eMail - a versatile marketing tool for Welsh SMEs
eMail Marketing Options and Tools

When running an eMail campaign SMEs have two options: they can handle it themselves in-house or outsource it to a third party.

An example of a company providing an eMail marketing service is EMailCenterUK. The services this type of company offers might include:

• List rental;
• List management e.g. your own in-house eMail lists;
• eMail design (creative content);
• Campaign testing;
• Response management;
• Tracking and reporting – this is very important as you must be able to measure your campaign.

If you are going to do it yourself, be sure that you have the resources and means to carry it out. You will also need appropriate eMail marketing software. An example of such software is Broadc@st HTML which starts at $249 or £175 approximately. See the mailworkz Web site) or Group Mail from Infacta which starts at $79.95 for theProfessional version but has a free version which businesses can download andtry out first.  

eMail marketing software packages have different features to standard eMail software. As well as facilities to create messages (such as your mail shots or newsletters) and broadcast them to customers on your mailing lists, features should include:

• Reporting/tracking tools – to track and analyze eMail campaigns;
• Subscription manager – to handle subscriptions and remove users wishing to unsubscribe from lists;
• Returned mail handler i.e. eMail which is undeliverable;
• List manager e.g. list cleaning, merging, checking and removing duplicates etc.
• Personalization facilities – to personalize eMail campaigns for the customer;
• Filters to sort incoming eMails e.g. for a particular campaign;
• Import/export information e.g. from an existing customer database.

Businesses can also make use of HTML to include graphics, fonts, colour and even animation in their eMails. Always think of the end user though - they must be able to access your eMail.

Some software packages have a restriction on the size of the lists they can handle e.g. Broadc@st HTML Business Edition can handle any number of mailing lists  but each list can not exceed 500 eMail addresses; Broadc@st HTML Commerce Edition can handle lists up to 5,000 eMail addresses and is more expensive at $795.

Or depending on your needs, for a monthly fee you could use the services of a company such as SparkList to manage subscriptions and distribution. There is a one-off set-up fee dependant on the size of the list with prices starting at $50 per month depending on the size of the eMail itself e.g. set-up fee of $25 for a list of 0-2000 eMail addresses plus $1 for every 1,000 messages based on a 10k message size ($2 for every 1,000 for a 20k message).Sparklist provides two types of service – announcement lists and discussion lists.

If you intend only to eMail a small number of recipients and only plan to eMail them once a month for example, you might well find that your standard eMail software will do the job, however for larger lists and frequent mailingsdedicated eMail marketing software will probably make the task a lot easier and more efficient. If you intend to buy specialized software you will need to consider:

• Size of the proposed mailing list/s;
• Number of individual lists;
• Frequency of mailings;
• Number of individual mailings;
• Personalisation required;
• Requirements to import data from existing sources e.g.address book applications, database applications, spreadsheets etc;
• PC/system requirements;
• External factors – e.g. will your current package with your ISP enable you to carry out large commercial mailing.

Guidelines for planning and writing an eMail mailshot and newsletter can be found in the article Tips for Writing Your Own eMail Mailshots and Newsletters.