Joss Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 I have never used an email service, but I have a potential client who wants to send out tons of mails to clients, wants them to be complex html and needs them to be responsive because so many people read their emails on phones. Up to now, he has been doing this on outlook, but as soon as we start taking the responsive route, we run into an issue where outlook and many other clients simply strip out the bits you need on the way out. So, he needs to do it through a hosted service like Mailchimp, and that also gives him proper unsubscribe bits and so on. However, never having used these myself, I am not sure what I should be suggesting. No, strike that, I really don't know what I should be suggesting! So, you lovely lads and lasses, what do you recommend? (ps. no solutions that needs to be installed on a server, I just KNOW that is going to cause me headaches!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 Mailchimp It's got a nice interface for doing just about everything you need to do. You can use or modify existing responsive templates, or create your own if you wish. You can easily add multiple types of content to messages. And all the other mundane stuff like managing subscribers and tracking who opened which messages. There are two non-profits I'm involved with who both use Mailchimp for regular member newsletters and it's brilliant. I'd say give it a go with some trial content and see how you and/or your client like it. The help guides are great too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joss Posted October 21, 2014 Author Share Posted October 21, 2014 Thanks Craig. I just tried a test mail on a responsive template I made with Ink and it worked nicely. Do the free emails get ads in them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 Cool I don't think so, no. I just checked a recent mailing and there is a "Mailchimp" button in the email footer under the unsubscribe links, but I think that is optional - either configurable as a setting or in the template. Essentially, whatever comes through to you from the "Send test" feature should be what goes out to subscribers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Knight Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 I've always recommended CampaignMonitor over MailChimp. in my experience, MC UI is less intuitive for clients and generates less support calls. Try both? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joss Posted October 21, 2014 Author Share Posted October 21, 2014 I think the use will mean that he wont have to input anything - I believe the plan is that I do the copywriting. So I will do that then just upload the html file. All he has to do is send it. I will look at campaign monitor too! Ta much Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sforsman Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Quick bump for MailChimp PS. Will you be implementing the MailChimp API for syncing the mailing list? If you will be, there's a few things you need to be aware of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
totoff Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 I'm working with Cleverreach (http://www.cleverreach.com/) and feel very satisfied. The good thing is: up to 250 recipients are free, so you can test unlimited. Haven't tested the other recommendations though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muzzer Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 I recently used MailGun for a newsletter mailout and it was the bomb. No ads for the free account which is also very generous in it's limits. The API was nice also allowing me to send contacts and campaign info to Mailgun direct from PW. Not as "out of the box" ready as the likes of MailChimp - a bit more down and dirty which I quite like ;-) Some services are just too polished! Also check out Mail tester if you have not already. Nice little site which analyses the email you send to it and advises how spammy it is and how to rectify any issues to get the best mailout results, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwired Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Forget about Outlook, it's headache crap. You may say that is personal. So here a working fact: Use Email Thunderbird plus Mail Merge add-on. All you need is your email adresses in csv format. Mail Merge makes email campaigns a breeze. <quote>If you want to send a mail to multiple recipients, there are three common problems: First you can't personalize the mail. Second you can't send a mail to more than 25, 100, ... recipients at once. Third the recipients should not see the other recipients. Mail Merge solves these problems by creating one single mail for each recipent from a draft! </quote> <consider> The number of emails that your ISP or Hoster allows to be sent at once, or to be sent per time unit. Crossing these limits may result in a block or ending up at the list on spam house </consider> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/mail-merge/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joss Posted October 22, 2014 Author Share Posted October 22, 2014 Hi Pwired The problem with that is that if he tries to send 2000 emails, his ISP is going to object. Also, when a company is signed up for Office, they wont want to use anything but Outlook - I don't blame them. In the office environment, with the way it coexists with Onenote, word and the rest, and the pure look of it, it puts Thunderbird in the shade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwired Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Then you need a microsoft way of sending those emails. You can write your own script that drives email outlook or whatever email program that is being used. and make it do what you want such as an email campaign. Writing a script that sends 10 emails every minute will not alarm the ISP or Hoster but of course check before. Over night that will take a bit more then 3 hours. So that is a workable situation. I use autohotkey to drive and automate the front end of programs. Have a look if Outlook has it's own scripting language or MS has one for your mail program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martijn Geerts Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 I would highly recommend Mailchimp Joss, we send over 1.000.000 emails a month using MailChimp. For templates look at these blue prints: https://github.com/mailchimp/Email-Blueprints They are from Mailchimp and they know what the are doing. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joss Posted October 22, 2014 Author Share Posted October 22, 2014 Unfortunately, I will have to do the templates as the client and his designer want it that way, but I have been using Ink and that works well. I am also looking at Amazon SES, though it wont be for this one. Interesting how much cheaper it is than things like Mandrill. My main worry is I suspect that the client might be buying email lists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marty Walker Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 @Joss if you're going the Amazon SES route take a look at Sendy http://sendy.co/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joss Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 That is very interesting, thanks Marty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onjegolders Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Also Mandrill https://mandrill.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joss Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 Already said that SES is 100th of the price, but more work. This is interesting - Sendy hosting http://www.sendyhosting.com/ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragan Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Whatever you'll decide to use, don't use SAP. I had to develop some responsive emails for a client recently, which uses SAP. It's a dark narrow path of misery, pain (and even more pain). A little word of advice: You should test your emails/templates with a tool like Litmus. They can do tests on all possible email client varieties / devices. https://litmus.com/ Writing an HTML email (from scratch) in 2014 feels very weird - you're extremely limited due to vendors stripping out all kinds of tags and stuff. HTML tables for content is still the sad truth, with a bit of CSS icing on the cake, and lots and lots of hacks. Some reading material: http://alistapart.com/article/can-email-be-responsive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joss Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 So far, with my experiments, I have found INK by Zurb very good. I even fired up Dreamweaver to use it. What I like is in their documentation they have compatibility tables for various ways of using it. For instance, there are problems with media queries on some combinations. So they offer alternative ways of doing things. They also have a free inliner on their site, which is very gracious ... Certainly it seems that even more than with web, a mobile first design philosophy is paramount. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osorio Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 @Joss if you're going the Amazon SES route take a look at Sendy http://sendy.co/ I second that - sendy is great, and increadibly cost-efficient (when used with SES) if you're dealing with large volumes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joss Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 Using Sendy/SES, how is it with not getting rejected by the likes of Google, Outlook.com and so on? I notice that one of the things that Mailchimp and CampaignMonitor talk a lot about is building their reputation so that emails get through as much as possible. Are you guys having to build your own reputations? And if so, how are you doing it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joss Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 You know, you never see pink cars until you own a pink car, and then you see them everywhere. Same with Sendy - never heard of it till yesterday and now it is everywhere.... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 You know, you never see pink cars until you own a pink car, and then you see them everywhere. Same with Sendy - never heard of it till yesterday and now it is everywhere.... Congratulations, you've just encountered the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information--often an unfamiliar word or name--and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joss Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 Ah, I think I predate that. I grew up in London in the 60s, and was working in London in the seventies when the IRA were setting off bombs in Oxford Street (100 yards from the studio I was at) and Baader Meinhof were regularly on the news. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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