Introduction 

Email can be a very useful tool for marketing to your existing customers and new ones. Its quick and theres no delivery costs. In fact it can be one of the cheapest and easiest forms of marketing there is. There are different ways to do it, ranging from your desktop email client, like MS Outlook, to professional email marketing services or software.

So how do you go about it, and what do you need to know?

To many people its simple - just write an email in Outlook and send it to all the customers in your contacts list. If you want to buy in more contacts, simply import those into Outlook and away you go. Whats the big deal?

Well one thing that has to be explained to start with is the problem with mass emailing from your usual email client, whether its Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird or whatever.

Why not use Outlook?

 The problem isnt so much Outlook as where your email goes after Outlook. Your email going out gets sent to a computer (the Outgoing SMTP server) which relays it on. Typically on a PC this will be set to either a mailserver designated by your broadband supplier (like mail.talltalk.net), or if you own a domain name it may be set to a mailserver thats provided with your domain name (like mail.yourdomainname.com). Either of these may prevent mass mailing - they just stop after you send more than a few dozen at once. They do this in case you get a virus on your PC.
You can get round that problem in theory by using (paying for) an SMTP server such as http://www.authsmtp.com/ that permits mass emailing. The only remaining problem is that many broadband providers block access to anything other than their own SMTP servers! (again for anti-virus reasons).

Outlook can’t handle automatic unsubscription - very important.

Another problem with Outlook is that unless you add all the recipients as BCC, they will see who else is on the send list - which is potentially very embarrassing and possibly illegal!

So in summary, you could use Outlook, if your SMTP server is OK and you BCC everyone. Beyond that ,why move up to the next level?

Common Features of Email Marketing Systems

• Automatic un-subscription. This is important to avoid you falling foul of anti-spam legislation - see below.
• Automatic subscription from a form on your website is possible.
• Double opt-in. Identify peoples ID before emailing them, by requiring them to reply to an email, checking that they want to subscribe.
• Schedule and repeat your emails.
• Send them faster than from a standard email client. Outlook could take hours to send a long list even if your SMTP server allows it.
• Track results - see who  received and  opened your mail, at what time, and what links they clicked.
• Monitor bounces - identify emails that dont get delivered, and the reasons.

Anti-Spam Legislation 

E-marketing activities are regulated by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations that came into force in December 2003. The regulations  legislate against unsolicited emails or SMS, commonly referred to as spam (see DTI Business Link Site ).

 The key thing is that if you are sending email to an individual it must not be unsolicited (they must have opted-in) and it must alllow them to opt-out from future emails. Its in theory Ok to send unsolicited mail to a business, (i.e. theres no opt-in requirement) but you still must allow them to be able to opt out. However business email addresses frequently are owned by individuals, and therefore the safest and most polite thing to do is not to send unsolicted email at all!

Beware bought in email lists - they may not have opted in properly. If they have opted-in in some general way to receive emails from lots of companies, the chances are that the user will be inundated and will only be reading a small percentage of what they get.

Solstice Business Systems can help you with any aspect of email marketing!

Have a look at MyMailMan which is operated and supported by Solstice. It uses state of the art email marketing software.

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