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Looking For An Email Program

S

Scott

Flightless Bird
I'm looking for a free or low cost program to send emails to all of of my customers
at the same time, instead of one at a time. I run a home business and am looking
for a good way to keep my customers informed via email...either with reminders
or a monthly newsletter.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Scott
 
D

Daave

Flightless Bird
Scott wrote:
> I'm looking for a free or low cost program to send emails to all of
> of my customers at the same time, instead of one at a time. I run a
> home business and am looking for a good way to keep my customers
> informed via email...either with reminders or a monthly newsletter.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks!


Outlook Express is an e-mail program. You can use it to create
distribution lists. Just look at the Help file. If you have other
questions, post here:

news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.outlookexpress.general
 
R

Robert Macy

Flightless Bird
On Jan 19, 4:43 pm, "Scott" <gol...@uslink.net> wrote:
> I'm looking for a free or low cost program to send emails to all of of mycustomers
> at the same time, instead of one at a time.  I run a home business and am looking
> for a good way to keep my customers informed via email...either with reminders
> or a monthly newsletter.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks!
> Scott


Check out google, they'll even supply you free, voice over internet
plus conference calling! It is my understanding that over ten people
cn be in the video conference at one time and it still works!
 
S

Scott

Flightless Bird
"Robert Macy" <macy@california.com> wrote in message
news:f22811d6-dcb7-4bed-93cd-c7a1003b531d@34g2000yqp.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 19, 4:43 pm, "Scott" <gol...@uslink.net> wrote:
> I'm looking for a free or low cost program to send emails to all of of my customers
> at the same time, instead of one at a time. I run a home business and am looking
> for a good way to keep my customers informed via email...either with reminders
> or a monthly newsletter.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks!
> Scott


Check out google, they'll even supply you free, voice over internet
plus conference calling! It is my understanding that over ten people
cn be in the video conference at one time and it still works!

Robert,

Okay, I'll check it out.

Thanks!
Scott
 
V

VanguardLH

Flightless Bird
Scott wrote:

> I'm looking for a free or low cost program to send emails to all of of my
> customers at the same time, instead of one at a time.


That would be impossible. SMTP doesn't work that way. You client sends a
RCPT-TO command for each recipient in your list. This tells the SMTP
server who gets a copy of your message. The client then follows with a
DATA command that sends *one* copy of your message to the SMTP server. The
SMTP server then uses the RCPT-TO list to send a copy of that one message
to each recipient.

You can specify as many recipients in the list of RCPT-TO commands
(compiled from the values for the To, Cc, and Bcc fields in the UI for your
client) as your e-mail provider allows. If your list is longer than
allowed, you'll have to split it up. You can search for bulk mailing
programs that can give you parameters as to how many recipients are
specified per e-mail, what input list to read from for the recipients, and
how far apart to separate each e-mail send (to 1 or multiple recipients).
Since I'm not into spamming, I don't have any off-the-cuff recommendations
for bulk mailing programs but a Google search or hitting the big download
sites (CNet, Softpedia, Tucows) should turn up some possibilities.

> I run a home business and am looking for a good way to keep my customers
> informed via email...either with reminders or a monthly newsletter.


Why not have these users read your blog when and if they choose. Maybe
some even allow for RSS feeds so your "customers" could subscribe to them
to get notified when there is an update to your blog. You could also use
Yahoo Groups which are forums to which users join. As I recall, they can
also elect to get notified via e-mail so they would know when there was an
update in a discussion, and I believe the owner of the group can broadcast
an e-mail to all members of the group. In addition, you don't have to
maintain a mailing list. Those who join your group are electing to get
messages from it. If they don't want those messages anymore, they simply
unjoin from the group. They get a true opt-in method of deciding whether or
not they get your newsletters and immediately action to opt-out when they
unjoin, and you don't have to maintain a mailing list.

You might also want to search on "list server" (with and without the space)
to find out how to use those for your business newsletters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISTSERV
 
L

Lem

Flightless Bird
Scott wrote:
> I'm looking for a free or low cost program to send emails to all of of my customers
> at the same time, instead of one at a time. I run a home business and am looking
> for a good way to keep my customers informed via email...either with reminders
> or a monthly newsletter.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks!
> Scott
>
>


A lot depends on what you want to do.

Send an identical message to everyone? Use any email application
(Outlook, Thunderbird, etc., etc.) or web-based email application
(Gmail, Windows Live Mail, etc.) and set up a mailing list.

Send a personalized message to a list of people (e.g., "Dear [client
name], here's this week's newsletter.")? This is a little harder. You
need a mail merge program. WorldMerge is one such
http://www.coloradosoft.com/worldmrg/index.htm

The problem with either of the above approaches is that your ISP may
have a limit on the number of email messages you can send in a short
time. That is, if you have a mailing list with 500 customers and try to
send an email to all of them at once, your ISP may bounce your messages.
I don't know if the web-based services have similar limits.

A good way around this is to use a service specifically designed for
sending bulk email. Constant Contact is a popular one:
http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp and it's not terribly pricey.
It even lets you compose and sent HTML email, if you're not afraid of
antagonizing some of your customers.

--
Lem

Apollo 11 - 40 years ago:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/40th/index.html
 
S

Sanford Aranoff

Flightless Bird
Scott wrote:
>
> I'm looking for a free or low cost program to send emails to all of of my customers
> at the same time, instead of one at a time. I run a home business and am looking
> for a good way to keep my customers informed via email...either with reminders
> or a monthly newsletter.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks!
> Scott


Try my program: EmailDatabase.exe, on
www.analysis-knowledge.com. I wrote it years ago and use it
all the time. I am a university professor, and use it to
send daily emails to all my students. Since this is a
database, it is a record of what we did in class. Since it
is a database, the same database deals with personal emails
as well. It has many other features. Download and try it for
free.
 
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