This week the big project is finding a solution to the e-mail marketing problem we have found.
For a number of years I/WE (there are others involved now) have been using a third party company for the delivery of company e-mails and auto-replied messages.
There is a significant difference however between these two systems. Company e-mails, i.e. periodical news e-mails are simply sent as and when the company decides. The newsletter is constructed and sent out on mass to a defined set of opt-in e-mail subscribers. The second system mentioned was an auto-reply service which is entirely different in that when a users signs up their e-mail address gets entered into an auto responder. An auto responder can be set to send an e-mail immediately (noting a thank you to the customer) with a further “set” of time delayed emails which have already been constructed.
Bulk E-Mailing
The problem we have found recently is that in using a third party company for our bulk e-mails means that we are completely reliant on their capacity of preventing spammers using their service. I have found that there has been an increase of e-mails returned which have been bounced by receiving e-mail servers due to this third party company having been black-listed as a spammer. This has presumably come about due to a user or two using their system to send out spam. Obviously this is not a great relationship for us to have for two reasons.
- We do not want to be related to spammers
- People actually do want company news, having signed up to receive it.
So I’ve made a decision to go in-house with one of our big mailing lists as this ensures we have zero relationships with blacklists and users will get the mail they wish, having opted-in for it.
Mail Headers
As domains are cheap as chips I have purchased a new domain (related in wording to the main company site) specifically for the purpose of being the originator of the weekly newsletter. This makes sense on many levels, not least that within the mail headers sent out, the domain will be listed as the mail sender and therefore will keep the news as a distinct department and away from the main company business.
I feel this makes a great deal of sense and can in fact been seen in use by tons of companies, for many different purposes, press domains, marketing domains,image domains, video domains etc, all essentially “branches” or extended arms of the company.
More soon.