Automatic mailing of letters. What is automatic mailing and how can I set it up? and little tricks

Send email

For everything to work, jQuery must be uploaded to the landing page. To do this, add:

And now the main script that does all the work:

$ (document) .ready (function () (

var url = window.location + ”;

var urlAux = url.split (‘=’);

var leadEmail = urlAux;

$ (“# Email”). Attr (“value”, leadEmail);

4. Integrate Mailchimp with other services and tools

You don't have to write any code to integrate Mailchimp with other applications. To do this, you need the Zapier.com service. It will help you set up automation with Google Docs, Gmail, Dropbox, Evernote and other popular services.

You can find a complete list of automation for Mailchimp using the Zappier service.

Finally

In the modern world, for many people, the Internet is not just a means of communication and entertainment, but also a tool for business, since it allows sales and delivery of information to the audience, even if there is a fairly decent distance. For the purpose of marketing promotion, various methods are used, among which mailing lists are not the last. With their help, you can significantly expand your customer base, while it does not matter at all what exactly you are selling, goods, services or information. For a successful business, the number of people you have dedicated to it matters.

It is clear that manually sending letters is quite a tedious and time-consuming task, especially when it comes to large-scale mailings, where messages need to be delivered to more than one thousand addressees. For this purpose, special web services and programs for sending letters to Email are used, which will help in a short time, in just a few clicks, inform a large number of real and potential customers, significantly saving your time. Such tools do not require a lot of money, and the results are impressive.

To get the most out of creating bulk e-mails, you need good software that specializes in this. Let's consider the best software solutions for this problem today.

Among the variety of automatic mailing tools, Atomic Mail Sender takes a leading position; in this niche it is one of the most popular and effective programs. The software is included in the Atomic Studio set, but it can be downloaded separately. The tool is a full-fledged assistant in mailing letters; installation of auxiliary utilities is not required. An SMTP server is integrated into the program, which provides independence from the provider and guarantees the distribution of letters as scheduled, but you can use your own.

Mailer is a powerful multi-threaded tool, so messages are not queued and the sending speed is fast. After installation, you need to import the list of email addresses to which the mailing will be carried out, and then create a letter (text and HTML formats are supported) and click on the button that suggests the start of its delivery to recipients. The functionality of the program is at the highest level, thanks to the available options, Mailer is also able to send spam without hindrance.

The interface is friendly and understanding the tools is not difficult even for an inexperienced user, in addition, there is support for the Russian language. Advanced users can customize the parameters, there is also the possibility of personalizing messages, so that the recipient can see his name in the message. The software is distributed on a commercial basis.

A program for mass mailing of letters with rich functionality that delivers mail directly to the addressee's server, bypassing the provider. The utility has an integrated SMTP server, it is possible to create messages in any format, including different mail applications. The tool can act as a remailer for other software, mailing list or mail server.

The remail function will also be useful in the case of working with mobile phones, since letters are sent directly to the recipient. While operating in a local network, where one or several computers are connected to a modem, information will be accumulated on the device, and when connected to an Internet it will be sent to addresses. Remailer works in multi-threaded mode, which provides fast mailing to addresses. The toolkit also includes the function of sending personalized letters in which the recipient's name will be indicated. The interface of the program is convenient and understandable, the Russian language is supported, which will allow you to quickly familiarize yourself with the capabilities of the software.

Bullet Proof Mailer

Another program for sending letters to email with a powerful mail engine, which, with such a rich functionality, is quite easy to learn. The software quickly delivers mail using your SMTP server, there is a built-in message editor, text formats and HTML are supported. Emails saved in EML format can be read by any of the email clients, but they can also be saved as text files. The tool fulfills its task with high quality, allowing you to inform a large audience in the shortest possible time. Bullet Proof Mailer is a shareware application, and at the same time it is quite effective.

A software product that allows you to carry out bulk mailings with the ability to personalize messages with an unlimited number of addresses. The program includes everything you need to prepare and the shipping process itself. You can import a mailing list from any source, there are tools for working with contacts, the ability to set a schedule for the start of mailing, automate the subscription and unsubscription of users. There is a built-in editor that allows you to format the letter, including adding attachments, text and HTML formats are supported. Process monitoring and detailed reports are also available. The software works in a multithreaded mode, due to which a high speed of sending is achieved.

Some good free software solutions include Send Blaster, an application that also allows for quick sending by email. There are no restrictions on the number of addressees in the program, there is an automatic start of sending according to a given schedule and the ability to manage the list of addresses. In addition to mass mailing, the option of personalizing letters is available, text and HTML formats are supported. Send Blaster includes email monitoring and can provide detailed progress reports. An integrated visual editor with the ability to add images and other attachments is used to create messages, an external editing tool is also provided, and templates are available.

A freeware bulk email program that is simple but has enough features to get the job done. Works with text formats and HTML, you can also attach files to messages. The NI Mail Agent tool allows you to work with sock-proxy, templates can be used, and the option to personalize messages is available. It has a simple and intuitive interface, supports Russian, so it will be convenient for a user of any level.

A simple, easy-to-use program for sending letters to email addresses with the ability to use the built-in mail server or SMTP provider (you must specify the protocol in the settings). The functionality includes tools for working with a list of contacts, a mailing directory, the ability to attach files to messages and other options. Thanks to sending messages in several streams, the sending speed is quite high. For the paid PRO version, the number of addresses is not limited, for the free version - a maximum of 300.

It is logical that all powerful mailing tools are mostly paid products, and they also have a trial period. Primitive utilities with a limited set of functions are distributed free of charge, although sometimes they are enough. As an alternative to free email marketing tools, web services are also used to organize the process, for which you do not need to download an installer, but a browser is enough. Such online tools (for example, UniSender) completely contain everything you need to complete the mailing and do not require downloading additional applications.

If you do not know where to get the address base, the question also has a software solution. For this purpose, there is a special software that allows you to extract email addresses from various sources on the network. Examples of such tools are Advanced Email Extractor, Atomic Email Hunter, Mailagent Parser and other similar utilities. Such applications are used in conjunction with programs for mailing, allowing the most efficient way to inform clients and expand the client base.

Automated emails have become an integral part of every effective marketing campaign. Thanks to automatic emails, you can connect with your audience exactly when the need arises and when the conversion is most likely to occur. (Learn more about the top email marketing metrics -)

If you are considering automated emails as part of your marketing campaigns, this article may provide you with some ideas.

What are automatic mailing lists?

By analogy with your out-of-office messages, there is no need to manually send e-mails. Using autoresponders and marketing automation processes, you can send emails at specific times or react to subscriber behavior with a newsletter.

Automatic emails will be sent as a personalized message or as part of an advanced "drip" marketing campaign. For example, in order to welcome new subscribers, you can refuse to send a single email letter, and instead use a welcoming chain, introducing subscribers with all the details of your product.

If you have already defined the time when the email will be sent to subscribers, you can click on the "publish" button. From now on, whenever a subscriber fulfills certain conditions, he will receive pre-prepared letters.

Automatic mailing - types

The way you communicate with your subscribers depends on many factors. Industry, target audience, campaign mission - these and other elements affect the way you communicate with potential and existing subscribers.

In order to make your life as a marketer easier, we've created a list that includes more than 20 types automated emails with examples that you can use in your marketing campaigns.

1. Thank you email

As a marketer, you constantly ask your followers to do something for you. Signing up for a newsletter, downloading an e-book, filling out a questionnaire sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Now imagine a similar situation offline. If you constantly ask to be done for you, then at least you will thank, and, most likely, you will show a courtesy in return.

The best way is to do the same online. All you need to do is send an automated email immediately after the action taken by the subscriber. To make your thank you note more enjoyable, you can offer a discount, loyalty credit, or free shipping. Subscribers will notice that their efforts are appreciated.

2. Welcom letters

Let's say you decide to host a party. What will you do when someone accepts the invitation and comes to you? No doubt you will greet the guest with joyful greetings and take you on a short tour.

Even if signing up is more akin to a business meeting than a party, good manners should not be forgotten. Thank new subscribers for subscribing to the newsletter and explain how often subscribers will receive your newsletters and what topics are discussed.

Do your best to make the subscriber feel like a special guest and show how much their trust means to you. See how Coursera uses welcome emails and explains to new users how they should proceed by offering them the most important pages.

If you are looking for inspiration, be helpful.

3. Introduce team members

There will come a point where you really want to interact with your audience. Not at the business-to-client or business-to-business level, but at the simple human level. In this case, you can represent the team and people who are associated with the brand.

An email that introduces the team is a great start to communication. You can use this type of letter when communicating with employees using an internal mailing list, or when trying to convince your regular subscribers to support a common cause.

These kind of mailing letters perfectly show that an ordinary person is behind the brand. He or she does everything possible to provide the subscriber with added value, but sometimes he or she may make mistakes or need the help of the subscribers. It's much easier to ask for a service if your subscribers know you. Below are examples of welcome emails from the Andrew and Pete team.

4. Download the app and stay informed

Regardless of whether you are working on the development of an online store project, a news resource or a SaaS platform, it is imperative that subscribers return to you as often as possible. Is there a better solution than giving them the app?

Let your fans know that they have access to their favorite information and products, even when they are commuting to work or just killing time playing on their smartphone. If you can't offer them apps, then just make sure your site is mobile-optimized and your audience knows they can take advantage of it.

This type of emails works well with welcome emails when subscribers become familiar with your offer. In addition, from time to time it is also worth reminding those subscribers who do not use it yet about the application. After all, you want your followers to engage with your brand as often as possible.

5. Your order is in progress

Letters confirming orders and transactions are very popular in e-business. However, other types of mailing related to the ordered product are not so common.

Customers who are waiting for an order are more likely to feel delight and sometimes anxiety. If you can provide useful content, such as the best ways to use the ordered product, advice on care and pairing with other wardrobe items, how to replace, etc., their expectation will become even more enthusiastic.

Explain why they made the right decision, share feedback from other buyers, and have them join the discussion on social platforms too. This is how brands build effective communication.

6. Share your opinion

If you ever wanted to know more about your target audience, who would you ask first? Your customer support team, sales team, or perhaps your marketing team? Why not go directly to the source and just chat with customers?

If you want to take a closer look at your audience, just sit down and chat with them. Send them a letter with a questionnaire and ask them to respond to your message. Thus, you will quickly receive information about their needs, problems, preferences, goals and can improve the product and communication.

The examples below demonstrate that brands such as Timberland and Adidas see an advantage in having knowledge of their customers' opinions.

7. Product Review Letters

Marketing isn't just about selling. It is about the participation and satisfaction of the client's needs. The profit takes the following places.

You shouldn't only care about your audience when customers place an order and then forget about them. On the contrary, you should stay in touch with your subscribers even after receiving the ordered goods from their side.

If you want to build a meaningful relationship, you should ask them how happy they feel after receiving the ordered products, what was their first impression and if it has changed over time. Only then can you truly say that you care about their opinion, which helps you improve the product.

Asking for product review has another advantage. You can use the information you receive to create more compelling marketing messages. Social evaluation works wonders!

8. Most popular products

Showcasing the most popular products has its advantages. First, you can convince new customers to make their first purchase, and you'll get a conversion right away. You will also find out what categories of goods customers are interested in, and you can use this information in the future.

This type of emails can be used at various stages of the customer interaction cycle with the brand: at the beginning of the cycle, when customers are still thinking about whether they should place an order, or later, when they have already decided that they will make a purchase.
Customer rating emails are also a useful tool that we covered earlier. It should be borne in mind that 88% of customers trust online reviews as well as personal recommendations. No doubt you will use grades in communication to make communication more effective.

The most important goal of modern marketing is to provide value and relevant offer... This means that products or services should not only solve customer problems. Customers must be willing to associate themselves with these products or services.

If you really want to provide value to your customers, you have to pay special attention to how they interact with the brand, what products they look for, what they order, and what products they enjoy. You need to complete the picture and create recommendations that meet the individual needs of your clients.

Don't force users to flip through pages for inspiration. Show them the foods they like right away. Save subscribers time by using recommendation messages, and they'll be grateful for the time they can spend with family or friends. And this is a real advantage that only a few can provide.

10. New information on the blog

If you are interested in content marketing or e-business, you will likely be blogging with the goal of acquiring new customers. If you can answer the questions that interest the audience, solve their problems, your blog will gain popularity.

If you are going to blog, discuss new products or topics that will be useful to your subscribers. Make sure you send automated rss emails.

Why? It is loyal subscribers who should be the first to know about the publication of new materials. They will be the first to gain access to new offers, and you will be able to understand how your audience is reacting. This situation is beneficial for both parties, and if you explain it clearly enough, many will want to get into your subscriber base.

11. Invitation to webinars

Webinars are one of the best ways to build effective relationships. Webinars help build trust, build credibility, and above all, show audiences that the goal of a business is to help customers, not just sales.

The success of a webinar will often be related to the number of registered users. In order to ensure that you attract the maximum number of subscribers, you will use a variety of channels and techniques, including paid advertising and email marketing.

Email letters are especially important when organizing webinars, because you can apply automatic mailing of letters to all those who will be interested in participating. Whether you're hosting weekly educational webinars or monthly meetings to discuss more advanced topics, automatic webinar invitations are a useful tool.

Another benefit of webinars or product demo invitations is that your potential buyers will finally get to know your product. Perhaps they postponed their acquaintance until some point. However, you explain that there is no good reason for this. Webinar attendees can also only listen to the webinar and try the product later.

12. Reminder of events

If you really want to convert leads, invite subscribers to participate in the event. Just like in everyday life, it is worth sending an automatic reminder letter with information about the beginning of the event, explaining how participants can quickly access.

If this is an offline event, send an email a few days before starting. If this is an online event, send a reminder email on the day of the event. Make sure participants set aside time to communicate with you and to ask questions that arise. Once they get some value from you, your chances of doing business projects will increase significantly.

13. Reactivation of subscribers

Even if something is important, people tend to often lose sight of what they have begun. They stop exercising, eating well, or watching their favorite TV shows.

This also goes for tracking their favorite brand. They may stop being active subscribers due to some changes or stop visiting your site or reading your email newsletter. Don't be offended.

However, this does not mean at all that you have to accept it. You must take appropriate action and launch a reactivation campaign. Send reactivation emails as soon as the subscriber stops opening your emails within a certain period. Remind your subscribers that they are subscribed to your newsletter and provide a special incentive that will win their hearts again.

14. Your discount code will be unavailable soon

Many e-business owners are trying to attract customers with discount codes. Business value is beyond doubt.

However, in the case of using promo codes and other incentives, a problem may arise. If you use these tools very often, it will not only lead to a decrease in profit, but also to a decrease in customer responsiveness. Sometimes this behavior can lead to your customers not shopping at the standard price because they know they will likely be offered a discount soon.

Therefore, it is necessary to use promo codes very cleverly. If the codes are valuable, you cannot offer them as brochures or takeaways from your local pizzeria. So don't offer promo codes as often, but remind subscribers that the promo code will expire soon. Show them that their chances are diminishing, and if they want to buy the most popular items, they must act immediately.

15. Content letters after visiting the site

With marketing automation, you can also track audience activity and make good use of the data. Sometimes this task can seem overwhelming, but at times a simple solution can yield excellent results.

Research shows that one such technique is to track the behavior of customers who visit your site. If you notice that they are only viewing certain pages, for example, those that describe a product characteristic, you can send them a reaction email about their behavior that is directly related to that topic.

There are several ways to do this. For example, a visitor viewing a pricing page might automatically offer help from a sales team. Or post a breakdown of use cases for the tools they reviewed. Give it a try and see how you can deliver value and achieve significant business results with relevant trigger emails.

16. Emails after attending the event

After you have hosted an event or conference, you may be thinking about how to have fun and relax. If you have ever been involved in sales, you know very well that this is not the right moment. You must manage the game by reaching out to everyone who has taken the time to attend your event.

Some tasks can be automated. An automatic email poisoned after attending an event can tell you about all the nuances that you are thinking about at the moment. A thank you letter, a demo offer, a report you promised, a question about the audience's experience are great opportunities to start a conversation.

Most importantly, this method of communication is not intrusive. If someone wishes, he will answer, also because he is interested in the implementation of joint projects or simply wants to ask about something.

17. Anniversary or birthday emails

For us, birthday means gifts. If you have a more practical approach to money, chances are still that you enjoy receiving gifts.

Even if we are not very happy, as another year flies by, we still expect to be welcomed. Such a gift can be presented by family, friends, or ourselves. When we are in a holiday mood, we often say to ourselves, “I think I deserve this. I must / must get it "

What marketers can do is simplify the process and draw the customer's attention to the proposal. For example, send a congratulation message telling them that you wish the very best and offer an attractive incentive so they can indulge in pleasure while shopping.

All you need to do is just find out the date of birth of subscribers and set up automatic sending of letters. Offer a special offer and show them the products they miss.

18. Automatic Email Distribution for Abandoned Carts

According to the results of the SaleCycle study, more than 68% of shoppers leave the store without making a purchase. For many online stores this is a serious problem, but nothing is impossible.

In addition to using retargeting, you can get customers back by using the abandoned cart email campaigns. These automatic emails are sent a short time after the visitor has left the site without placing an order. Abandoned cart emails serve as a reminder and can increase conversions, especially if buyers were genuinely interested in the offer.

Abandoned cart emails work great because they are timely and relevant. If you want to increase their influence, you can indicate free shipping or provide a promotional code in your mailing letters, and then you will notice that some of the customers are happy to return.

If you are looking to implement automated abandoned cart emails, you might like the article by Pam Neely (available soon) for some of the best examples of effective abandoned cart email campaigns.

19. Letter of thanks for testing

Let's say you run an online course that offers a free demo so that users can try a product without making any commitment. Over the course of the course, you may send a few emails trying to convince customers to upgrade to a data plan. However, what happens to those users whose test subscription ends before they make a final decision.

The most obvious answer is to reach out to them. Provide them with a final offer (for example, combining with a 10% discount if a decision is made within 24 hours) or ask them to answer a few questions about the product, what was done well, what needs to be fixed, or what they liked the most ...

And you'll find that last resort offerings not only add value and provide additional customer insight, but also generate profits that you might not have considered.

20. Upsell letters

Marketers always strive for better results. They want customers to buy more, place more orders, spend more time on the site. This is not surprising as we all strive to achieve a higher return on investment.

Upselling is a successful method for generating higher checks. Most often, upselling is carried out using additional elements that are shown on the landing page. However, you can also use these elements in your email campaigns. All you need to do is send your email at the right time.

Upsell emails are very popular with booking sites like Booking.com or Airbnb. Their goal is to convince users to devote more time to their services. For this purpose, these sites use various techniques, for example, providing the client with the opportunity to stay in a higher class room, but for a longer period. Thus, commissions are increased, and customers are given the opportunity to extend their vacation.

21. Join the community

Who can be more desirable than a loyal and dedicated customer. A true brand advocate. However, such faces do not just appear. You need to find them.

By engaging users, you'll want them to spend as much time as possible on the brand. You will be able to achieve your goal using all available channels and tools.

In order to increase the number of buyers, it is necessary to take care of increasing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. One of the ways is to invite subscribers not only to visit your site, but also to become a member of groups on social networks, for example, Twitter, Facebook, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Pinterest or Instagram.

Invite users to become part of your community not only to buy products, but also to become part of your brand.

Who knows, maybe your subscribers will become as loyal customers as Harley Davidson customers.

Automatic mailing - your actions

You've just seen over 20 ideas on how to create automated email campaigns. Now is the time to act! Analyze your communication with clients, what you are doing well, and what nuances can be improved. Treat this list as inspiration For future email campaigns, use marketing automation to send timely, relevant email messages that your audience will appreciate.

What types of emails do you use in your campaigns? What results are you getting? Do Email Marketing Help You Build Strong Relationships With Your Target Audience? Write in the comments and share your experience with our readers.

Mailing lists are one of the most inexpensive and at the same time effective ways of transmitting commercial offers to potential customers, as well as familiarizing them with company news and changes in the price list, informing about software updates and promotions, etc. However, often the usual distribution of messages with relevant information using Microsoft Outlook (which in most cases is used to organize corporate mail) may not bring the expected effect, since it will not be personalized. In addition, conducting such a distribution can be difficult due to the lack of tools in Outlook for effective management of subscriber lists, as well as due to possible problems with the mail server when sending a large number of messages.

To maximize the effect of mass email marketing, you should create lists of subscribers, automate their processing (for relevance, eliminate duplicate addresses, etc.), prepare personalized letters based on these lists and send them to recipients. If you plan to conduct such mailings on a regular basis, you will have to provide customers with the opportunity to independently adjust the status of the subscription. It is very time consuming (if not impossible) to carry out all of the above actions using only the built-in Outlook tools - it is much more efficient to use third-party solutions, with which it is relatively easy to automate the process of working with mailing lists. The easiest and most accessible way is to install a set of Outlook plugins that allow you to carry out all operations with mailings in a familiar environment. However, you can go the other way - use stand-alone solutions. We'll look at both options.

As for Outlook plugins, the most famous are software products from Western companies Sperry Software and Genius Connect and Russian MAPILab. In terms of their functionality, they are about the same, but packages from Western developers do not have Russian-language versions and are more expensive, so they are less attractive for Russian users.

Among the stand-alone solutions for Russian users in terms of price / availability of Russian-language localization, the most interesting are programs from Russian companies Tweak Marketing and Business Software Products. The first offers a set of programs designed to solve various problems of email marketing, and the second - a comprehensive solution AMS Enterprise, covering almost all aspects of working with mailing lists (see table).

Preparation of personalized mailings

Typically, when sending many identical emails from your Outlook email client, it's a common practice to create distribution groups, which is really handy. However, there is one "but" - in this case, it is not possible to create personal letters, that is, letters with an appeal. But this is very important, since the recipient is much more pleasant when he is addressed by name, and not as a faceless "respected client". In addition, a personalized letter may contain information that is specific to a given client, for example, data on the conditions for the provision of services or delivery of goods, depending on the region in which the client is located. It is also important that in personal letters the final recipient in the "To" field will not see information about all other addressees (but only his name and e-mail address), which would be inevitable when forming a regular mailing list.

When creating personalized mailings, you can limit yourself built-in Outlook features using your contact list and mail merge technology. In this case, at the first stage, it is required to determine the list of contacts to whose addresses the correspondence will be sent, which is easiest to accomplish through categories (for this, all contacts must be pre-divided into categories). Then you need to apply the command Service ® Merge ® Selected contacts only, enter the general (unchanged) text of the letter and supplement it with the required references by inserting the appropriate merge fields, and when finished, click on the button To combine and by choosing from the dropdown list Appointment option Email, configure message parameters. After that, in the folder Outbox personal letters will appear to all selected contacts, in which, unlike the option of sending letters to the distribution group from Address Book, there will be a personal appeal, and the addresses of other correspondents will not be displayed (Fig. 1).

Rice. 1. Preparing a personalized mailing list
built-in Microsoft Outlook
and one of the ready-made mailing lists

From the above, it is clear that the built-in Outlook features allow you to automate the process of preparing personal correspondence, but it may not be convenient enough for regular bulk mailings. Much more effective in this regard are specialized solutions, thanks to which the preparation of personal messages will be both easier and faster.

The easiest way to create personalized correspondence is to use the Outlook plugin Send personally... It is an alternative way of preparing and sending letters of the same type from Outlook, in which a message is generated for each recipient (with its own name in the "To" field). At the same time, thanks to the support of basic macros (% USERNAME%,% USEREMAIL%,% LIST%, etc.), which are replaced when sending a message to the data of a specific recipient, the text of sent letters can contain not only constant, but also variable information (Fig. 2) although complex merges are out of the question.

Rice. 2. Personal letter prepared for sending
via Send Personally (in its original form - on the left, received
user - right)

Solutions such as the Mail Merge Toolkit and AMS Enterprise offer greater flexibility in embedding variable information in personal messages.

Mail Merge Toolkit extends the built-in mail merge capabilities in Microsoft Office, allowing you to perform mail merge not only from Microsoft Word, but also from Microsoft Publisher, with the ability to send generated messages directly from these programs. In this case, personal information can be embedded not only in the content (a full set of built-in macros is supported), but also in the subject line, hyperlinks can be inserted into HTML messages (which are embedded in Microsoft Office built-in tools, but do not work in mailings) and attach files to messages (fig. 3). In addition, when sending from Microsoft Publisher in GIF format, you can specify different HTML links for individual areas of the image (image map). Moreover, the mail merge toolkit practically does not differ from the standard one, since you need to perform the same set of actions, except that at the last step ( Completing the merge) you need to select the item in the merge task pane Mail Merge Toolkit(instead of paragraph Email).

An even higher level of personalization of mailings is achieved in the case of a comprehensive solution AMS Enterprise, which can not only automatically insert data from any fields of mailing lists into the body of the letter and into the subject of the letter, but also dynamically change the content of the letter depending on the state of certain fields in the list (Fig. 4). The latter is implemented using MailMerge rules, due to which the information sent in different mailing messages is different. For example, the program can substitute information about various goods and services in the letter, depending on the interests or field of activity of the recipient. In addition, AMS Enterprise (like the Mail Merge Toolkit) allows you to use hyperlinks in HTML messages and attach files to messages.

Rice. 4. Personal letter prepared in the environment
AMS Enterprise (in its original form - on the left and with preliminary
viewing - right)

Mailing list management

In general, it is not difficult to create the required set of distribution lists using built-in Outlook tools, but it will take a lot of time, since adding each new contact to the list is done manually. With a large number of respondents, this happens rather slowly, and besides, it often leads to numerous errors, since the same address can be entered twice, but some, on the contrary, can be missed. In addition, the management of mailing lists is not limited to their initial preparation - it is required to keep the lists up to date (since some of the addresses are outdated), and this is not provided at all in the functions of the Microsoft mail client.

Therefore, when actively working with mailings, specialized solutions are indispensable. They will allow you to quickly import email addresses into mailing lists, check for duplicate addresses and keep the lists up to date, thereby significantly reducing the volume of returned mail that could not be delivered due to invalid addresses. In addition, they can provide additional options for processing lists, allowing you to combine lists, compare them, remove the contents of other lists from one list, segment them to achieve the best distribution results, etc.

Formation of lists

To form large mailing lists, Russian users should pay attention to such specialized solutions as Mailing List Service, Mailing List Wizard and AMS Enterprise.

Program Mailing List Service, included in the MAPILab Toolbox utility package, allows you to quickly export contacts and distribution lists from the Outlook address book or sender / recipient addresses from in / out folders to text files, as well as import contacts from a text file or sender / recipient addresses from in / outgoing messages to the Outlook address book, including in the form of a distribution list (Fig. 5).

The Mailing List Wizard will guide you through the processing and conversion of mailing lists. Most importantly, it knows how to exclude duplicate addresses from the lists (Fig. 6). In addition, the program can be used to merge lists and exclude them (when addresses of an additional list are excluded from the main one), remove names of address owners from mailing lists, filter lists by various criteria, sort addresses, etc.

Rice. 6. Removing duplicate addresses from the lists using
Mailing List Wizard

Functionality AMS Enterprise wider (Figure 7) than the Mailing List Wizard. AMS Enterprise's built-in list manager allows you to import existing mailing lists from text files of various formats and CSV files, Windows and Outlook Express address books, as well as from other sources (Excel, Access, FoxPro, MySQL, etc.) via ADO / ODBC. At the same time, during the import process of lists, all duplicate addresses are automatically eliminated and addresses with incorrect syntax are ignored. With regard to imported lists, versatile processing is provided - you can combine lists, delete the contents of others from one list, compare and sort lists, change their structure as required, remove addresses that meet specified criteria from the lists, etc. It is also possible to exclude entire recipient lists from mailings.

Rice. 7. Working with lists in AMS Enterprise

Checking list addresses for relevance

To check the existence of an e-mail address programmatically, you should perform the same actions that the mail server performs when delivering a letter to the addressee. First, you need to determine the address of the server that receives mail for this addressee (for this, a request is sent to the DNS service) - if one could not be found, then the address can be immediately rejected as non-existent. And secondly, you need to connect to the identified mail server and send it a request to see if it can accept a letter for a user with such and such an email address. In case of a positive response from the server, the address is considered valid. This approach of checking addresses for relevance makes it possible to identify about two-thirds of non-existent addresses. The rest of the non-existent addresses cannot be detected programmatically, since some mail servers are configured so that they accept all letters for their mail domain (including letters with non-existent mail addresses). And only after accepting letters to a valid address, the server informs the sender that the letter cannot be delivered.

According to statistics, about 30% of addresses that are recognized as non-existent during a program check are identified at the first stage of the check, and 70% at the second. At the same time, the second stage of verification takes on average 10 times more time and five times more network traffic than the first. Therefore, for multi-million dollar lists, such a thorough check is not always advisable - in such cases it is often wiser to limit ourselves to only the first stage of the check - a query in the DNS.

You can check mailing list addresses and identify nonexistent addresses by using solutions such as Advanced Maillist Verify, Mail List Validator, High Speed ​​Verifier, or Actual Contacts. The first two carry out verification in two stages, which allows for higher verification accuracy, but takes a lot of time. At the same time, the Advanced Maillist Verify program (Fig. 8) can process only small (no more than 50-100 thousand addresses) mailing lists. And here Mail List Validator(Fig. 9) is designed to work with lists of any size (including multi-million dollar ones) and is free, although not all list export options in it work correctly.

Rice. 8. Checking addresses for relevance in the program
Advanced Maillist Verify

Rice. 9. Checking addresses for relevance using Mail List Validator

Utility High speed verifier(Fig. 10) is positioned as a high-speed program for checking mailing lists and can process up to several thousand addresses per second. It copes well with mailing lists of tens of millions of addresses, and thanks to the built-in caching, it is on lists of this size that the maximum performance of the program is achieved. But High Speed ​​Verifier performs only the first stage of verification (that is, it determines the reliability of the DNS server address, which means that it can only identify those inoperative addresses whose domains no longer exist), and therefore the percentage of non-existent addresses detected by this utility is much lower than that of the above solutions. For this reason, the program is effective as a solution for quickly removing garbage from multimillion-dollar lists, when a thorough scan is not practical due to the time and network traffic. At the same time, it should be noted that the Mail List Validator, if necessary, can be limited to only a quick DNS check.

Rice. 10. Checking addresses for relevance in the program
High speed verifier

Concerning Actual Contacts, then its possibilities are somewhat wider. The program can directly check mailing lists (DNS and SMTP) - fig. 11, and also knows how to carry out a similar check in the merge mode. It harmoniously complements the Mail Merge Toolkit, although it can also be used for regular merge with built-in Outlook tools. True, the percentage of identified working and non-working addresses by means of Actual Contacts is much lower than in other considered solutions (a considerable number of addresses remains in question), and the program works noticeably slower.

Rice. 11. Checking addresses for relevance in the Actual Contacts program

Automation of subscription and unsubscription from mailings

If it is assumed that the mailing list will be reusable (for example, mailing with company news), then the recipient should be able to unsubscribe or, conversely, subscribe to it. It is better to automate this process, especially if you have more than one thematic mailing list, since otherwise manual processing of subscribers' wishes can turn into a sheer nightmare. This can be done in various ways - in particular, using the Outlook plugin. Subscription Manager, included in the MAPILab Toolbox utilities package (Fig. 12), or the already mentioned package AMS Enterprise... Both solutions allow subscribers to independently subscribe and unsubscribe from mailings, for which they only need to create and send you a special type of mail message (request), which is a regular mail message, in the "Subject" field of which the request command is indicated. The programs analyze the incoming correspondence and if the letters meet certain criteria (for example, if the keywords subscribe, unsubscribe, etc. are found in their subject), update the mailing lists accordingly and inform the user about the status of his subscription. As a result, you no longer have to be distracted from your work by constant requests to add / remove a subscriber from the mailing list. If there are problems with unsubscribing / subscribing (for example, if the request specifies a nonexistent or currently unavailable mailing list), as well as in the case of a subscription, a message is sent to the subscriber with information about the error. All messages automatically generated by the named programs are formed on the basis of built-in editable templates.

Rice. 12. Setting up automatic subscription / unsubscription
by means of Subscription Manager

In AMS Enterprise (Fig. 13), the automation of subscribing / unsubscribing is implemented through the additional utility Input Mail Processor, which is designed to solve all tasks related to automating mailing lists. And the possibilities it provides in terms of subscription management is somewhat broader, since there is an independent setting of rules (Fig. 14) for making a decision on adding or removing an address in mailing lists; detailed statistics are kept on the operation of each of the rules.

Rice. 13. Setting up automatic subscription / unsubscription
with AMS Enterprise

Rice. 14. Adjustment of subscription / unsubscription rules in AMS Enterprise

Scheduled mailing

Many mailing lists are periodic (for example, price lists updated on Thursdays, company news published at the beginning of the week, etc.). And some of the mailings, which may not be periodic, are simply for certain reasons more profitable to launch at a certain time of the day (for example, at night, so as not to interfere with the company's employees to work on the Internet). In this case, mailing planners will come to the rescue, allowing you to automate the process of sending letters on a schedule. The role of such a scheduler can be played by the component Email Scheduler from the MAPILab Toolbox utility package or the utility AMS Scheduler included in the AMS Enterprise solution.

The principle of operation of these schedulers is practically the same - it is enough to prepare a mailing list and set up a schedule for launching it in the scheduler (Fig. 15 and 16), after which the mailing will be launched and executed automatically at the specified time. The only difference between the solutions is that AMS Scheduler has more capabilities in terms of setting up a schedule, although in most cases the functionality of Email Scheduler is sufficient. In turn, Email Scheduler allows you to attach files to messages sent on a schedule, however, AMS Enterprise (which includes AMS Scheduler) also implements this functionality.

Rice. 15. Configuring the schedule for launching mailings using
Email Scheduler

Rice. 16. Setting the schedule for the distribution in the environment
AMS Scheduler

Fast mailing

Some mail servers have restrictions on the number and volume of messages sent over a certain period of time - this is done to prevent the spread of spam. Alas, such restrictions create certain problems not only for spammers, but also for those users who have to send a large amount of e-mail every day to legitimate subscribers of certain corporate mailings. However, with the help of specialized software solutions, you can bypass such restrictions and thereby save yourself from the need to re-send correspondence.

So, using the component Batched mail from the Mail Merge Toolkit package will help organize the sending of letters, taking into account that their number does not exceed the maximum allowed for a specific mail server. You can, for example, send a fixed amount of correspondence within an hour (Fig. 17) or send consecutive letters not immediately, but with some interval. Of course, this is not a solution when working with millions of mailings, but with small mailings it is quite reasonable.

Rice. 17. Regulation of dispatch of letters through Batched Mail

In the case of large mailings, you will have to resort to solutions such as, for example, Advanced Direct Remailer or AMS Enterprise(fig. 18 and 19). Both solutions deliver outgoing mail directly to the recipient's mail server, bypassing the provider's server, thereby eliminating the restrictions set on the provider's server. At the same time, they deliver in several streams, the number of which for Advanced Direct Remailer can reach 399, and for AMS Enterprise - 500. As a result, messages are delivered an order of magnitude faster than with regular sending from an email client, for example, in AMS Enterprise, the delivery speed reaches about 250 thousand letters per hour. In the process of sending emails, the automatic detection of bad (non-existent) and incorrect syntax mail addresses based on a series of rules. It is possible to carry out mailings through proxy servers.

When using Advanced Direct Remailer, you can create mailing letters in your usual mail program (for example, in Microsoft Outlook or in The Bat!), Which you must first configure to work correctly with this package. In the case of AMS Enterprise, the preparation of correspondence is carried out in the built-in html editor, while it provides the ability to preview the created letters in the emulation mode of Microsoft Outlook.

Briefly about the products

Actual Contacts 1.16

Developer: MAPILab

Distribution size: 3.28 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98 / Me / NT / 2000 / XP / Vista

Distribution method: http://www.mapilab.com/files/actual_contacts.zip)

Price:

Actual Contacts is a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook XP / 2003/2007 designed to maintain the relevance of addresses and other contact information in the address book. It allows for automatic updating of information in the address book by sending messages with a form to all contacts and processing the updated data received from respondents. In addition, the plugin can be used to check addresses for relevance.

Advanced Direct Remailer (ADR) 2.2

Developer: Tweak Marketing

Siteprograms: http: // www. massmail.ru/adr/

Distribution size: 1.88 MB

Work under control: Windows NT 4/2000 / XP

Distribution method: shareware (15-day functionally limited demo - http://www.mailutilities.com/adr/adr.zip)

Price:

ADR is a utility designed to massively send e-mail bypassing the provider's server (that is, directly to the mail servers of correspondents). It uses multithreading (which allows an order of magnitude increase in the speed of mail delivery) and, unlike many competing programs, is tightly integrated with well-known email clients (Microsoft Outlook Express, The Bat !, Eudora, Pegasus Mail, etc.), which allows you to use them to prepare correspondence. ADR supports mailing lists of any format (including those imported from Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, or Microsoft SQL Server) and Windows address books.

Advanced Maillist Verify (AMV) 4.27

Developer: Tweak Marketing

Siteprograms: http: // www. massmail.ru/amv/

Distribution size: 1.44 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98 / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP

Distribution method: http://www.mailutilities.com/amv/amv.zip)

Price: 59.95 USD, for Russian-speaking users - 700 rubles.

AMV is a program for checking the relevance of email addresses in mailing lists, databases (via ODBC SQL - from Microsoft Excel to Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle) and address books Outlook, TheBat! and Eudora. It performs a thorough check of addresses (DNS and SMTP), but is recommended only for checking relatively small (no more than 50-100 thousand) lists.

AMS Enterprise 2.7

Developer: Business Software Products

Siteprograms: http: // www. bspdev.ru/index.php?ams20

Distribution size: 8.22 MB

Work under control: Windows 98 / Me / NT / 2000 / XP

Distribution method: shareware (20 days demo - http://www.bspdev.com/down_load/AMS272e.zip)

Price:$ 289, for Russian-speaking users: when paying via WebMoney, Yandex-Money, Sberbank - 8250 rubles, for non-cash payment - 8980 rubles.

AMS Enterprise is an effective tool for working with mailings that provides a solution to almost the entire range of email marketing tasks. This package allows you to manage mailing lists, prepare personalized messages based on them using MailMerge templates in the built-in Html editor, and quickly send mail to recipients. In addition, with the help of AMS Enterprise, you can organize automatic subscription / unsubscribe to mailings and set schedules to automatically start mailings at the right time, as well as receive detailed information on the results of mailing (the number of delivered / undelivered letters, the number of open letters and the number of clicks on the specified in letters to links).

High Speed ​​Verifier (HSV) 1.21

Developer: Tweak Marketing

Siteprograms: http: // www. massmail.ru/hsv/

Distribution size: 1.51 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98 / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP

Distribution method: shareware (functionally limited demo version - http://www.mailutilities.com/hsv/hsv.zip)

Price: 59.95 USD, for Russian-speaking users - 700 rubles.

HSV is designed to quickly check email addresses for their existence (DNS only). It does an excellent job with mailing lists with tens of millions of addresses and is very fast, but it detects only about 20-30% of non-existent addresses, while competing solutions that perform two-level verification (DNS and SMTP) can detect up to 60 70% of similar addresses.

Mail Merge Toolkit 2.5

Developer: MAPILab

Siteprograms: http: //www.mapilab. com / ru / outlook / mail_merge /

Distribution size: 5.93 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98 / Me / NT / 2000 / XP

Distribution method: shareware (30 days demo - http://www.mapilab.com/files/mail_merge_toolkit.zip)

Price:$ 24, for Russian-speaking users - 700 rubles.

Mail Merge Toolkit is an add-on to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Outlook that allows mailing from Microsoft Publisher in HTML, RTF and GIF formats and from Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook in HTML and RTF formats while maintaining the functionality of Internet links, as well as allowing you to substitute data fields in the subject of the letter (sending letters with personalized not only content, but also the subject) and attach one or several files to the sent letters.

Mailing List Wizard (MLW) 1.32

Developer: Tweak Marketing

Distribution size: 1.81 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98 / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP

Distribution method: shareware (functionally limited demo version - http: // www. mailutilities.com/mlw/mlw.zip)

Price:$ 40, for Russian-speaking users - 500 rubles.

MLW is designed for complex processing and transformation of mailing lists and allows you to exclude duplicate addresses from the lists, filter lists by various criteria, combine two lists into one, exclude from the address list using an additional list, etc.

Mail List Validator 2.1

Developer: Business Software Products

Distribution size: 2.2 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98 / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP

Distribution method: freeware (http://www.bspdev.ru/down_load/MLVLD21.zip)

Price: is free

The Mail List Validator utility is designed to check email addresses for their existence. It performs a thorough check of addresses (DNS and SMTP) and can even work with lists containing several million addresses (although the size of the database should not exceed 4 GB). At the same time, if necessary, the program can only perform a DNS check to quickly clear the lists of those addresses whose domains no longer exist.

MAPILab Toolbox 3.0

Developer: MAPILab

Siteprograms: http://www.mapilab.com/ru/outlook/toolbox

Distribution size: 2.66 MB

Work under control: Windows 98 / Me / NT / 2000 / XP / Vista

Distribution method: shareware (30 days demo - http://www.mapilab.com/files/toolbox.zip)

Price:$ 24, for Russian-speaking users - 700 rubles.

The MAPILab Toolbox package unites 18 add-on plugins for Microsoft Outlook 2000/2002 / XP / 2003/2007, including the components discussed in the article:

• Batched Mail - used for scheduling mail distribution, taking into account the restrictions imposed by the mail server;
• Email Scheduler - designed to automate the process of sending individual letters or launching mailings on a schedule;
• Mailing List Services - used to quickly generate lists of the necessary addresses, including mailing lists (the source of addresses can be letters, contacts, files on disk), and also allows you to search for contact addresses in Microsoft Outlook folders and text files stored on your hard disk ;
• Subscription Manager - Provides automation of the process of processing requests to add and remove addresses from mailing lists, and can also be used to add and remove mailing lists available to subscribers.

Most ordinary users work with e-mail directly on the site. The functionality provided by them is quite enough for creating and receiving letters. But what if you need to send the same letter to a large number of people, you need to send a specific message at a specific time, continue to send letters without the participation of a person while he is basking on the beach on vacation? In such cases, all kinds of programs and services of automatic mailing come to the rescue. They differ in functionality, paid for / free of charge, peculiarities of work and many other factors, but what unites them is that they do not need the constant presence of a person to work. Mailing of letters can be carried out around the clock with different customizable intervals.

Why are mailings needed?

The opinion that the main and most effective marketing tool is the website is far from the truth. Most of the buyers of a product or service, with a single visit to a web page, are not yet ready to make a decision to make a purchase. The reasons may be different, and not in the last place is banal forgetfulness. Customers simply don't remember seeing something that caught their attention. Some potential buyers have to be reminded of themselves repeatedly until they finally make a purchase. And the automatic email is that reminder.

Features and services

There are many programs and services for automatic mailing of correspondence, both paid and free. Their functionality is not limited only to sending letters without human intervention, its capabilities are much wider:

1. Before mass mailing, the effectiveness of letters can be tested on a selected group of users by examining the statistics of sending and delivering these letters, the activity of customers after receiving them.
2. The services allow you to regularly update the list of subscribers by processing service messages about delivery errors. Thus, system resources are not wasted on useless actions to send messages to addresses that no longer exist.
3. Statistics on clicks on links in emails will help you evaluate the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.
4. The built-in technology for determining the location of subscribers will allow you to select letters for mailing based on geography.
5. The base for sending letters can be replenished in various automatic ways, for example, by scanning sites on the network.

Automatic replies to letters are also configured. This will be useful, for example, when leaving. The contributor can be informed that the letter has been received, but the answer will be on his return after some time. If there was a change in the e-mail address, then it is very easy to receive the mail sent to the old address - just set up the forwarding. But how to inform everyone who writes that the old address is no longer up-to-date, and next time it is better to write directly to another one? And automatic writing will help with this.

Such programs usually have templates of typical letters that can be easily modified to suit your needs. Thanks to all this, automatic mailing allows you to promote goods and services with a minimum investment of time and money on advertising, processing and analysis of correspondence.

Send what?

The most popular are letters of welcome (for example, after registering on the resource) and gratitude (for example, for a completed order or long-term cooperation with the company).

Greetings are the most read letters. People are used to seeing them, most of them open in search of some useful or interesting information.

Thank you letters may contain information about the order, delivery method, various promotions and discounts for a regular customer. All this attracts people, and such letters, as a rule, are read or at least casually overlooked.

An automatic letter can suggest products that are related to topics that the person has purchased or was interested in. Letters will allow you to congratulate, for example, on your birthday, making an individual advantageous offer.

To deal with complex customer problems, of course, you will need specialists. But simpler issues, thanks to automatic emails, can be resolved around the clock and daily when users need them.

Among all the variety of programs and services, the Outlook program from Microsoft is well known, therefore, the methods of creating mailings, automatic replies and forwarding certain letters to other addresses will be considered using its example.

Newsletter

For a large group of people, there is no need to manually add them to the mailing list every time. To do this, you can create a mailing list. On the "main" tab in the program, you must select the item "create a contact group", then specify a name for this group and add members to it. The list of participants and the name of the group, if necessary, are edited or deleted completely. One and the same contact can be included in an arbitrarily large number of user groups to whom automatic mailing will be performed. This saves a lot of time.

Automatic writing: how to do

Sometimes it is necessary to send an automatic letter at a strictly defined time, and in the absence of the sender himself at the computer. Automatic email sending Outlook allows you to do this too. You should write a regular letter, if necessary, attach the necessary files to it, indicate the addressee (s) or a mailing list, and then go to the "parameters" section of the menu. Further in this section, select the item "Delayed delivery", and then - "Do not deliver until". Then all the necessary parameters are configured, including the date and time of sending the letter, the presence or absence of delivery and read notifications, etc.

After specifying all the necessary data, you should send a letter. It will be saved in the folder of sent letters, but in reality it will go to the recipient only on the specified day and hour. It is important that at this time the computer is turned on, the program is running on it, and there is also an Internet connection. If these conditions were not created at the right time, then automatic sending of letters will occur at the moment when they are finally met. It is not very convenient, but there is nothing you can do about it.

Automatically forward Outlook emails

Messages can be forwarded from the first addressee to others in two ways - forwarding and redirecting. Forwarded letters are distinguished by the presence of the abbreviation FW in the subject, and the recipient sees from which address the letter was sent initially, and from which it was later sent to him. The redirection is not noticeable to the recipient, he sees the letter as sent by the first sender.

Shipment management

You can configure either the forwarding of absolutely all letters, or create rules governing what should be forwarded and when. In this case, the forwarded letters are saved in the "Inbox" folder. The program analyzes the sent letter, and if it meets the conditions specified in the rules, then it performs the action specified by this rule. This can be not only automatic forwarding of letters or replies to them, but also transferring them to a specific folder, i.e. sorting, deleting, etc.

To create rules for processing incoming correspondence, you must select the "rules" item on the main tab of the program. Further, in the menu "managing rules and notifications", algorithms for processing received letters are already directly configured.

No forwarding

Some letters cannot be forwarded - this happens when the sender has installed a protection on the correspondence sent to them, which does not allow the recipient to share this information with anyone else. This restriction is removed only by the sender, the recipient cannot do this in any way.

Also, in companies, the system administrator can establish his own rules that restrict or prohibit completely sending letters outside the corporate network, and sometimes inside it. This is done to protect corporate information.

Auto-replies

In the absence of the addressee on the spot due to a business trip, vacation, illness, or for some other reason, automatic replies to letters can be configured. If the mail is located on the corporate one, then you can also create various responses to letters coming from other employees of the company, and to those received from outside.

To enable this function, in the program menu, in the "file" section, select the "auto-replies" item, where you need to select "send auto-replies". In this section, the text of the letters itself is written, as well as the period during which these responses will be sent. If the user appears online before the end of this period, he will be prompted to disable the function.

For the period of validity of auto-replies, you can set the rules for processing mail, for example, for sending them to other employees of the company who can resolve the issues that have arisen, etc.

Detailed help is available in the program, as well as help to avoid common mistakes when working with it.