Another dude asking what is the best mass email provider!

[faroki2951]

But I am going try and narrow things down by providing some details….

Our need is for a ‘once off’ publicity push. We're not trying to build a 'customer base' or anything like that. It’s a press release being sent to journalists about an artistic event and we’re confident that if the journalists receive it, they will likely read it. Yes, we know everybody thinks that - but the artist has a track record and some awareness. We have reason to believe there is significant interest.

The problem is getting the email to them the first place and not being marked as spam. That’s the reason we are looking for some kind of service, rather than setting up multiple email accounts ourselves and foolishly hoping to avoid spam filtration. We have created a list of 12,000 recipients and just want these recipients to get their 12,000 individual emails - that’s it - and we’re willing to pay a reasonable price…

Unfortunately, when I read through similar posts, with people recommending Privy, Hubspot, Ontraport, Keap, Sendy, Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Omnisend, Sendinblue, Klaviyo and so on… it’s difficult for me to read between the marketing lines, so to speak, i.e. to figure out which service is better and less likely to get our press release marked as spam.

We appreciate that normally people have a large array of considerations and these companies try to field those considerations. But as this is a ‘once off’, we were wondering if anyone could recommend the best one specifically for that?

We have even considered using multiple services in the free mode and splitting the 12K recipients across them - but worry that might increase the danger of getting marked as spam, yeah?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you in advance. Highly opinionated or even pushy responses ARE valued also. I just want to break through this web of services that I am caught in and pick the one that will deliver the 12K emails, period. Please set me straight!

[Dani]

Hi and welcome to DaniWeb!!

The problem that you are likely to encounter is that anti-spam functionality has become very sophisticated nowadays, and one of the things that it specifically singles out is when there is a one-off blast to thousands of recipients.

For example, here on DaniWeb, we have a 20 year history of slowly and steadily acquiring new emails for our mailing list, messaging opted-in users regularly, removing bounced emails from the list, etc. One of the things that email providers such as Gmail, etc. like to see is that a list has been slowly growing organically over time, and that unsubscribe requests are honored, emails that bounce are removed from the list, and users who don't engage with the email contents are also removed from the list over time. The key to making it through email spam filters is consistency!

To just send out a one-time blast to 12K recipients, the thing that sets off spam alarm bells is, did these recipients opt-in to receiving marketing-based emails from you? Where did this list of 12K emails come from? Did you buy this list of 12K emails, or did you grow the list organically, yourself, over time? Remember, with both US-laws as well as just about all email provider terms of service contracts, you are prohibited from sending marketing-based emails to anyone who hasn't explicitly opted in to receiving marketing-based emails from your company. Long story short: It's going to be close to impossible to, out of nowhere, email 12K users with the same messaging, and not have it go to spam.

This leaves you with four choices. The first seems to be the road you've gone down so far, and aren't keen on ... which is to use an email marketing solution such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact, to grow and maintain your mailing list. The benefit of these services is that they, not just send the email, but also handle all of the list management, which means providing unsubscribe functionality, handling unsubscribe requests, detecting and removing bounced emails, etc. All of this functionality goes towards maintaining a clean list with a low bounce rate which, in turn, directly leads to not being marked as spam.

The second choice is to abandon your 12K emails (where did they come from, anyways?) and to rent an existing list to send your messaging. For example, here at DaniWeb, you can pay us $8K to send a dedicated email blast, with your wording, to our 50,000 mailing list subscribers. The benefit of renting a list consisting of your targeted demographic is that you're paying for all the legwork that was previously done over years to create what's called a "clean" list with a low bounce rate, high conversion rate, and low spam flag rate. It's very popular to rent mailing lists, and the pricing varies depending upon how clean the list is and, in turn, what their email open rate is (the percentage of users who receive the email to their inbox and, subsequently, open the email, instead of just quickly deleting it). Email lists that have a history of sending quality, informative content to their subscribers, have a high open rate.

The third choice is to do all of this yourself. Sure, you can email the 12K users yourself from any Linux server connected to the Internet, but the likelihood of it going to spam is high ... unless you build up an honest list over time.

Since you're saying that this is all for a one-time event, why not use a service such as Eventbrite? Eventbrite manages an RSVP attendee list for you, and then lets you send an email blast to everyone who has RSVP'ed for your event through the Eventbrite system (since they validate and opt-in the users into a mailing list during the RSVP process). The caveat here is that Eventbrite owns the mailing list, and it's fully under their control, not yours. Another option might be to use something like Meetup.com where members can join your meetup event, and, because they're meetup members, Meetup has the ability to send your attendees your custom messaging. With both of these options, they're akin to you collecting email addresses as you build RSVPs, building mailing lists from those RSVPs on Eventbrite and Meetup (instead of building your own lists), and then renting the lists you just created, so to speak. The benefit is obviously that it's a great way to get word about your event out there, since both Eventbrite and Meetup promote your event within their website to their huge audiences.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

[faroki2951]

Thanks, Dani - I really appreciate the time you took to respond, it is very helpful!

We're in the hundreds of dollars market, not thousands, hahah...

So considering the issues with trying to do an email blast ourselves and considering we don't have too much money either, it does seem like one of these mass email services might be the happy medium.

(I'm not sure Eventbrite would work, as the artistic event referred to is something dropping online, sorry if that was poorly expressed)

So, focusing on the "email marketing solution such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact" I am just trying to figure this out.

Somebody else I asked about this commented that I basically have a "cold list" and most such services will not load it, i.e. reject my list.

The list is really just of journalists and all of them have volunteered their emails publicly, but it's niche and took a year to build. I appreciate that if I simply try and send them from gmail or something, it would have no way of knowing that. But I would have hoped a mass email service would be able to get 12K emails to them...

I previously assumed: 1. good list. 2. mass email service. 3. most of them get your email ...but now am not so sure :(

Thanks again for any thoughts.