External Email Marketing Platform

[Andrew]

Hi, Just wondering if anyone out there uses a 3rd party company for email marketing rather than the internal BP tools.

We have just had a demo from DotMailer and I have to say I was extremely impressed with the flexibility you can build into your campaigns and the reporting side of things look really good.

If anyone has any experience with this company I would appreciate any feedback you could give me before I commit.

[Red Devil]

If you don't mind me asking, what do they charge?

[Neil]

Can i ask what % you got marked as read?

[NicJ]

Not used Dot Mailer but they are well known in the industry and send out emails for some big clients as well as having the package you can use.

I have used a small company called Global Gold with software called Suite 26. Has good features and easy to use - I get charged £7.50 / 1000 emails for quantities of around 30,000 emails. This is fairly standard but the biggest cost is usually the account set up fee which is one to look out for.

Open rates will vary by industry and the quality of the email list (how old it is etc) but you should look for something around the 15% mark.

[Marco]

We have used Interspire Email Marketer, hosted on our own server and have had no problems with it. Lots of features including Auto responders, the feature we mainly use.

[Dave]

We have used Interspire Email Marketer, hosted on our own server and have had no problems with it. Lots of features including Auto responders, the feature we mainly use.

How dare you mention a competitor to Bluepark :D

[john]

We are using Mailchimp, it's expensive but the site is quite amusing

[icegems]

We used to use Constant Contact and another one that I can't remember right now but we now use the BP email system. Yes the stats are nice to have, there is no denying that but the Bluepark integrated email system meets our needs and saves us a fortune each month. We decided the stats were a luxury we could live without - we haven't noticed any decrease in resulting orders from the emails and at the end of the day that is what we want the newsletter for - to generate orders.

[Neil]

We used to use Constant Contact and another one that I can't remember right now but we now use the BP email system. Yes the stats are nice to have, there is no denying that but the Bluepark integrated email system meets our needs and saves us a fortune each month. We decided the stats were a luxury we could live without - we haven't noticed any decrease in resulting orders from the emails and at the end of the day that is what we want the newsletter for - to generate orders.

My feelings as well, why pay extra for what we already have? Could spend all day looking at stats of one sort or another

[Andrew]

Hi, some really useful responses, thank you.

Until we had the demo we did not think we needed the tools that Dotmailer has, but having had them explained to us it makes sense to investigate further.

Things I really liked were the fact that the email could be dynamically personalised in that it would take the gender "Mr", "Mrs" etc from our user list and dynamically alter content based on gender which is really usefull for an underwear site. Also small things like you could alter the subject text so that you could have three different subject titles, the emails would be sent over a longer period of time i.e the first 1000 sent and based upon the responses the email subject line would be optimised to give the best response rate, dynamic on the fly A/B testing, very clever stuff!

Set up charges do not seem that high £600 for mid-range package plus monthly fee depending on number of emails/month. PM me if you would like more info monthly costs.

I might give them a go in the next few weeks and I will report my findings.

Thanks again.

[Red Devil]

£600 set up charge. If your profit margin was 50% that would mean you would need to sell another £1,200 worth of items just to cover this. Compare this to using BP newsletter system or exporting email addresses youself into Outlook which are free and there's a big difference. You don't neeed to quote figures on a public forum but consider your return on your investment before committing.

I'm out ;)

[Andrew]

Red Devil or should I call you Red "Dragon" ;)

Yes, you are absolutely right,the ROI does have to be taken into account, you need to have several tens of thousand of opted-in customers to make it worthwhile investing in more sophisticated email marketing methods such as these.

I believe that a massive percentage of emails are probably going straight into junk and if this can be mitigated against by using more sophisticted tools then the initial investment will pay for itself very quickly.

Just my initial thoughts.

"I'm in" (I think) :)

[john]

Using MailChimp our last newsletter got 16.4% open rate and 3.4% click rate, from 24551 so £600 would be a very high start up cost.

[Marco]

How dare you mention a competitor to Bluepark :D

I don't know what got into me ... hanging head in shame.

[Paul S]

I'm revisiting this subject, too. I'm aware of Dotmailer (who send out some great monthly tips on email marketing once you're on their contact list) and agree the set-up and ongoing costs are probably the turn-off. The service looks very good, though.
Much trawling and comparison led me to Mailchimp. They didn't seem to be too expensive at $50 monthly for up 5000 subscribers and unlimited sendings. Their templates looked good and their site is easy to walk through. Haven't actually used anyone yet, though.

That includes the Bluepark system (must admit I haven't looked at it in detail). How much can it do and how much reporting is available on bounces, etc? One thing that I'm aware of is not using our own email address for mailings, in case of getting it blacklisted if tagged as spam, so external hosting seems vital.
I'd much prefer to use Bluepark, so anyone's experiences and advice on how to approach it would be most welcome.
Paul

Two way radio & vehicle tracking
(http://www.communicatemobile.com/)

[Red Devil]

You can buy email only accounts from say 123-reg (or similar) but you have to buy the domain name as well. So you could buy yourdomainname2 and use that for bulk emailing from say Outlook. You don't need to buy any webspace. The account comes with ample space for your emails.

[amberpumpkin]

I've used a number of them, had a demo from DotMailer, its good but its expensive. It is worth having a look at Extravision - Its a payas you go so no monthly fees. I've used it a lot and been very happy particularly on number of clicks, personalisation etc.

Having said that I've used the BP one, its free, built in to the system and seems to work a treat.

[thehrvault]

Hey guys, I use MailChimp too, and I have to say I love it!

Even if it is just cause the Chimp like's my shirts!

They have also change their pricing, and for low numbers is 'totally' free... a good way to start!

This leads me onto a question, is their an API around that can integrate sign ups/ customers who have bought directly to the MailChimp lists? I would love this, as it would take away the admin of copying over the data, as well as saving valuable time!

Any ideas/ suggestions?


Greg
*The Vault Master

htttp://www.thehrvault.co.uk

[thehrvault]

I ain't a developer but anyone out there who can shed some light on this http://www.mailchimp.com/api/how-to/sync-you-to-mailchimp.php

I reckon Bluepark could sort a fix to integrate with MailChimp (/crosses fingers)

[john]

I ain't a developer but anyone out there who can shed some light on this http://www.mailchimp.com/api/how-to/sync-you-to-mailchimp.php

I reckon Bluepark could sort a fix to integrate with MailChimp (/crosses fingers)

I wouldn't think this is likely, Bluepark is never very interested in integration with external 3rd party software, unlike some of their rapidly growing competitors.

This is not a criticism, just an observation.

[Neil]

Doesn't need to - it's got its own thats perfectly good enough.

[NicJ]

And if we are going to there are many better than mail chimp out there - Blue Park would be better served to enhance the one they have on the current system rather than linking to 3rd party software as I can guarantee that people will moan about who we can or can't link to.

[john]

And if we are going to there are many better than mail chimp out there - Blue Park would be better served to enhance the one they have on the current system rather than linking to 3rd party software as I can guarantee that people will moan about who we can or can't link to.
The issue is not who or what BP links to but that it has no API to interface with anything, unlike just about all it's competitors.

[Neil]

Well have to agree on the api, would love to have a direct link into netdespatch (apc)

[john]

Well have to agree on the api, would love to have a direct link into netdespatch (apc)
We also use APC and connect via Linnworks, the only part we cannot integrate is the tracking number call back from Netdespatch (we put it in manually from the label!) as the file name is unique each time. APC so called software expert also no help in integration at all, we had to do the lot ourselves and we will have to re-visit this before things get too hectic to spare the time.

[santhosh]

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