Hi, can anyone give me some advice on the subject of email marketing?

I work for an advertising agency whose clients have expressed an interest in using email marketing quite regularly (maybe once a month). At the moment we are designing the emails and outsourcing to a company who put the emails together and handle the process of sending. As the job is going to become much more frequent we would like to be able to handle it ourselves. There is no-one in the company who has any web experience but we are keen to learn, the problem is that we don't really know what we need to learn at the moment. I have taught myself how to turn our designs into html based files, now I need to find out what we need to create and manage the distribution of the emails. We are a small advertising agency and so don't need an expensive solution or the advanced features offered by some companies. Can anyone give me any advice about possibe solutions, particularly about the software aspect?

Thanks

Max

Hi Max,
There are many options available but they generally fall into two broad categories:
1) PC based software
2) Web based subscription tool

If you want a hassle free life then I would advise going for the second option. PC software requires a lot of set-up on the IT side and deliverability knowledge plus the tracking is usually limited.

There are lots of web based tools out there. For an agency the things to look for are:
* Is the support UK based? You don't want to have the situation where you have to wait till the US wake up before your question can be answered
* Can the solution be white-labelled? Many providers offer a solution that appears to be yours which you can then resell. However it is always worth checking that there is no reference to the provider in the interface, url, help materials or tracking links
* Child accounts and logins - can you manage all of your customers through a single login while your customers have access into their own area to look at the stats. Giving your customers a login will save you lots of time in the long run as you won't have to keep sending the reporting updates
* Commercials - is there a cost per customer? Are your volumes costs spread across all customers
* Reliability and scalability - many budget solutions usually offer all the basics such as tracking and list management. However there is a reason for the price, namely in terms of support, speed emails go out and many have issues with blacklists

We offer a specialist solution called Maxemail Agency which offers everything agencies require and pricing is scalable to help you grow your business. Feel free to call me on 01327 350921 and I will happily give you a demonstration and talk about the other agency partners we work with.

Sean Duffy
Emailcenter

On 15:15:52 25 September 2007 Manwell wrote:
>Hi, can anyone give me some advice on the subject of email
>marketing?
>
>I work for an advertising agency whose clients have
>expressed an interest in using email marketing quite
>regularly (maybe once a month). At the moment we are
>designing the emails and outsourcing to a company who put
>the emails together and handle the process of sending. As
>the job is going to become much more frequent we would
>like to be able to handle it ourselves. There is no-one in
>the company who has any web experience but we are keen to
>learn, the problem is that we don't really know what we
>need to learn at the moment. I have taught myself how to
>turn our designs into html based files, now I need to find
>out what we need to create and manage the distribution of
>the emails. We are a small advertising agency and so don't
>need an expensive solution or the advanced features
>offered by some companies. Can anyone give me any advice
>about possibe solutions, particularly about the software
>aspect?
>
>Thanks
>
>Max

Hi Max

Just to follow-up on your query. I work for Mailvivo and like some the advice you've received already (!) our company provides an on-demand email marketing platform.

Several agencies, from small to large, use our system as it saves them time (creating and sending emails) as well as making sense financially (flat-rate monthly fee to allow them freedom when running campaigns).

We also like to feel that we genuinely help every customer with advice as executing successful email campaigns is not just about having great features like dynamic content but also being able to use it easily yet effectively.

Feel free to touch base with me if you'd like a look at alternative on the web-based solution side of things.

http://www.mailvivo.co.uk

Mark Gooding
0845 644 3730
Business Development Director
Mailvivo

Option 1:
- mailing list feature as part of web hosting.
(fixed annual cost)

Option 2:
- email marketing tool/platform (shows you clickthroughs and records interest)
(fixed monthly cost)

Option  3:
- mailing list application on a desktop PC (could run into spam issues easily)
(fixed low cost for buying the software license)

Could help if more detail if you want:  denis@naxtech.com

Sorry my message was a bit off topic :(