Sending a Email to All Your Customers

[naekelsey]

How do you send out an email to all of your customers without it being marked as spam?

 

[lt1jane]

I send out small batches and don't use the PC sysetem through my PWS. I send my newsletters from my personal e-mail and don't have a problem getting spammed, yet.

 

[naekelsey]

Since you can't send our own things through the website, I was going to make sure I also inputted everyone's email addy into my yahoo acct. How many do you keep in a group and how do you "label" them in your contact list?

 

[Sheila]

I use iContact. Then I can make it longer for a newsletter or something super short & sweet for a sale. And iContact has an amazing non-spam rate.

 

[Sheila]

Had to come back & say ... remember that the more your business grows, the harder it will be to use your personal e-mail client for that. If you have too many e-mail addresses in the "to" field, most servers will knock you out as spam. So where's the magic number? 20? 50? 100???My newsletter just went out to 1,632 people and I've been doing the "hobby" thing for 4 years. Imagine how big that list would be if I had hit the ground running hot & heavy from day one & been doing more than 2-3 shows a month! Yikes!!! LOL I couldn't imagine splitting them into groups of 20, 50 or even 100. That would be more e-mails than I'd be interested in sitting & sending.

 

[lt1jane]

My groups are small. My director keeps her groups to 40-50 per group. When she sends her newsletter, she sends one group at a time. She's been doing this 15 years and has I think 40 groups. Hers are labeled Newsletter 1, Newsletter 2, etc...

(She's also technologically challenged and is NOT looking forward to the new web. She was hoping it would be rolled out alphabetically instead of by title. She wants those of us with some savvy to be more familliar with the new program when she gets it because she will need help.)

 

[naekelsey]

may have to look into the Icontact thing a little bit later. Will try the smaller groups through Yahoo for a little bit longer. Just trying to get organized..Boy is that a feat!!

 

[Sheila]

You do have to pay a monthly fee with iContact, but you never have to worry about forgetting to add a customer or spending time doing double entry on the PC side & in your personal e-mail too. Do the "export contact" feature in P3, upload to iContact, it recognizes the pre-existing ones & only adds the new ones. Done. I don't use the HO e-mail, but I know you can view reports there too. Not sure what all you can do through their system, but you are limited to just the newsletter e-mail or the Consultant Connection e-mails. With an e-mail company like iContact (ConstantContact, etc.) you can also view the stats for your e-mails, see which people are clicking on what links, etc. AND you can click on a particular person & see what all they've opened (in the whole time frame of being on your customer list), what they've clicked on, etc. LOVE that feature!!! LOL And of course the flexibility of sending out shorter blurbs for sales, PC news flashes (like when the Ice Cream Scoop went away), etc.

 

[BethCooks4U]

I sent emails out to my customers from my email server for years. I would put about 20-40 in a group and send as many as my server would allow, then the rest the next day. They weren't sent to spam. I did try a service or two but when i surveyed my customers they said they preferred mine and that was actually easier for me... When PC added the NL (at no extra cost to us) I gave it a try and everyone seemed to love it. I have gotten a lot of comments on it and have not gotten anyone tell me theirs went to spam (unlike our invitations - I still have to warn hosts to otherwise contact people to make sure they got the e-vite to their party). If I have a special note I want to send out - new promotion or whatever - I just send an email from the PC website. I can't attach my flyer but I can put it in my words. Do what's comfortable and cost effective for you. We all do things differently to suit our styles. Try different things and then use what works for you.