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Emailing Your Customers
[Note:
This article is almost four years old. I have asked the software
publisher for an updated version of the program so that I can update it.]
Note: To use the
method of emailing your customers that I recommend here, it is best that
you have some experience with basic computer file formats, directory structures,
and computer terminology.
Introduction
This article briefly
describes various ways of emailing your customers, and describes in detail
the method that I use. If you are committed to making jewelry and
have been doing it for a while (or expect to), then you will build a customer base.
Emailing those customers periodically will
bring in sales and help you grow your business. Emailing
customers is definitely a valuable business technique.
Before I continue, let me
address the ethical issue. "Spam" (unsolicited commercial email)
has become the bane of internet users. As of early 2004, more than 50% of
the email sent across the internet is spam, and much of it
is obnoxious: offers for pornography, penis-enlargement products,
aphrodisiac drugs like Viagra, and fake diplomas. Very few
legitimate businesses do their marketing via spam (and to keep the
proliferation of spam down, you should never buy products from spammers).
However, you are not spamming when you email your customers. The Can-Spam
Act of 2003 specifically gives businesses the right to email their
customers.
Even so, you want to do it in a way that won't offend them, and you want to comply with the Can-Spam
Act even if you don't have to (see below). If, like me, you don't start emailing your
customers until after you have been in business for a while, then your
first mailing will indeed be unsolicited. However, if it is nicely
worded, and if you give your customers an easy way to opt out (i.e., to stop
the emails), then you are doing nothing wrong or illegal. They are,
after all, your customers, and you have a right to
contact them.
Content of Your Message
My strong suggestion is that you keep your email message simple and
personal. Something like this is appropriate:
Dear [[firstname]],
You have purchased jewelry from me in the
past, and I thought you would like to know that I have recently stocked
some new items on my site. Here is a picture of several of them:
[picture]
If you are unable to see the picture, you can
see my new styles at [give page address].
[Now include a brief description of the new
items you have made. If you are using new materials or working in a
new style, you should mention that.]
Thank you for your interest!
[your name]
[your business name]
[your home page address]
(This email is a solicitation. If you do
not wish to receive mailings from me, please email me back to let me know
and I will remove you from the mailing list. If you were annoyed by
this email, I apologize. [Insert your business name and physical
mailing address])
Now, I'll be the
first to admit that that is a pretty dry letter. I don't have much
imagination when it comes to wording, but I do know that you should keep
it short, simple and personal. Don't use exclamation marks or ALL
CAPS or fancy advertising lingo. The thing that will really get them
to go to your site is the photos, so the photos should be well done –
bright, clear, detailed and colorful. Do not make the mistake
of over-compressing your photos (see my other articles).
[Note:
I have discovered in my own business that a simple text note announcing
new beads, without pictures, brings in plenty of sales. However,
including pictures might be more important when you are selling finished
jewelry.]
Methods of Emailing Your
Customers
There are several ways to email your customers, one of
which I specifically recommend:
Your email program.
You can send emails using the program that you receive your email with.
This has two major drawbacks: First, standard email programs are not
designed to send group mailings conveniently. Second, they are not
programmed to bypass the outgoing limits of your internet service
provider (ISP). Most ISPs limit the number of outgoing messages their
customers can send at one time; they do this in order to prevent their
members from sending spam. Sometimes there are hourly limits also.
Internet emailing services.
There are various internet emailing services you can pay which will email
your customers for you. I haven't actually tried one myself, but I understand
that they can be very convenient. However, they have definite
drawbacks: First, they are expensive. The service Constant
Contact (www.constantcontact.com) charges $15 per month to send up to 500
emails. $15 just to send emails is, in my view, a lot of money (that's what I pay each month to have this web site hosted!). Also, what happens
when your list exceeds 500 customers? Then you have to pay
$30 a month! Another major drawback is that some ISPs, such as AOL, view the email coming
from these services as spam, and they block it.
Special mass-mailing programs.
This is the option I recommend. I have experience with only one
mass-mailing program, Auto Mailer (www.automsw.com), so that is the
program I recommend. Please note that there may be
others that are just as good.
I have not been paid for this recommendation; I am simply pleased
enough with the program that I feel the need to tell my customers about
it.
Auto Mailer has these
advantages: It is simple to use; it allows you to customize your
emails; and it gives you more than one way to bypass your ISP's outgoing
mail limits.
Prepare for Your Mailing
Your preparation for using Auto Mailer is
simple:
* Compose the message to your customers as an
HTML file. You should do this in your
web-publishing program or in any program that allows you to design
HTML files. Whatever graphics you use in
this file (backgrounds, pictures) must be uploaded to your web site, and the HTML
message must reference the internet location of the graphics, not the
location on your hard drive.
The HTML file itself must be saved on your hard
drive. If you think that you don't have any web site space, you probably do:
Most ISPs give their customers a small amount of free space on
their internet servers. [Added later: This step is
necessary only if you want to include pictures in your email. If you
feel that your customers will respond to a simple text message, then that
is all you need to send.]
* Compose a similar message, without any
graphics, as a text (.txt) file. You can do this in the Windows
Notepad program, or you can do it in a word-processing program and save it
as a text (.txt) file on your hard drive.
It is necessary to include a .txt version of your message because not all
email programs can read HTML files. (Note: If you don't want
to go to the trouble of composing both an HTML message and a text message,
you can send mailings with just a text message.)
* Construct and save your mailing list in text
(.txt) or CSV (.csv) format. You can do this in the Windows
Notepad program, or you can do it in your word-processing program and then
save the file in text (.txt) format. The text and CSV ("Comma
Separated Value") formats are delimited, meaning that each bit of
information is separated by a tab (text format) or a comma (CSV format). Here are two examples of a delimited list, the
first in text format and the second in CSV format:
firstname
lastname email
Joan Smith joan@aol.com
Bob Jones bob@earthlink.net
Pablo Ortiz
pablo@yahoo.com
(Note that the tabs won't line up,
and you shouldn't make them line up.)
firstname,lastname,email
Joan,Smith,joan@aol.com
Bob,Jones,bob@earthlink.net
Pablo,Ortiz,pablo@yahoo.com
(Note: Since the
comma is being used as the delimiting character, any entry which has a
comma in it has to be surrounded with quotes.)
In both cases, the
first line of each list is the field names. You can choose whatever
fields names you please, although the field name for the email address must be
"E-Mail" or a variant, such as "email".
Tip:
If you do your mailing list in a table in your word-processing program, and then
copy the table and insert it in Notepad, Notepad may (depending on which
word-processing program you are using) convert it to text format with tabs
between the fields. This works with WordPerfect, but I don't have
Microsoft Words, so I don't know if it works with Word. However, whatever
word-processing program you use should have a feature that will convert the
table to text, which will put tabs between the fields.
Important Note:
The free version of Auto Mailer limits your mailings to 75 recipients at one
time. Thus, if you are emailing 750 people, you will have to have 10
separate email lists. Once you have paid the $49 registration fee, this
limitation is increased to 2,500 recipients per mailing. If you use
multiple lists, each list must have the field names as the first line.
How to Use Auto Mailer
The easiest way
to explain how to use Auto Mailer is to show you a screen shot and tell
you how to fill in the fields:
[Note: When I update the images, I'll use a more normal
window color!]
(1) Click on the
Change button to the right and fill out the Configuration screen that
opens. Here is an example:
You should fill
out the Configuration screen similarly to the way I have, using the 2nd
option, "Send Using SMTP Mail Server" – you should, of course, fill
in your own information. For example, if your ISP (internet service
provider) is Verizon, you would fill in "outgoing.verizon.net" in the SMTP
field (each ISP has its own unique name for its mail server – to find out
what it is, look at the settings of your regular mail program or
call your ISP's technical support department).
For your "From
E-Mail Address", it is very important that you use the email address
that your ISP gave you, not some other email address, such as a Hotmail
address or an address from your own domain. There is a good reason
for this: if the ISPs of your customers see a discrepancy
between your From address and the IP address (numeric domain address) that you
are sending your mail from, they may block your messages.
Note for
AOL/Netscape users: AOL (and I think Netscape too) uses its own
email program which is integrated with its other software. Because
of this, you must use the option "Send MAPI Client for Sending EMail" at
the bottom of the above window. The disadvantage of this is that you
can only send text messages to your customers, not HTML messages.
(2)
Insert the path and name of your
mailing list. Let's say that you named it "customerlist.txt"
and saved it in the "c:\my documents" directory, then you would fill this
into the "To" field: c:\my documents\customerlist.txt
(3)
Insert the subject line of your emails. I always use "New Beads at
Purebeads". If your business name is Cynthia's Designs, you might
say "New Jewelry at Cynthia's Designs". If you are running a sale,
you might say "Sale at Cynthia Designs". You get the idea.
(4)
Insert the path and name of your message in text (.txt) format. Let's say that you named it "mailing01.txt"
and saved it in the "c:\my documents" directory, then you would fill this
into the "Plain Text" field: c:\my documents\mailing01.txt
(5)
Insert the path and name of your message in HTML format. Let's say that you named it "mailing01.html"
and saved it in the "c:\my documents" directory, then you would fill this
into the "HTML" field: c:\my documents\mailing01.html.
Please note you
can use either the extension ".html" or ".htm" for HTML files.
(6)
In this field, insert the path and name (on your hard drive) of any
attachments you want to send, such as pictures of your jewelry.
Because of the suspicion that people have about email attachments, I
strongly recommend that you do not include attachments.
Configuring
the Time Delay
If you followed
my instructions above, you have already configured Auto Mailer to send the
mail through your ISP's mail server. However, your ISP probably has
limits on the number of messages you can send at one time, or in one hour.
To bypass those limits, you configure Auto Mailer to send one message
every ten or fifteen seconds. To do that, click the File
menu, click Options, then fill out the Options box to appear as follows:
Instead of using
15 seconds in the Pause field, you can use 10 seconds. I have gone
as low as 9 seconds in my own mailings, but not any lower. If you
space the individual emails too close together, your ISP may see them as a
contiguous mailing and block them. Also, using more than one thread
(in the "Use" field) may alert your ISP that you are sending a mass mailing.
Send your
Mailing
Now you are
ready to go. To send your
mailing, click the green right arrow at the bottom of the Auto Mailer
window. If you are using multiple lists because you haven't paid the
registration fee, you must update the list name and repeat the process
until all the lists are sent.
Complying
with the Can-Spam Act
As I stated
above, you do not have to comply with most requirements of the Can-Spam
act because you are emailing your customers. However, it is a good
idea to do so. To comply with the Act, do these things:
* Use a real
From/Return email address in your mailings.
* Your subject
line must be appropriate to the contents of your email.
* You must
identify your email as a solicitation or advertisement.
* You must give
your customers a way to opt out of the mailings. You don't need to
employ an automatic method – just tell them to email you back with a
request that their information be deleted from the list.
* You must
include a physical address for your business.
Mailing Strategy
I am adding the
following paragraphs simply for your edification. You don't need to
read this section to send your mailing.
Auto Mailer is designed so that you can bypass your ISP's
mail servers altogether. You do that by selecting "Send Directly to Recipient"
in the Change menu to the right of "From" at the top of the Auto
Mailer window.
When you send email normally, it goes to your ISP's mail
server and then it is sent to the recipient. When you select "Send
Directly to Recipient", Auto Mailer turns your computer into a temporary
mail server and sends the messages via port 25, thereby bypassing your ISP's mail
servers. That doesn't mean that your emails are not routed through a
server owned by your ISP; it just means that your emails are not routed through
a
mail server, which has limits on how much mail you can send at
one time.
The ability to bypass your ISP's mail servers sounds like
a good thing, but it can cause problems. Many of the large ISPs that
you would be sending mail to (most notably AOL) are on the alert for mail
which is sent from servers which are not recognized mail servers. If other
customers of your ISP have been using port 25 to send spam, some of the
recipient ISPs may have blocked mail coming from the server your mail is
routed through. Also, when you send your mail directly, your return
address will not match with any of your ISP's mail server addresses, so
your mail can be blocked for that reason. When I sent my first mailing via
port 25, 45% of my messages got bounced back to me as undeliverable.
The solution, then, is to go through your ISP's mail servers, but to do
it in the way described above (by spacing them 10-15 seconds apart). If
you send 300 emails and it takes Auto Mailer 50 minutes to send them, your
ISP won't view those emails as all sent at the same time. And if it
takes an hour or two to get all your emails sent, that is a small price to
pay to get your message out. While AutoMailer is sending
your mailing, you can use any other program on your computer, and you can
also send and receive mail normally.