Email blasts - How to?

[Sonny]

I think we made a huge mistake.

For the past five years my wife & I have been running our youth sports photography business. Last year in July we started a portrait photography business. This being a new year, we wanted let our clients know about new promotions coming this year and let them know about the new portrait business.

We create a letter inside of Microsoft Word. Using the mail merge feature it sent 88 emails. 21 of those emails were bounced back with messages "Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender". Long story short, our hosting support person found out that SCB blocked our emails. The support person contacted SCB and is trying to get them to unblock us. We'll find out in two days.

My question is, how do you send emails like this without getting flagged as SPAM or worst yet...getting blocked?

[Howard Barlow]

You may want to try Constant Contact, or other such.

[jeffkohn]

My question is, how do you send emails like this without getting flagged as SPAM or worst yet...getting blocked?

Based on your description, it is spam. Calling it a blast doesn't change that.

IMHO promotional emails should only be sent to people who explicitly opt-in. Just because somebody has done business with you in the past doesn't mean they want to get promotional emails from you.

[ronocnikral]

send them one by one and personalize them. if sending from outlook, writing a macros can make this easy if you have a spreadsheet with names and emails.

i'm with jeff though, it is spam regardless of how you paint it.

[ndsimm]

constant contact and icontact.com both offer the service for about 10 bucks a month for basic service...you can do your own templates, upload an excel spreadsheet with the contact info and they send it out....there is also an option for the user to opt out and those are tracked as well
both services let you track who opens it, who reads, who clicks through, etc...
Constant contact is always sending me emails about seminars and I think one is coming up in Houston...I'll have to check deleted emails to see

[Sonny]

Originally Posted by Howard Barlow

You may want to try Constant Contact, or other such.

Thank you Howard. I'll look at their website.

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

Based on your description, it is spam. Calling it a blast doesn't change that.

IMHO promotional emails should only be sent to people who explicitly opt-in. Just because somebody has done business with you in the past doesn't mean they want to get promotional emails from you.

Jeff,

I asked for help finding a solution to my problem. I did not ask for a lecture about spam. I am well aware about spam. I hate it as much as the next person. I should of better explained myself and the situation. Since portraits is a new venture for us, we wanted to inform our past clients and hope to generate some interest. That much I've explained. In the past, many of the same clients have called us requesting portrait type photography and in the past we've happily referred them to other photographers. I'm sure not all of our past clients will be interested but you never know who they might tell about our services. Like I said, I hate spam too, but I like getting emails about sales and promotions.

Lord knows companies like Newegg, Amazon, Tiger Direct, etc send me loads of emails. I've OK with that. I've bought from them before. It's all the other crap I disapprove of. I don't need pre-approved credit cards, penis enlargement pills, my credit score 5 times a year, or porn. OK...maybe a little porn. Our intention was to MAYBE send an email twice a year or once a quarter at the most. If business picks up enough maybe I won't have to send out those type of emails. Who knows, maybe we'll have a good following on our blog and we can inform past clients that way. Here's to wishing and hard work.

I'm sorry. I get really frustrated at all the wise guys on the forum talking **** and giving other members a hard time. If we would shut the **** up, take time to help our fellow members, this place would be great once again like it used to be many years ago. It's still a good place and I love coming here everyday.

I think a better to start your reply would of been to explain the different ways I can offer my clients the option of receiving future promotions, updates, and sales.

Originally Posted by ronocnikral

send them one by one and personalize them. if sending from outlook, writing a macros can make this easy if you have a spreadsheet with names and emails.

Conor,

That's what a mail merge does. It personalizes each email for the customer.

Originally Posted by ndsimm

constant contact and icontact.com both offer the service for about 10 bucks a month for basic service...you can do your own templates, upload an excel spreadsheet with the contact info and they send it out....there is also an option for the user to opt out and those are tracked as well
both services let you track who opens it, who reads, who clicks through, etc...
Constant contact is always sending me emails about seminars and I think one is coming up in Houston...I'll have to check deleted emails to see

Nathan,

Like I mentioned in my reply to Jeff, I only want to do this twice a year (4 times at the most). What do those services offer?

[MT Stringer]

I don't see this as any different from Adorama, Amazon and B&H send me emails with their monthly (sometimes weekly) specials. And personalized too. Hey Mikey! :-)

I guess I can ell them to stop but so far, I haven't. :-)

Mike

[Coogie]

The difference is, Adorama, Amazon, B&H etc. have that little link in the bottom that lets you opt out of the emails and nobody's feelings get hurt. I guess the customer could potentially just write or call you and ask you to knock it off, but if they know you personally or run into you at events, they may feel awkward about asking and instead may opt to just not do business with you to avoid getting them. I think a better approach would be to try to add the customers on facebook organically (ie. get few customers to be the fan and since they're on the same teams etc. you can add the others easier) and then you can send all the updates you want.

Regardless, I think the first two responders were helpful. You're pretty much sending spam and asking how to get around the system from marking them as spam. The obvious answer is "stop sending spam!" so no need to get defensive.

[Sonny]

Arie, I was not getting defensive. I was simply frustrated at the fact that many members would rather talk down to you instead of offering constructive advise.

You did a good job. You offered information about using facebook and backed up your point with two pieces of data.

And you are correct, facebook can potentially be a powerful tool. If I can combine fb & the blog into one huge commercial tool that would be great but first, I'm just trying to get people to look.

[keripayne]

I use MadMimi for my newsletters. It's free for up to 100 contacts, and not much a month after that. They're GREAT!! Plus, they have tracking that shows who opened your emails and forwarded them and other things.

They ALSO have a handy little "unsubscribe" button at the bottom of the newsletter - and I know it works because I've had one person unsubscribe.

Use them! They're great and you can create really great-looking newsletters!! I've got several "stock" newsletters set up with pricing information, and info on different types of sessions. That way, when someone inquires about those things, I can just pull up the newsletter and send it to them. Way better looking than a simple email, and it also adds them to my contact list. There's an iphone app for them too that makes that process super-simple.

[ChristopherCoy]

Tag for info...

[Cajungaltx]

Sonny,
I tried constant contact for NILMDTS emails - it's pretty good - but I switched back to using straight Outlook because I got frustrated with it a bit.

Some folks live by it... apparently it wasn't a right fit for me.

Good luck!

[ndsimm]

there is no contract with either service so you can sign up and cancel as needed, but if people have purchased from you before or have gotten any email from you before, you can use outlook....

[StevenGWebb]

I don't have a solution to offer. I would like to ask a question or two. Is email advertising effective enough a tool for all the work and expense necessary to break through these effective roadblocks, which seem to be in place for the purpose of deterring just what you are trying to do?

We are all looking for cost effective methods to announce new products or services and that's pretty good business. Many people use the phrase, "Ya get what ya pay for" in describing all manner of things, from equipment to competition. I'm not sure that email advertising crosses a line separating cost effective from diminishing returns. Email blasts are the electronic equivelant to direct mail. Direct mail has a really low conversion rate and I only guess that email is even marginally lower.

You have a prospect list from your existing sport picture business. Might there be a better vehicle for getting the word to them, like inserts with their order forms or package deliveries?

The social networking presence is good. Your in front of those people and if in their actvity stream your announcments and promotions can be seen as frequently as you post. Don't aggrivate people with them though. I've taken people off my actvitiy stream, not the least of which photographers, who seem to put new pictures in an album every few hours every day. TV ads run repetively for a purpose but when they are over done folks grab the remote or leave the room. Just a though.

Steven

[keripayne]

I have people tell me all the time that they like my newsletters, and they forward them to their friends as well. I typically send one out a month - on the 1st - and list any promotions for that month, or holiday deadlines, or something new. Mostly things I think people might not find on my blog. Or things that I want to specifically tell my past clients - like updated referral programs.

I think a GOOD newsletter is a nice addition to a marketing program, as long as it's not multiple times a month. I definitely DON'T think a regular email is quite the same thing. I don't think it stands out as much, or is as interesting to clients. Think about it - if something is pretty, aren't you 100 times more likely to look at it longer and actually enjoy it? Plus, it just LOOKS professional - compared to a regular email.

For me personally, I tend to use Facebook a little more casually. I don't like it when my "friends" only post new products, or seem to be always trying to sell me something. So on my facebook page I try to keep it more casual, and I don't update my status all that often. I DO, however, have my blog set up to automatically put new posts onto FB, so that's another way to keep my name in front of people. But blog posts tend to be picture-related, or personal, so I think people find them interesting.