Mailing Lists (Full Version)

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jaybee -> Mailing Lists (3/12/2005 14:54:21)

Just thought I'd put this in here for anyone who is not aware of the potential problems with mailing lists.

A lot of hosts are offering an add-on of PHPlist which allows you to set up a mailing list and ship out emails or newsletters to people who sign up. What they don't tell you is that they usually have a limit on the number of mails that can go out at any one time.

The client I am working with now has 8000 addresses in his database and wanted to send out a global one-off welcome mail. The host informs me that you can only send 100 mails per hour.

This turns out to be not quite correct. You can process the queue for all 8000 but only 100 will go out, the server dumps the rest without telling you.

I'm in the process of setting up a cron job which will hopefully handle the process automatically but even this is fraught with problems. It will take 80 hours to ship all these mails out. If during that time he decides to use the manual send to one of his lists, one lot will vanish.

If anyone has any ways round this, short of shifting the whole site to a mailing host then I'd be interested to hear it.



paulie -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/14/2005 20:03:36)

No solution, but I have found that to be somewhat commonplace with hosts nowadays. It seems that staying off the blacklists is such a full-time job that only the hosts who specialize in email marketing deem it worth the trouble.

There are lots of free apps to manage a list and design your message, but the challenge is finding someone to send it for you. None of the hosts I've used will allow more than a minimal number per hour or day, so you're left to the service providers who specialize in it. Many have affiliate programs, but I have just referred my clients to them and forgotten about it. After doing a cost analysis, there was no way I could compete with their prices, and I've never made enough money on an affiliate program to bother.

Your mileage may vary.



Long Island Lune -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/16/2005 13:27:56)

This problem can be solved if your willing to pay a monthly fee. Has nothing to do with you swtiching hosts or anything. The the price is steep. 125.00 per month for up to 25,000 emails stored on their server for you, the send rate is about 10,000 an hour, and all the emails go out. No problems with wondering if they all went out or not. And you can send as many campaigns as you wish per month. If you have 50,000 emails, then it's 250.00 a month. But using this method and paying that price, it would be better if you were sending them out on a dialy basis and charging to do it. In other words, don't include this as free with any work you do in the website development or hosting fields. Make it separate.



eureka125 -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/16/2005 14:43:43)

We just discussed this issue last night. Here are two possible solutions:
-- the do-it-yourself solution: DADA Mail, a PHP mail program.
-- to let them do it solution: Constant Contact



jaybee -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/16/2005 17:32:55)

Mmmmm thanks for that. Unfortunately this is my first experience with newsletters and like a total pillock I agreed to handle the whole thing. Never again.

It took me 6 hours just to set up the lists and load the data into them. The client is one of those who can't understand what the problem is, all he has to do is click on send in Outlook Express and off they go. I told him I'd mail him all 8000 email addresses and he could use his method then. [:@]

There is no way he'll ever pay the prices the mailing specialists want but in future, anyone asks for it and they have more than 100 addresses then I'll farm it out. It's not so bad if it's a start-up and people arrive and sign up, no data uploads.

Once I've got this cron sorted then I can throttle the sends and just keep a copy for future reference.

Never ever ever take on a large mailing list [&o]



kevin3442 -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/16/2005 18:32:26)

Don't know if this is helpful at all, but just in case anyone is interested in a different twist...

I ran into a similar problem a while back. The host would only allow 30 emails to be sent at one time. No hourly limit (at least not then), but a limit on the number of addresses you could send to in one mailing. This sort of put a damper on using a mail group to hold all of the recipient addresses. We solved the issue by getting GroupMail; an inexpensive, easy to use, yet very flexible group mailing app. Been using it for a couple of years now with no complaints.

Kevin



traveler98 -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/17/2005 8:54:02)

Interesting and timely-

Just ran into same problem myself. Have a customer who has an opt in email list for specials, and is up to 250 people. Had to stagger them out like jaybee discussed because the host server will only let so many go out at once. Can't find anywhere where is says what the limit is....finally sent 10 at a time out which was a huge pain. Still not sure everybody got them.

Any other programs out there for group emails?



jaybee -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/17/2005 9:01:26)

The only way you'll find out what the limit is - email the host and ask them. I had a go at my lot and suggested they might like to post something that tells people.

If they sent an error message saying "you've exceeded your mail limit" then it would be fine..ish but they don't, they just drop the excess so you have no idea what went.

I've suggested they put a message on the install panel next to PHPlist saying maximum send 100 per hour.



kevin3442 -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/17/2005 11:35:32)

Same here... the host involved with my story had no information about their limit; still don't! And no feedback when you exceed the limit. They just dump all of the addressed past the 30th. Our only feedback was along the lines of, "Hey... why did my co-worker received his newsletter but I didn't? Emailing the host didn't hep either. We ended up calling their tech support, and were fortunate enough to speak with someone who knew what was going on.

Kevin



Anklebuster -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/17/2005 21:57:11)

I signed up for the Internet Marketing Center's app, called MyEmailManager. I wonder if anyone has used this app? It is supposed to handle HUGE mail lists.



Thomas Brunt -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/29/2005 9:46:00)

I cannot imagine ever suggesting to anyone to go the do-it-yourself route, but it's not fair to say that using a service will absolve you of problems.

Most reasonably priced services place a number of clients on a single IP. The chances are very good that at least 1 of those clients has been flagged as a spammer even if none of the clients actually is a spammer. It's the IP that get's blacklisted -- not the domain.

IT IS FAR TOO EASY TO BLACKLIST A NEWSLETTER PUBLISHER.

DIGITAL McCARTHYISM

Even when you go with a dedicated IP, it's likely that you will be blacklisted. All it takes is one yahoo mail user to click the "This is Spam" button, and you're in trouble. If you happen to have an unscrupulous competitor who really knows the ropes and doesn't like you then you can just hang it up right now unless you can afford to spend hours per week fighting the blacklists.

More problematic than blacklisting is the rate of turnover in valid email addresses. You get a new email address. You sign up for some newsletters. One publisher sells your address. You get spammed to death. You quit using that address and start another. Will you remember or even dare to sign up for all the newsletters you signed up for before?

I'm not saying that mass emails are not worth doing. I'm just saying that they take a lot more work and seem to reap a lot less reward than they did 3 plus years ago.

Here is the best resource I know on the subject.

http://www.emailsherpa.com/

I believe that rss will one day completely replace permission based mass emails because the problems with email are only getting worse, but software makers have a long way to go to make rss more convenient and attractive to end users.

t



traveler98 -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/29/2005 12:08:00)

Thomas or anybody else-

Have you ever tried these people? Or know anything about them:

GotMarketing http://www.gotcorp.com

Their list of clients is impressive and the prices for small fries like me also seem very reasonable.



jaybee -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/29/2005 12:57:31)

Tom, I think I'm reasonably OK with this one as the newsletters go to schools who hopefully don't change their mail addresses too often and don't use Yahoo.

For any other client I'm steering well clear. This one has been a pain in the btm to say the least.



Anklebuster -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/29/2005 14:22:49)

Tom,
Thanks for your input.



cfilut -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/30/2005 15:29:51)

Hello everyone,

Like almost everyone else here, I am a webdesigner with very limited coding knowledge. However, my partner is very familiar with asp and other coding so I asked him to set me up with a mailing list I could run and install on many sites.

What we came up with was a add-in for frontppage. We developed it about a year ago and have been tweaking it ever since. I have used it with great success on several of my sites. I never intended on giving it to the public, but the last few mailers from outfront made me think that someone else out there might benefit from this.

After installing the subscription add-in on your computer, you may need to add it to your addins in FrontPage. Then install the subscription into your website by clicking on tools, 2guysfromcleveland, then add subscription. I would suggest setting it up in a new website for testing purposes. Plus, I have only tested it on windos xp, 2000 and FP2002 and up.

It is important to know the email address your sending from, your outgoing smtp address for the site and the username and password for this account. There is an edit feature in the same spot in case you mess this up.

If you do not know how to create databases in frontpage, this will set it up automatically for you. It will also create all the pages necessary to subscribe, unsubscribe, thank you pages, emails to administrators and validations on unsubscribers. This is all optional in the wizard.

I set up a site to download this subscrition addin rather quickly for the Outfronters only (about 3 hours) so do not judge to harshly on design.

If you think its something worth while for any of you, I will develop detailed instructions on set up and implementation, along with some extra tricks I have learned.

Download the addin here. http://2guysfromcleveland.com/shop/



jaybee -> RE: Mailing Lists (3/30/2005 16:10:05)

That's great and thanks very much. I'm sure there will be people on here delighted to make use of it.

Me, I'm off mailers until the mists of time have dulled this experience. [&o]



freelancewriter -> RE: Mailing Lists (4/27/2005 15:33:33)

I have used an old, free version of Group Mail for years with good success. So long ago that a different company owned it at that time (Aureate now of spyware fame, not the current owner Infacta). I've also used WorldCast, which is free (or at least used to be free) to non-commercial users and non-profits.

Both were fine, but that old copy of Group Mail has gotten buggy as time goes by. Not sure if it's due to Windows updates, or what, but it misfires at least 1/4 of the time now.

The new, free version of Group Mail limits groups to 100, which isn't all that practical. The pay version can handle bouncebacks and unsubscribes, which might be useful if I could try out this feature for even one mailing to see how well it works. Alas, you have to buy it to try it, and I don't want to shell over $99 to see if it actually works. (I'm particularly interested in bounceback handling.)

There are so many mass mail programs on the markets nowadays. I, too, wonder what people are using and how it works for them. Please share your experiences!



jaybee -> RE: Mailing Lists (4/27/2005 16:39:38)

PHPList handles bouncebacks. Handles lots of other things too but documentation is atrocious/non-existant. The support forums are pretty good though and got me round problems with batch mailing. I finally got it going using cron but it took an awful lot of digging around in that forum.



Anklebuster -> RE: Mailing Lists (4/27/2005 21:08:51)

quote:

ORIGINAL: freelancewriter
There are so many mass mail programs on the markets nowadays. I, too, wonder what people are using and how it works for them. Please share your experiences!

I wasted 432.00 in monthly fees (in addition to 221.00 in software) for Internet Marketing Center's My Email Manager. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It got blacklisted by my mail provider, and their attitude was less than helpful. I am not going to further bash them in public - just stay away from them. Corey Rudl got rich off of rubes like me!
I am now using AWeber. I had an extensive chat with the manager of that company and he assured me that their deliverability rate is excellent. The rate is much cheaper, and I don't have to install software.




jaybee -> RE: Mailing Lists (4/28/2005 4:17:31)

quote:

432.00 in monthly fees (in addition to 221.00 in software)


Ouch! At least PHPList is free.



Anklebuster -> RE: Mailing Lists (4/28/2005 8:01:26)

quote:

ORIGINAL: jaybee

quote:

432.00 in monthly fees (in addition to 221.00 in software)


Ouch! At least PHPList is free.


Well, that was the whole point: I can paint my house for free, but what would it look like? At the time, I knew zero about website building. that is why I started with FrontPage, this forum and a whole bunch of other resources.
Being a programmer, I quickly acclimated to the HTML, but despaired of ever having the time to learn all of the myriad languages such as perl, php and jscript. Individually, I suppose they're relatively simple, but to make a coherent whole...bah! I paid the piper and he took all my money, the rat!




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