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A Few Good Broadcast Email Tools
By Laura S. Quinn, nonprofit consultant, Alder Consulting
So, you’re looking for a way to email hundreds
or thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of people at
once. You’ve thought through your strategy—useful,
well-written information sent to a list of people
eager to get it, right?—and you've identified your
needs. Maybe, you want to send fancy, formatted
eNewsletters, or maybe just plain, text action
alerts. Maybe, you’re hoping for a tool that can
send emails to very large, or relatively small,
groups—one that can integrate with your offline
database, customize the content for large donors,
send emails to tailored segments of your list, or
track who's opened which email.
Regardless of your precise needs, you want a tool
that is reliable, affordable, and easy to use. We
asked 13 nonprofit technology professionals what
tools have worked well for them, and combined their
thoughts with the collective wisdom of various
listservs (e-mail discussion groups), and forums to
come up with a solid set of tools that might work
for you.
Tools You Already Have
You can probably send broadcast emails with the
software you already own. While such options won’t
provide sophisticated reports or effectively deliver
hundreds of emails, they might be a practical choice
for a very small mailing list.
• Outlook (or other email applications): Outlook and
other standard email applications will certainly
work to send a couple dozen emails. However, this
method has some substantial disadvantages.
First, putting lots of email addresses into the BCC
field (the standard procedure for emailing a large,
anonymous group) may cause your email to be flagged
as Spam.
Second, it’s difficult to create complex formatting,
like an eNews layout that will show up in readers’
browsers as intended.
And third, you’ll have to manually manage your list.
There's a lot of effort involved in adding new
subscribers, deleting those who ask to be removed,
and monitoring returned emails—remember, you are
legally responsible for removing those people who
request it. If you send more than a few dozen emails
at a time, or send to a list on a periodic basis,
most of our contributors strongly advise you to look
beyond standard email tools.
• Mailman (or other email list tools offered by your
Web host): If your website is hosted by a commercial
shared hosting service, there is a good chance that
your hosting package already includes Mailman—check
your website control panel. This email list tool
allows you to post a plain text or graphic message
to a large distribution list by sending the message
to a specific email address. However, dt
(development tool) Mailman is not the easiest tool
to use, and it lacks several features common to
other tools. For example, you can’t easily export
your subscriber list, or access reports of how many
readers opened an email or clicked on a link. If
you’re sending more then 100 or so emails at a time,
again, look beyond these options.
While using your existing office email application
or Mailman may work for you under some
circumstances, there are some sizable downsides.
Because they send email from your own domain and
email server, you need to be concerned that your
emails will be trapped by Spam filters and never
make it to your subscribers. Tools designed to send
millions of emails (like those listed below), work
carefully with Internet Service Providers (ISPs),
such as AOL and Yahoo, to ensure their email is
delivered. You can’t easily do this as an individual
organization. If you send out a lot of emails, some
people are likely to complain that your emails are
Spam, regardless of how careful you are. In fact,
simply having a large number of email addresses in a
BCC field can trigger Spam alerts at ISPs. If this
happens, all your emails could be labeled as Spam,
or your domain could be blacklisted. If that
happens, major ISPs will refuse to deliver any email
from you—including your organization's day-to-day
email. If you’re only sending out 100 emails a
month, you probably don’t need to be concerned; but,
at larger volumes, it is well worth looking into
other options.
And, one final issue: If your email is hosted
through a shared server, that Web host may put a cap
on the number of emails you can send per hour or per
day. This could be as low as 50 or 100 per hour, and
it could simply stop sending emails after this time.
If you’re going to be sending out to groups of 50 or
more, check with your Web host to make sure they’ll
go through.
Do these methods sound problematic? They are. If
you’re serious about sending emails in bulk to more
than a few dozen people, there are better options.
Inexpensive and Straightforward
There are three online tools that offer both free
and straightforward emailing: Google Groups, Yahoo
Groups, and Topica’s free service. These three tools
are very similar in that they let you send plain,
text emails to an unlimited number of addresses.
Most typically used for discussion lists to allow a
group of people to email each other, there’s no
reason you can’t use them to send text-only emails
to a group.
People can subscribe or unsubscribe by sending an
email to a particular address. All three tools show
substantial advertisements at the top of the email
messages you send, and none allow you to track how
many opened an email, or clicked on a link. The
emails are sent off the providers’ servers, so they
handle some of the issues around deliverability and
spam complaints.
Online Mass Emailing Tools
One of the most common ways to send bulk emails is
to use an online service set up for precisely such a
function. Hosted email tools typically allow you to
manage your list, create emails, and view reports
through a Web-based interface. Most will allow you
to send formatted emails; some provide tools to let
you easily format them. You can generally integrate
them into your website so you can take subscriptions
online, and the tools will automatically manage
unsubscribe requests and delete email addresses that
are no longer valid. Reports allow you to see useful
details, such as how many recipients opened a
particular email, how many clicked on a link, and
how many forwarded a message.
Nonprofit Specific Deals
There’s little difference between the typical needs
of a nonprofit, and those of a business, when it
comes to sending emails. However, three robust
services provide special discounts for nonprofits,
making them a very attractive choice—if they’ll meet
your needs. They are:
1) VerticalResponse is a reliable, sophisticated,
and popular online service that allows 501(c) (3)
nonprofits to send up to 10,000 emails per month for
free.
2) EmailNow by Network for Good, powered by Emma is
a very attractive choice if you send more than
15,000 emails per month.
3) MailChimp offers a wide range of features at
competitive rates, and offers a significant discount
for nonprofits.
Other Online Options
Dozens, if not hundreds, of bulk emailing services
cater to both businesses and nonprofits. If you’re
not a tax-exempt nonprofit, or you have quite
specific needs, here are some more services that our
contributors recommended.
1) ConstantContact provides solid templates,
segmenting, and reporting features. The pricing
scheme is friendly to small lists, at $15 per month
for under 500 subscribers, $30 per month for under
2,500, and so on.
2) CampaignMonitor is directed at those who have
access to someone familiar with HTML for emails, and
want to create their own template.
3) Topica offers sophisticated website integration,
lots of custom fields, and powerful
list-segmentation tools, as well as the standard
newsletter template and report functions.
4) WhatCounts offers premium, broadcast emailing.
It's worth considering if you have a large list and
are serious about investing in your email
communications—it starts at $600 per month for up to
50,000 emails.
How to Decide
With all these options to choose from, how should
you decide? As always, think through your own
situation. While almost all of these options provide
a solid base set of features, there are a couple of
particularly important considerations to keep in
mind as you weigh your choices:
• How many and how often? How many emails will you
be sending? To how many people? Pricing varies
dramatically depending on the size of your list, and
how often you'll send to it.
• Will you be able to integrate the email addresses?
Don't underestimate the value of synching up your
list of supporters across different tools. Being
able to look at all your constituents' information
in one place is very valuable. If possible, pick a
broadcast email tool that works with the database
you already have, or that offers strong data
integration options (like an API). If you don't
already have a strong constituent tracking solution,
an integrated solution that handles emailing as well
as donor tracking, online payment processing, and
other tasks, can be a great investment.
• How fancy will your emails be? Will you send
simple, text emails, or highly formatted
eNewsletters, or appeals? If the latter, do you need
a tool that provides high quality packaged
templates, or will you want to use your own custom
template? The tools vary considerably in their
support for these kinds of needs.
If you're planning substantial email campaigns that
require A/B testing, conditional responses, and
automatic sequencing of emails, different internal
approvals or highly detailed segmentation put these
features at the top of your list.
There are a lot of terrific options in the market
for broadcast emailing, and now, more than ever,
there are solutions within the reach of any
nonprofit. Whether you're looking to send just a few
dozen update emails, or fancy eNewsletters to
millions of supporters, you can find a package
that's both effective and affordable.
---Source: Idealware March 2010 (www.idealware.org).
Laura S. Quinn helps non-profits create mission
focused technology plans, internet solutions, and
databases. Reach her at laura@alderconsulting.com.
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