[lauralil]

Hey everyone :-)

I have just finished designing a html newsletter for a client. However they don't actually have an html e-mail account with which to send it with.

Is there a way of sending this using a normal e-mail account? Obviously all the data will be kept on the clients web space, but whenever I try testing the newsletter with a mail account all I get is a load of code!

I'm taking a web development course over the summer to back up my web design skills, but this has left me a bit stumped!

Any advice or pushes in the right direction as to where I can get more information would be great.

thanks

L x

[Minuteman Press]

Hi Laura,

Try these boys - Email Marketing Solution from SimplyCast.com I've always found them very good value and excellent live help (on Canadian time).

Peter x

[IS-James]

Unless the newsletter is only being sent out to a handful of people you really need to be looking at using a third-party to mail it. Sending bulk email, even to as little as a hundred recipients, can cause serious problems in the future. Once ISPs and webmail operators notice large numbers of duplicate emails coming through their servers you risk them labeling the email as SPAM and blacklisting your companies mail servers.

There is also the problem that a lot of people will mark the email as junk even if they requested it! People are lazy and often will label a message as junk instead of unsubscribing because they can't be bothered to go through the process of being removed from the list. If the email is going out to webmail addresses like Gmail or Hotmail it only takes a few people to mark it as junk before you can be blacklisted.

Using a third party mailing company eliminates these risks as well as ensuring that the email is delivered promptly and looking as intended.

If you are handling the design of the email then the cost to send it out is minimal. To give you an idea of costs our email marketing department charge £32 setup + £20 per thousand emails to send out a pre prepared email and this includes link tracking and a report detailing how many recipients opened the email as well as other tracking data.

[sdesign1]

Try sending out using your own email account to a variety of emails including hotmail, gmail, mail on a mac, outlook express, outlook 2003,2007 2010 and see what you get.