Technical Issues with Mass E-Mailing

[MerpsMom]

I want to do a targeted e-mailing to a number of people at once, perhaps 400 or so. Before making up my list, I have heard of issues and want to avoid them. This has happened to a fellow "marketer".

Issues: Could not do a "blast" to a list of about 500. They broke down the list to smaller numbers of addresses in "groups"; but while some groups went through, others were rejected in total. Reasons given by Outlook: "invalid addresses" which they took to mean those no longer working. They called their ISP which said the problem was sending out to too many AOLrs in one hour. Then someone said it wasn't that but the dead addresses.

What would keep a mass e-mailing from going to a large number of people if those addresses were good? If some are bad, why reject all? Is there something I can do to prevent this before investing the time to create a distribution list?

I know there are spam filters in place all over the internet, but I've done mailings before with 80 addresses and had no problem.

 

[David Waldmann]

Take a look at Constant Contact, a web-based email manager that works to make sure your emails go through.

 

[Mike Labbe]

I recommend outsourcing something like this to a third party, if you really want to do something by email. A third party email company will know all the rules for each ISP and is probably on a list of acceptable sources which the ISPs trust. I believe some ISPs, such as AOL, charge companies for exemption from the spam blocker.

Mass emailers will usually find themselves reported as spam, then will get listed on one of the spam databases. As a result of that, most of your regular emails will be blocked until you contact the spam database folks to get your name removed. All of this takes several days. Most email servers reference these known spammer databases when filtering the incoming mail, to weed out the spam. There are over 100 of these databases.

Places like AOL will automatically ban, because of the volume.

Also, when doing any type of email campaign, try to keep the distribution list to 9 or fewer recipients at a time. It's also very important to hide the identity of other people on your mailing list, by sending them as a BCC (Blind carbon copy). If you simply put them in the TO: or CC: fields it will expose everyone elses names and addresses to everyone who receives the email. This is probably a confidentiality problem for many, not to mention a big problem for infections. If one person on that list gets infected, the infection will likely harvest the names of your customers and send it to each of them. These are some reasons why it's good to hide the names of the recipients, when there are more than one.

Some vendors that provide this service:
http://www.constantcontact.com
http://www.subscribermail.com
http://www.benchmarkemail.com
http://www.emaillabs.com/
etc there are about 50 companies out there for this service.

 

[MerpsMom]

I will look at all these sites and appreciate the info.

I'm one who always wants to know the why things work and why not. If I could successfully send out an e-mail message to 80 people at once with no rejections of any kind, why can't that be done with 80 +or- in this capacity? Actually, some of these are the same people.

The list I used last year was for 80 women golfers: the list this year includes them but now will go to the whole membership. We are allowed to do this as small business entrepreneurs at this club and in our Homes Association.

I just don't see why it worked before and does not work now. You guys are so technically oriented, I'm sure there must be some small thing going wrong that you know and I don't. I'd at least like to understand it before I pay for a service---which I'm willing to do but not unless I must.

Thanx.....

 

[Mike Labbe]

One thing I failed to mention is also the ISP you use to send it through. (your dsl or cable company). Outgoing mail passes through their SMTP mail server, which delivers it for you. Many ISPs will automatically block or reject a message that has a lot of recipients, because it is likely a mass mailing.

Did you recently change ISPs? Could the isp's policy have changed?

Something worth considering, in any case.

Good luck with the promotion!
Mike

 

[Paul N]

This may or may not be the problem, but it's worth mentioning:

A few years back I regularly did email mail-merge (mass emailing) to customers, from a within a program that uses Outlook.

I discovered that if Outlook went through an invalid email address, it would stop at that address, abort the process and went no further.

An invalid email address could be something as simple as a comma instead of a dot (i.e: joe@here,com)

 

[MerpsMom]

Mike and Paul:

I believe that's the crux of the problem. We haven't changed ISPs but they may have changed their policies. And...Outlook may be "reading" deads and getting picky about it.

The solution we've decided upon: first, validate the addresses, load into a large list, try it. No rejections because of deads but still won't go? break into smaller groups and try again.

A pain, but worth the education. Then, it's off to a fee-based system, but they'd still have to have a valid list anyway, so...

Oh, my.

 

[Kirstie]

Take the free trial on Constant Contact 's web site and your mass emailing will be a breeze. This is the best email software company I have ever found, and I've tried a number of them as I have sent a once a month email for the last 5 years. I have my first of the month email going out to over 2800 subscribers (all opt-in) tomorrow morning and it will go off without a hitch. My ISP will not be involved. No blind ccs, no problems,each letter will be individaully addresssed and the unsubscribes will be taken care of in an ethical way. Teriffic reports available on thier site. I could not do business without them. Don't try to do it yourself. Let the pros help you and you will be amazed at how easy it is.

 

[Kirstie]

Sorry for the spelling below. I have yet to find the spell check on this thing! Is there one?

 

[Peter Bowe]

We just sent out our first mailings with IntelliContact after years of wrestling with in house approaches. I'll never go back. It is quick and easy to create a slick looking HTML message and all the opt out & unsubscribe stuff is taken care of.

I particularly like the list management tools - we have several email lists that we have developed, our in store customers, internet customers, a media list for press releases and a list for the Circle of Art , a charity benefit we host yearly. I was able to pretty easily load separate list for each group and will be able. Adding and removing names was getting to be a major task and I was always terrified of missing an unsubscribe and seriously annoying my customer or my ISP.

The tracking tools are fascinating. You can see exactly who opens the messages, when they open them and what links they click on.

Peter Bowe
Saline Picture Frame Co,
www.salinepictureframe.com