drew
World's Best Boss
Premium
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA
clubs:
 ·wavebroadband
|  So I am about to become the least popular man here...
Because of what I'm about to ask.
I work for a software company who is..ermm...trying to grow. And part of that is emailing prospective clients with newsletters and white papers et al.
Now, when our Business Development department (yeah, that's the official title of it, they're stretching I'm sure...) decides it's time for another round, my life as a network admin goes to hell due to blacklisting, not enough bandwidth to send 2000x500KB attachments, etc.
What I need from you is to get some recommendations on how to solve this problem. A great solution would also include a backup MX service.
TIA. |
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drmorley
Premium,MVM
join:2000-12-20
Park Ridge, IL
clubs:
| Why not outsource it?
I just did some work for a German firm that wanted to enter the U.S. market and we used this company for their email campaign with great success.
»www.benchmarkemail.com
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»mediafly.com/Welcome.aspx |
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drew
World's Best Boss
Premium
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA
clubs: | Outsourcing is certainly an option. Considering I've never used services such as these, how does the email appear to the end user? |
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drmorley
Premium,MVM
join:2000-12-20
Park Ridge, IL
clubs:
| said by drew  :...how does the email appear to the end user? Do you mean which domain appears? You can customize it to appear to come from your domain. Their FAQ is pretty good you might want to give it a once over.
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»mediafly.com/Welcome.aspx |
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B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28
| reply to drew
500 KB ??
I don't like getting messages that big from someone I know, even if I've asked for something. And yet these are "unsolicited commercial e-mail" messages?
Surely you can replace that with a link to a web-hosted PDF or what-have-you?
-- B
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In a realm outside causality and function |
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drew
World's Best Boss
Premium
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA
clubs:
·wavebroadband
| Trust me, we've been round and round on this.
We have a webserver in house with TWO T-1s. (Yeah, that makes sense... it's not like colo would be insanely cheaper or anything. . .) Plenty of bandwidth, but people around here are afraid of clicking on links in email, so they figure everyone else is too. |
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B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28
| I'm just going to ignore the self-deception and self-contradiction in their position ('cause it kinda baffles the mind) and ask that they at least try to slim the sucker down. Use HTML to its full extent and you won't need too many embedded images. Lots of times it turns out that the stupid company logo is well over half the message size.
But as you're well aware, what you're about to do makes your company the enemy of every sentient being who you victimize... 
Anyway, on topic, aren't there all kinds of relatively trusted outsourced mail agencies you can use?
Then again, the really legitimate ones would require that you have real opt-in authorization for your mailings, which based on what you've said so far I kinda doubt?
-- B
-- B
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In a realm outside causality and function |
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drew
World's Best Boss
Premium
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA
clubs:
·wavebroadband
| Straight from the Sales dept.'s mouth is that every e-mail address was collected at a tradeshow for solicitation purposes and that the person who signed up was well aware of it. Entirely possible.
I assure you, none of this is my idea, but I can't do much to change what the business owners want. I think I might be able to win the battle of clicking on a link to the PDF soon, so I'll keep pressing that.
Thanks for your thoughts |
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B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28
| I've been to enough of those trade shows. The scanning has replaced business cards, but there's no consent to spam (except that smart people realize that's exactly what's going to happen every time they hand out their info). I doubt that the contacts signed their names to a sheet that said "sign up for our spammy newsletter here".
The phrase "Hi! Let me scan your badge" is a frightening one.
-- B
--
In a realm outside causality and function |
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drew
World's Best Boss
Premium
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA
clubs:
·wavebroadband
| regardless of the tactics, I have a job to do. I've been assured by those above me that it is all on the up and up. I've done what I can and am not in a position to make such decisions.
Do you have a recommendation as to what 3rd party vendors could handle this kind of thing? |
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B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28
| Sorry no. I think it came up in a discussion here a while back but I don't recall the one or two mail houses that were mentioned.
Before my last reply I Googled the subject but of course it's difficult to avoid the antispam links and find a trusted mail house.
One suggestion I can offer is »www.m0.net/ . Dell uses them... of course I only know this because I had to fish some out of our spam bucket.
-- B
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In a realm outside causality and function |
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hober
Now with real cheese
Premium,MVM
join:2004-07-27
Asheville, NC
| reply to drew
I've used »www.myemma.com many a time, and they are very good. You can get them to enable the ability to create custom campaigns (copy and paste in your own email rather than using their templates) at no additional charge, but you have to call and ask for it.
The support is great and personalized, and I've never had a problem with them.
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o o o |
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DC DSL
Stays crunchy even in milk
Premium
join:2000-07-30
Washington, DC
 ·Covad Communications
·Verizon Online DSL
| reply to drew
If you're targeting business customers, check the trade rags (eWeek, ComputerWorld, cNet) advertising sections. They have buy-ins with qualified demographics. Don't try this on your own unless your folks have vetted each recipient and can certify they have explicitly given consent to receive your mailings.
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There is no giant fur-bearing trout. |
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GeekNJ
Premium
join:2000-09-23
Waldwick, NJ
 ·Verizon FIOS
| reply to drew
You also can include references to images hosted on a server vs include those images in the actual email message.
Most companies use reputable 3rd parties to do their emailing. Many of these services provide features such as how many bounced back, how many were opened, click thrus, etc. It's not foolproof, but it's something to help the marketing team measure.
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Tweaked your connection? | Mail Parse | Speed Converter |
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scooby
Premium
join:2001-05-01
Schaumburg, IL
·AT&T Midwest
| said by GeekNJ :You also can include references to images hosted on a server vs include those images in the actual email message. Most companies use reputable 3rd parties to do their emailing. Many of these services provide features such as how many bounced back, how many were opened, click thrus, etc. It's not foolproof, but it's something to help the marketing team measure. GeekNJ do you have a list of these companies? My company has two weekly opt-in newsletters that go to a large number of clients (500k+ and 250k+). We use a CDN to host all the images.
We currently use a service that runs their software on our hardware. We do not get logins on the system itself, just in the web interface. What has me concerned is when I single user'd it recently to change the IP for a datacenter move, is that it is an old version of Fedora that has had zero security patches applied. Complaining has done nothing and I do not want to apply them myself in case it breaks their software.
We are big into privacy so obviously this has us looking for a replacement provider. |
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B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28
| Well yeah, that would kind of help the OP too -- so far three possible providers have been named in this thread...
www.benchmarkemail.com
www.m0.net
www.myemma.com
-- B
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In a realm outside causality and function |
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GeekNJ
Premium
join:2000-09-23
Waldwick, NJ
·Verizon FIOS
| The company I'm with uses what I think is a smaller company to fill that roll - »www.epsilon.com
Look at a lot of marketing emails from corporations and you might get some more. It is often not obvious looking at the headers or from info, but typically, to provide the "opened" and click-thru type info, the references for the images or links point back to the email marketing vendor.
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Tweaked your connection? | Mail Parse | Speed Converter |
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GeekNJ
Premium
join:2000-09-23
Waldwick, NJ | Another I'm aware of is »www.yesmail.com/ |
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