vitaly's blog

You’ve just configured your outgoing mail SMTP server and sent bulk emails to your customers. You are ready to receive email and to get answers and orders and you are clicking “Get new messages” button, but something is wrong - you have not received any emails at all.

Mr. Smith just set up his own local SMTP server on his laptop. He intends to go abroad and he is happy he could control his business even at a distance. However, Mr. Smith will be disappointed - he will not be able to send emails through his new, shiny SMTP server.

Why? When you are emailing, your e-mail client connects to SMTP server and sends your message to it. After SMTP server accepts your message for delivery, it will store it in its local queue. Then it starts sending emails.

How many letters you send every day with your outgoing mail SMTP server? One hundred? Perhaps one thousand?

You use bulk mailing to communicate with your customers, to send newsletters and commercial proposals and it is an integral part of your business

In this case, sometimes you face “your-e-mail-can’t-be-delivered” problem. It is normal, when 5-10 messages out of a thousand can’t be delivered (of course if you have a clear, healthy and well maintained subscriber list).

You've just finished an important project or concluded several lucrative deals. So, it’s time to go home and to relax watching TV with a cup of tea, but first you decided to send some bulk emails to your partners, notifying them of your success. You press the “Send” button, dreaming about soft armchair and… “Ding!” says your PC and there is a problem – your email can’t be sent.

If you ever tried to send email to a large list of your subscribers, you will know... It's not as easy as it seems.

Usually, when you first start, you have no experience and no knowledge of how this whole email works. You know, you just press the "Send" button, and your email goes away. What could be the problem with that? I have done it thousand times. Sure, I say, no problem. Knock your socks off, do it with your list. Press the "Send" button ten thousand times... per week... and also design your messages, promote your product and do all other stuff at the same time.

We continue our discussion from the previous blog on how to make a newsletter

Do not write newsletters for spam filters.

Most of today's email boxes are equipped with a lot of spam filtering. They are praying on terms and slogans like "Dear friend", "Easy money", "Make money fast", "Buy it today" and a lot more of them. If you use phrases like that when you send email newsletter, you increase your chances of spam filter blocking you. Get a decent mass mailing program, that writes individual emails to each client addressing them by name.

You might ask, why do you need to know how to make a newsletter?

With proliferation of spam these days, the stakes are very high. You cannot afford to make any mistakes when you send email newsletter.

Why? What is the big deal with this? Why can't I just slap something together? After all, they are ALREADY in my list.

I will tell you why:

Statistically, about 95% of all your messages only go to 4 major monsters. They are:

gmail, hotmail (msn), yahoo and AOL.