Bulk Email Sending Software Needed

Missy86

As the title suggests, we are looking to send regular emails to our customers. I understand that i cannot do this in Microsoft Outlook so I am looking for software to facilitate this. I have been looking on the net for software and have downloaded one or two free trials.

I was wondering if there was anyone who is currently using such software and what they think of it, etc or if any one can recommend a good software for us to use. We would be sending out about a couple of hundred emails weekly/monthly - we are not really sure at the moment, I need to be able to import lists from excel/word (more importantly excel) and it would be a bonus if we could track emails.

Thanks guys

edanto

If you only have a couple of hundred people to email, and just a single computer with Outlook on it, AND all the people saved in the Outlook Contacts, then you could use Outlook.

Here are some instructions: http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/mailmerge.htm

This will ONLY work if the conditions above are met, since after that you'll be into database territory. It's cheap and cheerful and will force you to keep your Outlooks contacts up to date. If anyone asks you not to send them the mass-mail, you just record that choice in a custom field on their Contact and then filter those people out of the mass-mail.

If you need more functionality, you could have a look at verticalreponse.com, they allow you to email a group (you maintain the list and upload a new one as required) and let people opt-in via a form on your website and opt-out via a link in the email. You get email opening (image downloading) and click tracking. It costs, but it's cheap. You can also design nice-looking emails, as opposed to building them yourself in Outlook.

It's hard to recommend properly without knowing more about what you want to send out, ie the same email to the whole list every time, or more targetted? If you want to do more targetted emailing, you probably want a CRM system with emailing capabilities. There are many answers to that decision, here is an example of one
http://blogs.zoho.com/crm/things-that-work-well-in-zoho-crm-email-campaigns

davenewt

Here's a piece of software I believe blacknight (web hosts) use. Heard it mentioned in one of their customer emails anyway.

http://www.group-mail.com/asp/common/groupmail.asp

Mods please note - I'm not affiliated with either company (edit: other than being a satisfied blacknight customer of course ), so not trying to advertise, just trying to be helpful to the OP.

D.

Sevenspeed

Hi,
I am hoping to do something similar.
Send a mailshot maybe once a month to around 4000 email addresses.
All the email addresses are stored in a microsoft access database.
I've used outlook for this but it nearly always crashes. I design the emails in microsoft word.
Any type of tracking or analytics would be a nice bonus.
Also is there a faster way to do this. If I succeed to send one with outlook it could take as long as 24 hours!
What would anyone recommend?

davenewt

Look up mailchimp or campaign monitor if the above didn't help. Both are online solutions with tracking/analytics capabilities and differing price plans.

hearny

Campaign monitor is easy to use and reasonably priced, I've never used Mailchimp but heard good reviews about it.