
i've a new client whose site i'm upgrading and they need me to send out newsletters to their mailing list.
they have 9000 people on the list and i have an excel file of this..
havent done this before.
can anyone tell me how i should go about this??
thanks
blak

Well, you've got two options - you can either install your own program on your computer/server and use it to send out your emails...or like benricho suggested you can use an online service to do it mange your list.

Personally, I like using online service services myself, and recently decided to use AWeber to handle my mailing list for about $20 a month. If you use an online service though, they'll probably limit the number of names you can import into their system at a time, as most are very cautious about sending emails to people they're not certain have asked to receive them.

I just imported a small list of 400 names from one site of mine and Aweber insists on sending out a confirmation email first to verify that those people want to be on my list. I don't know about campaign monitor or other services like ConstantContact - but you'll be a little more restricted using an online service than if you run your own script.

HTH,

Steve

P.S. If you think you might want to buy your own program to use, take a look at http://www.ecom24.com/arp.php which has been rated pretty well for years now.

[blakjak]

thanks dave, benricho and steve for the advice,
my client already has an online marketing service, like aweber, who sends it out for them.. to an undisclosed list. apart from this, they have their own (client) email list of 9k ids.
and since i maintian the website and design the newsletter they expected me to do it.
i tried group mail software (demo) from the net,installed on my computer and sent out a trial to 4 of my own ids. Only one of them received it.
Apparently hotmail. yahoo, gmail etc block emails coming from any mass mailing software. Does campaign monitor take care of this?
all help is appreciated.
thank you.
blakjak

[Ravedesigns]

Blakjak,

I think alot depends on the content of the email you sent out and if any of the major spam filters tagged it as spam. Did it not get to the test accounts at all, or did it end up in a spam folder?

I know some services like Constant Contact participate in programs that are supposed to get their email through to users of AOL and others, but I'm not sure about Aweber or Campaign Monitor. I just did a small test from my aweber account to hotmail and yahoo addresses and it went through no problem, and there's also a test you can run in Aweber to see if you message looks like spam.

If you have access to that Aweber account, try mailing some test messages through them and see how it turns out.

Steve