: Sending Bulk Email/Newsletter (20,000 emails) - our SMTP server vs bulk provider, what software, etc Wishing to send an email to about 20,000 recipients. Our own SMTP server used for transactional
Wishing to send an email to about 20,000 recipients.
Our own SMTP server used for transactional emails I believe is well trusted, we've not heard of deliverability problems, mails go to gmail/yahoo fine. DKIM, SPF, DomainKeys all set up, etc.
What program should we use to send the email? Would people recommend bulk email software like Sendblaster? Would this handle unsubscribes, etc?
Send via SMTP server or connect direct to theirs? Know some of this software can connect directly to the the recipients SMTP server. Is this advisable or is sending via a trusted SMTP server better?
Use our own SMTP server vs provider like SendGrid/Critsend? Presume if we were using bulk email software we'd have to connect to a SMTP service. Are we best sending using one of these services or our own server? My thinking is the bulk sender providers may not have sent emails before to the people we're sending to and as such perhaps our server has better reputation?
If our SMTP server, what software (Windows)? Currently using SmarterMail, is this up to it or should
Update: www.senderscore.org/ reports our mail server IP with a score of 99, low delivery risk and very low volume.
Any opinions?
Edit: thanks for the answers so far. Providers like MailChimp are just too expensive for one off emails. Plus they don't seem to like bought lists - in the UK this is fine if the data is collected lawfully under the List Warranty Register - www.dma.org.uk/information/ind-listintro.asp
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Bear in mind a minority of recipients will helpfully unsubscribe by using the "report spam" option rather than the unsubscribe link you provide. This means you have a chance of being temporarily blacklisted somewhere, even when you did nothing wrong.
So, as Osvaldo says, use one of the known providers who already have processes and whitelisting in place for this, like Mailchimp or Constant Contact. They've got pretty much all you need in terms of click tracking, open statistics and the like.
Why reinvent the wheel and risk taking your mail off the web in the process?
I would advice you to use a service specialized in sending bulk e-mail, like for example Silverpop or Mailchimp. The main reason for this is that their antispam whitelisting. You don't want your normal mail server/web server getting in a blacklist because some of your users didn't like the message.
You probably also don't want to send only one message once, and this services offer list managing, with unsubscribes, templates, segmenting A/B testing...
Another option is to look for CRM providers with mailing services included, but that is a more expensive option with many features that you would probably never use.
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