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Design

Posted by Marco Smolka
Marco Smolka
Courses Plus Student 4,097 Points

What to consider about sending Newsletter emails?

Hi @ all,

i have watched the newsletter design videos and i am ready to send out newsletters. BUT i heard about SPAM and the IP could be blocked from where you send the newsletter.

So my question is what would be the best options to send out newsletter ( about 10000 customers).

What do i need to consider? Get a special server. I would like to handle it by myself instead of having constant contact or any other paid service.

Thank you so much!

1 Answer

Simon Klit
Simon Klit
1,686 Points
Simon Klit
Simon Klit
1,686 Points

Hi Marco,

Minimally speaking, if you want to send out the newsletters yourself, it is important that you consider the following:

  • The possibility of your mail ending up in the spam folder of your recipients. Using a tool such as mailtester is a good idea.
  • A link in the mail that allows the recipients to opt out of receiving the newsletter.
  • A custom script that sends out HTML in an efficient, secure and fast way.
  • That your server can handle sending all of these mails, and that it is scaleable.

And, here follows a lengthy list on why I would advise you to use an existing, paid service instead (if you by no means want to do that, you don't have to read further): Strictly speaking, there is a reason people use services such as MailChimp, MPZMail and SendinBlue, and for a newsletter that is to be sent out to 10 000 people, I would recommend using such a service. It makes a lot of things easier for you as the sender of the mails. To mention a few, it makes it easier to:

  • create and keep track of specific campaigns.
  • keep track of statistics (open rate, click rate etc.).
  • send out automated mails.
  • improve your newsletter based on different tests (E.g. the A/B test on MailChimp: http://mailchimp.com/features/ab-testing/).
  • collaborate with co-workser on the newsletter/campaigns.
  • guaranteed scaleability.
  • support if anything goes haywire.
  • most likely more. You can read MailChimp's own arguments for using them here: http://mailchimp.com/why-mailchimp/

Conclusion: If you want your newsletter to be effective, easily manageable etc., you're going to either have to develop a system that allows you to do the above things (or some of them), or use a service such as MailChimp, MPZMail or SendinBlue. Considering the hours that would have to be put into developing the system, it would probably be more cost-effective (albeit not as fun from a developer's perspective) to use an existing service.

But, this is not meant to discourage you! If you want to be independent and handle your own newsletter, you can certainly do so, and you should just go for it. You could even develop a system and make it open source for others to use as well.

No matter what you decide, I wish you good luck in your endeavours. :)