e-newsletters,.. what to expect?

[Peter (IMC)]

Hi everybody,

I´m investigating for a client the possibilities of delivering an e-newsletter service. They have some good ideas, and unique features.

I am curious to what the prices are for this kind of service. What kind of payment structures are commonly used for e-newsletter services? And what are "normal" prices?

Anybody?

Thanks,

Peter

[ihelpyou]

Hi Peter, I'm not sure what you mean. I pay $25 per month to use optinpro.com. Great features and a ton of sent messages are allowed with it.

[Peter (IMC)]

Doug,

Thanks for your reply. Can I ask you some more questions?

How many emails are you allowed to send for those $25,-?

Which company is it? (web site?)

How do you maintain your email list? Is it through a web site or software? On their servers or on your own?

One of my customers is a start-up company that is preparing a video email service. I proposed to them to set up a newsletter service as well, which includes the option to send a video message inside the newsletter. They are interested, so I am trying to find out what the normal newsletter service is like.

Thanks in advance,

Peter

[ihelpyou]

Yeah, it's optinpro.com.

You can read all about the features on the site. I have not used it for awhile but will start back up real soon. I can't remember the details so you will have to read it.

[Bernard]

I'm using G-Lock Easy-Mail, a shareware bulk e-mailing program to issue our company newsletters. Works great. One time cost and I maintain the address list.

http://www.glocksoft.com/

[Dan0]

$25 a month is about right for a good, "unlimited" mailing list service these days.

With a "video newsletter," you'd have to consider bandwidth. If the videos will be sent as attachments, that's going to cost more. If the videos will be hosted, that too will have a cost, although not nearly as much as pushing it out with every email.

[Peter (IMC)]

It´s going to be embedded video, so the video is sent with every email.

the video size is not so big,... it depends on the length of the video of course.

I noticed that most people still use plain text newsletters,..

Is there a specific reason for using plain text other than bandwith issues?

I would think that an html email is much nicer,.. you just need to have the pictures and other files somewhere on a server,..

What are your ideas about doing more than plain text emails?

Thanks,

Peter

[Dan0]

"Some" recipients won't be able to read HTML emails. "Some" recipients who can read HTML emails will see them differently from others.

For example, take a typical HTML email you receive, and open it with Eudora, Outlook, and Pegasus. Most of the time, you get three very different views. Most of the time, unless the sender is incompetent, you can read the thing just fine.

You can use multi-part messages to send a plain text and HTML version out, which is the best way to go. Most of the free scripts, and even most of the paid services, don't support this well, but it's not terribly difficult.

[Bernard]

Some people turn off HTML rendering in their e-mail clients. Some auto-filter e-mails with attachments (embedded graphics files) and some HTML rendering e-mail clients filter e-mails that try to pull files (including embedded graphics) from web servers as part of virus security measures.

Plain text is the safest format to ensure 100% compatibility with all subscribers.

If you plan to offer video, I would suggest hosting the videos on a server and including a clickable link to it in the e-mail.

P.S. G-Lock will handle multi-part HTML/plain text automatically and also allows attachments.

[Peter (IMC)]

This video email services is pretty good, it doesn't just attach a video but it places a video message right inside the email and the video starts the moment the email is opened.

They are doing some trials now, and the first results are promissing. (higher response rates, etc.) They don't have an english version available yet, so it's little use to show their web site, but that will come up soon too.

Does anybody have any idea how many people are able/allow html emails?

I get some seo newsletters in html format and some in plain text format and I believe that eventually everybody will use html emails, at least from trusted sources. Since newsletters come from trusted sources I would expect that it is not such a problem. The only problem is those hotmail and other free accounts I think.

Thanks,

Peter

[rockynate]

One of my fellow marketers solved this situation somewhat simply:

He sends out what he calls a "metazine". It is a short email that has one paragraph descriptions of the articles in the newsletter, along with links to each article on his site.

He has complete control of the look and feel of each page (article), being that it's an HTML page. What he sends out is just plain text, so no mail issues.

I don't think he has any stats for how the readership rates differ - as he's used this method since the beginning. Besides that, his subscribers are highly interested in the subject area.

Just another thought for the mix!

[eznet]

Dear Peter,

Some more tips I can add after managing an email campaign for a company that sent out a very large number of emails a day (some of the following tips are more obvious than others...):

A) Make sure you perform effective QA (Quality Assurance).

Specifically, the most important QA task is this:
1) Find out what email applications your target audiences are using (e.g. Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, Outlook Express etc.)
2) Open test accounts at the above places.
3) Send your newsletter to your test accounts.
4) Review newsletter and fix bugs or make improvements. If you've made any changes - redo step #3.
5) If possible - send the emails to about 10 percent of your list. Wait for surprises and then send the rest. So, if you've got any other surprises after the initial delivery, you can monitor that and leave space for further fixing.

B) Put a lot of thought in what you're going to have under "from" and "subject".

C) Don't count on the users seeing that embedded video... expect the worse and have some effective copy there as well.

D) Track the conversion rates - not only visitors but target action as well.


Good luck, mate.

[Peter (IMC)]

Thanks a lot everybody,

It is always impressive how this forum manages to give so much information.

Thanks again,

Peter

[Dan0]

Nate, I think the main value of your friend's approach may come down to the total "end to end" response rate. Providing an index to the content makes it easier to access, and controlling the format makes a big difference in what happens when they do read the content.

When I've used PDF for newsletters/updates, I can't tell if more people are reading it (since you can't track the plain text emails). What I do know, is that the total response, in terms of sales, leads, clicks, etc. is much higher.

That's certainly due to the fact that we can control the layout.

[Kal]

Hey Peter - take a look at Constant Contact (http://www.roving.com), that's who we use. They have some great HTML templates and have (finally!) introduced the option of plain text so your subscribers can choose their preference. From memory the cost is about USD25 per month, up to a certain number of subscribers (5,000 I think) and then it increases dramatically. There is a free trial for a month or more too.

Tracking is very detailed - right down to which subscribers clicked on which link within which newsletter :)

[Dan0]

So, who's going to develop this application, Peter? Is it something your client is going to do, to expand the 'video email' service?

[Peter (IMC)]

Dan,

It is just an idea at the moment. But it combines very well with the service they already have.

In any way, they need to consider all the "standard" services that apply with e-newsletter services before they can really develop the newsletter service.

The video email service is still their main service, but they also do webconferencing. I´m using it to communicate with them (I´m in Brazil and they are in the Netherlands).

They develop all their services them selves. They have some very good java programmers.

Regards,

Peter

[Dan0]

That's what I figured. If they've got the expertise to develop the video email service, no doubt they can put together whatever they need.

The really high end of the spectrum, in terms of services, seems to be Constant Contact. Not cheap, but tracking click-throughs down to the individual recipient is great.

One thing that seems to have confounded all of these services and applications, is recognizing AOL addresses and formatting the links properly. I get all kinds of plain text emails that have this "AOL Users Click Here" HTML code in them, and I wonder why they send them to me, when I don't have an aol.com address.

[Peter (IMC)]

Dan,

They are able to create what they need. Knowing what one needs is another thing,.. :)

As to AOL,.. what´s up with that ISP? Why they need special treatment? Why they have their own little internet world that requires special links? I never understood them and would never become a customer to a company that has it´s own special internet logic. How come an AOL user can not click a normal link?

In any way, I would think that an AOL user can click on every normal link in an HTML formatted document.

Regards,

Peter

[Dan0]

In any way, I would think that an AOL user can click on every normal link in an HTML formatted document.
Right The problem only comes up with plain text emails, and plain text URLs aren't converted to hyperlinks automagically.

It just baffles me that so many mailing services and applications exist, yet none of them is capable of simply reading the domain name from the recipient's address, and acting accordingly.

[rockynate]

Dan and Kal:

In exploring several email cleaning programs lately - I've found an unfortunate problem. Several of the anti-spam email programs automatically filter out Constant Contact emails specifically.

I have several newsletters that come to me through Constant Contact, and I like them very much! So I didn't get those email cleaning programs. But what about the others less tuned into the situation than me? By using Constant Contact, at least at the moment, you're going to lose a percentage of your subscribers that use these services.

Hopefully they'll remedy that situation soon.

[rbateman]

Hi Peter. I did a lot of research on these for own company, for clients and now for my employer. I decided against any web based solutions because they were too limiting. I found a product called Gammadyne Mailer which will basically allow you to do anything as far as sending emails and it can handle large volume. It has the smarts to handle text/html issues and of course mangage lists. It allows for a phenomenal level of control and has its own scripting language as well. I use it so send out my own newsletter for one of my own companies and I use it at work to send out their newsletters. Ralph Wilson uses it too. And its cheap and I'm thrify. Check out all the stuff it can do on its home page. Highly recommended.

[Kal]

Hi Nate

Yes, I'm aware of the filter problems and that is my biggest beef with Constant Contact. I get quite a lot of rejection emails from initial sign ups, but at least I am notified if this happens and can email new subscribers directly to advise them to unblock mail from CC or use an internet based email address to subscribe with.

I do have a very high reject % for my newsletter, which I'm sure is due to the fact that CC is on a number of spam filters, including SPEWS. From what I understand, this has been the result of CC not requiring verified email addresses in order to set up accounts in the past. Just recently they introduced compulsory email address verification and opt-in rules based on the new U.S. anti-spam laws so this is a step in the right direction.

In the meantime, CC supply a letter to legitimate email marketers and newsletter producers that you can send to your subscriber to explain the situation and also a letter to their ISP to lobby for the lifting of automatic spam filtration for CC correspondence.