Email Marketing for Starts

[bo5ton]

From what I hear Email marketing is still an important part of any business and has a great return of investment. I would like to send emails to my client using a template in HTML. I have used campaign monitor and know what needs to be done to the format of emails for correct rendering. However, something that puzzles me is sending a HTML based email outside of any of the campaign manager sites (i.e. Campaign Monitor or MailChimp).

I only have a tiny list of recipients that I require to receieve emails, therefore I don't really need a large manager like Campaign Monitor, so I guess I'm just wondering, what are my other options? Can I send from a typical email client with HTML as the format? If so, which client supports this? What else do I need to do to perform this.

Thanks.

[ralph.m]

I think you can paste your HTML code into Outlook and send it (not sure about the latest version, though) and you can also do this with Thunderbird. (In both clients there's some kind of option, such as Insert > HTML or similar.)

Another option (which I quite like) is to load your template into Safari (even just locally on your desktop) and then click File > Mail Contents of the Page, and bingo, your email client opens with the HTML email loaded, all ready to send.

[bo5ton]

Ah excellent. I'll give that a go. Seems more economic for my 20 or so clients to just use this method. Thanks for that.
I wonder if there is a number you can send before you're marked for spam? Perhaps it depends on your clients.

[ralph.m]

I've heard that batches of 50 per hour are safe to send out, but that could be wildly wrong. When you think about it, I get funny emails from family and friends all the time with huge members of email addresses (grrr, not hidden by BCC) and no one seems to get whacked by their ISP for that.

[bo5ton]

Ah cool. With a small client base I shouldn't need to worry then.

Thanks for your help Ralph! (if that is your real name)

[ralph.m]

Ah cool. With a small client base I shouldn't need to worry then.

No, certainly I wouldn't think it's a problem. The advantage of things like CampaignMonitor is you get all kinds of interesting info on who's opened the email etc. You could also consider MailChimp, as you can do a lot of mailing for free (although CM is very cheap).

if that is your real name

'Tis indeed.

[bo5ton]

You could also consider MailChimp, as you can do a lot of mailing for free

Oh wow! You can send 2,000 per campaign and 12,000 a month from MailChimp for free! (Even if there are a few catches). I should have read the pricing from MailChimp... I had no idea! Thanks Ralph...

p.s 500 posts!