advice on email marketing

[Insha]

Hi, I have recently taken up new project at work and i having a tough time deciding i what i should do with email marketing....either to out source it or have a system in house but get is hosted from another firm

any advice???

Thanks

[ebonybailey]

Have you had a look at constantcontact.com
You can set up your own email marketing campaign.
Or let me know and I can put you in touch witha company that does email marketing

Michael

[DarrenC]

Sorry about my ignorance, but isn't email marketing just the same as SPAM?

[ebonybailey]

Darren

No you can do campaigns with opt in emails, for example I could opt into emails regarding telemarkeing or the IT INdursty where alot of my clients sit.
I know a guy who runs an email marketing company

Michael

[fridayteam]

Insha, do you have any idea of a plan of what you will be emailing?

Do you already have a list, or you need to build one from scratch?

[DarrenC]

Ah right.

So, where/how would I go about finding out if there is an optin list for holidaymakers, or people who enjoy travelling?

Darren

[Mwebb]

Darren,
You can create your own opt in list.
I personally use a company called www.getresponse.com on one of my websites.

you can offer a monthly newsletter to your visitors. They can then sign up through the code getresponse gives you to paste into your site, and you can send them a monthly newsletter.

In your case this newsletter could have a review of a particular holiday destination...maybe get a client to write a review for you when they return, and give them a discount voucher for doing so...

And then in the newsletter you also let people know about your latest offers, sell advertising,( if you send it html format)

There are loads of webdesigners on this forum, i bet they could all very easily do you a template for a newsletter, where all you have to do is enter the text, and send it each month to your list.
This is not spam...as they have requested this information from you.
If you have a hotmail account, you will recognise that they offer you a chance to receive newsletters from their partners when you signed up. It costs a shed load to be a "partner" but on average they send you 250k subscibers a year....and you are guaranteed it will not end up in the junk box!

Michael

PS PM me if you have any specific questions.
Although i use get response, i would recommend doing a google search for FREE auoresponders. There will be some good ones out there.

[Gregaria]

HI,

I worked quite alot with email marketing a few years a go on a company called Simply Games, it was hosted by a company called visuality in Manchester and they had a mail out scheme called i2i, it was superb, html emals with full link response breakdown etc. Looked very professional (although we designed them in house).

They regularly handled mailouts of 100k +

I'm thinking about using them for my current project, If only I had 100k addresses :(

Regards

Greg

[WakingDragon]

We use our own system as it allows us to manage the recipient data better for reporting and filtering against our internal client database. It also means that we don't have any restrictions about what we do.

However, the cost of setting it up was minimal for us as we have in-house techies.