I have been using Topica but it seems that they are seen as a spammer and many ISP's won't accept email from them. Is that your understanding?

If that is correct, I am looking for new email marketing software. My first question is whether to use a service like Topica or to purchase software that I run from my own computer. I want to be able to handle bounces automatically and to do some tracking of opens and clicks.

I am not sure if Tropica is black listed at all. How many emails do you need to send out per month? There are some services I use but they have limits on the number of emails allowed.

I have a list with about 2300 emails and I send out an average of three mailings a month.

I believe Microsoft's List Builder (http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/hub.mspx) allows you to send out 10,000 emails a month with its basic account. Also if tells you how many emails were opened, which links in the emails were clicked, etc.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will check it out. But I have a more basic question: I would like to use software that I run from my machine if possible, but I don't know what the downside of that approach might be. Any thoughts?

One solution is to create a program yourself.

Outlook, for example works with VB for Outlook or you can just use Visual Basic.

You can us the VB mail routines to send mail diereclty to you SMTP server, customise the email, etc.

These routines are available in every programming language.

Frank

How do you create the code to do this?

Frank,

I would also like to know

You can find info by looking up VB mail commnads on the internet , especially on Microsoft's site.

Thanks Cat

Mike,

I got you PM and replied to it.

Frank

Thank you for the messages and details

You shouldnt be spending money on newsletters programs or other email programs. If you like our company does offer email campaign services. We will take care of your campaign, by delivering your message to your subscribers, this process is done within 2 - 24 hours depending on the size of your list. We charge $200 for 20,000 subscribers, $400 for 40,000 subscribers, and $500 for 55,000 subscribers.

If your campaign is bigger, we may be able to give you a wonderful discount depending on the size and how often you would like this campaign to be sent.

Aren't most email software programs less than the $200 being charged for a single mailing you are offering?

Yes however if you are using software mailing most likely you are recieving opt out request that the software cant handle, you are recieving complaints from consumers(though you may not now because sometimes they do not copy you, they trace your ip address and contact your isp), you're isp may ignore 1 complainy, or even 2 complaints, but eventually you will loose your inernet service provider. Would you like to change your ISP everytime you finish with a campaign? I THINK NOT. We take care of everything for you, your advertisements, your lists, your mailings, your reports. We will send you a campaign report each and every time we are sucessfully mailing your request, the mailing will include the opt outs list, the failed messages (because your customer may have changed their email address) log, and ofcourse the log of all successfully sent emails.

Thank you for your question lisa, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to post it on the forum, you may contact me directly through private message from the forum options, as well as an email to: iffizworld@att.net

I asked because I am using Microsofts BCentral and was trying to see what advantages your program would have over that.

They offer me everything you indicate as well as what links were clicked in the emails, the number of emails read, etc.

In the past we used InMailBox... it has limitations and reporting could be a bit better but otherwise it served its purpose and for us, was an affordable small biz solution in the past.

Just my $0.02.

Cheers,

Is InMailBox an open source program? I am working with PHPList and so far, so good.

I also want to know how could I get more traffic by promoting my website through forum. If you have any list of suggested readings or e-books pls inform.