Paper, printing, envelopes, and postage can add up quickly.

Thursday, 21. July 2011

This is something you really want to avoid at all cost.4. They would gather all their emails into some primitive version of a spreadsheet, fire up some mail merging program, hook it up to their corporate mail system and voila, thousands of emails were flying away.Today, the scenario is certainly possible, but let me tell you in a simple set of scenarios what can happen:One of the many not-for-profit groups that decided to police the internet will intercept that a large number of emails were generated and sent by a server near you (yep, they can do that). Door to door sales require paying out commissions. Using most email list management programs, these 10-20% of users will open up emails from you and be very inclined to call you a spammer.To avoid this, look for companies that use multi-part MIME to send out messages. The only way to do it is with a maximum degree of automation, or, the better solution – to outsource to a company that does it professionally.Folks, I am known for promoting the “do it in house” concept, and am not that big on outsourcing. Your emails might actually be blocked so well that your company will have a real trouble communicating via email and your IT folks will all go nuts and/or get fired.Basically, not so good. In order to protect the civilized world from those who spread spam, viruses and other vermin, they will put you on Best Of Brochure Design a list of threats to humanity. Those other nice corporate folks who were your indented recipients, have an IT department that gets constantly yelled at by angry users who get emails with naked people. However, not all of your users have the ability to view email messages in HTML format. The better services allow to have custom fields, additional to the standard first name and last name.3. Instead of seeing your aesthetically pleasing email they might see a string of meaningless code. I say stay away from it and let the professionals do what they do.If you are worried about cost, know that the fee you pay for email marketing services, will still cost less than the continued overhead and expenses of the traditional options, not to mention the great possibilities of reaching a much larger audience, much faster (practically instantly).What to look for in an email marketing company?1. HTML emailThe ability to send out HTML emails has been around for quite some time. Other things that can happen are: you’ll have to build some opt-in / opt-out system, in some states there are laws that require that you make it very easy for your audience to unsubscribe, you’ll have a hard time formatting your emails in a decent, eye pleasing way, etc.Lastly, the process of sending thousands of emails and managing lists, subscribing and unsubscribing people is tedious and just plain annoying. Most email marketing companies support the ability to send out messages that include graphics and formatted text. This percentage is usually between 10-20%.