a good mass e-mailer

[Michael Munkittrick]

If you do a quick search on Google, there are about thirty that pop up. I’ve got no experience with any of them, but the underlying structure must be very similar.

Michael Munkittrick
Gainesville, Florida USA

[Colin Brown]

I guess I’m looking for the gem in the rough.

[Ron Lindeboom]

The best way to handle it in your situation in a service like Constant Contact which is at:

https://www.constantcontact.com

They are able to assist you in all your set-up, sending and management. Their service handles all the subscribes and unsubscribes and it’s all automated.

They also have what it takes to do MIME-compliant mailings and that will be important for a film festival like yours, I would imagine. Learning this on your own is a lot of work.

That’s how I would start the process and how I’d simplify it, if I were in your shoes.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net

[Mark Suszko]

I think Ron’t got probably the best suggestion on this. If that service is still too much money, perhaps you could use LISTSERV and just not enable all the 2-way features but instead use the front-end of that for you mass mailer.

[Ron Lindeboom]

The only drawback to that solution is that it’s pretty daunting to use MIME-compliant code in a program like that.

Without it, you are stuck with text-only emails and those just have almost no draw whatsoever. We tried a couple of experiments using text-only email for our newsletters and the response to them was almost nothing. People hate HTML newsletters but they respond and use them. When it’s text, your audience will almost never act or respond to them.

Best,

Ron Lindeboom

[Mark Suszko]

Well I guess I’m a contrarian, because I’m still on dial-up and I hate the long waits for download and slow navigation of those mime-compliant things you’re talking about. I put up with the one emailed to me from the COW because it’s not too frequent and generally has content of interest. AND, you use “permission marketing”, where you first ask and/or I have to make a specific request to get that email, it doesn’t just get sent to me willy-nilly. That’s an important distinction, I feel. Frankly, I’d prefer a straight text version with links, the pretty graphics attached to my COW special updates don’t ever really influence me to read anything. I read the headline and make my read/no-read decision. I subscribe to a number of pure email lists, not because of their fancy ascii art:-) but because of specific content and the timeliness of the delivery. Extraneous visual eye candy just ticks me off. I expect and even look for eye candy on web pages but hate it in my email.

If people want the content bad enough, it doesn’t matter how lo-fi the delivery method. I have seen this again and again in my dealings with video clients. They will bring in the most god-awfully produced junk for me to work with (and try to clean up), stuff with horrible powerpoint slides, and home camcorder stuff shot handheld with no lights and onbard mic, and the audience STILL eats it up because the actual content is something they really are hungry for. It is at once depressing but also fascinating. There are still people out in the hinterlands that like getting their religious sermon programming on cardboard LP records and audiocassette tapes. (indeed, an industry article I read said the biggest market for cassette blanks now was mail-order religion and get-rich-quick business seminar programming, as well as a somewhat smaller market for audiobooks on tape)

In the case of the people on the list for festival updates, you gotta wonder if they care more for eye candy and fun graphics or just the specific text info. The narrower the niche audience and the better the writing, the less glitz you need or want, is my opinion.

Content isn’t king; it’s a dictatorship. 🙂

[Bruce Bennett]

I just sent out my first emailed newsletter last week. I bought and used GroupMail (https://www.group-mail.com/asp/common/default.asp) for $100.00. It worked great.

It can verify addresses before you send your email out, sends out both

[Steve Wargo]

What’s a “dial up”? And why would anyone want one? Most people with dial ups shoot on Betamax.

Sorry, I couldn’t help it. Please don’t beat me up.

Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona

It’s a dry heat!

[Mark Suszko]

YOU DARN KIDS, GET THE HECK OFF MY LAWN!!!!!!!!!!!

Steve, you can paypal me anytime you feel like paying me for a DSL package.:-)

[Ron Lindeboom]

If content is king, then why are all the audience’s eyes fixed on the pretty dancing girls???

:o)

Ron “Who prefers a 1-in-3 open rate, thank you” Lindeboom

PS: Besides, nobody ever really liked dictators anyway…