Sending the Newsletter

And now you want to send the newsletter you built!

Okay. I admit it. I assumed that copy and paste would work. Those of you reading this know there are a number of little problems with such a simplistic approach, so I thought I would share some additional comments and suggestions with you.

First of all, you cannot use mail merge from Microsoft Word into Microsoft Outlook and use HTML mail at the same time. Microsoft does not support merge in HTML. I suspect they will at some point, but for now, the official Microsoft support page says nay. If you want to use merge, you must use plain text email. Even so, your hyperlinks will be hot. You just will not be able to use cool fonts and colors and all that other HTML stuff along with merge. If your budget will allow, there are other options, but they all cost some money.

Second, you CAN simply copy all from the normal view in FrontPage (click on the page and press Ctrl-A, then Ctrl-C, switch to Outlook, click into the body of an email message and press Ctrl-V to paste.) If you have made all your references into absolute references, this will work. To use absolute references means you must tinker with the image and hyperlink references in your newsletter and add the full Internet path to the reference including the "http://" part.

FrontPage assumes the Web page you are building will be located on the Web site you have open at the time you build the page and so it uses a shortcut method of referencing the images and other pages within the web site, called a relative reference. To check if you have the full reference, you can copy and paste the url of the reference you want to test, into the address box in your web browser. If you get the page or image to show up, you have the right reference. To access the reference of an image or hyperlink, right-mouse-click the object and choose "picture properties" or "hyperlink properties", depending on the kind of object you are checking.

To send the message, once you have it into the body of an email message is another matter entirely, and it deserves a better answer than I provided earlier.

To use Outlook to mail to a large list of addresses, you must use merge, so you cannot do this with your HTML newsletter. If you do want to send to a large list and you can stand the plain text limitation, here is how you can do it.

To send a plain text message to a list, put the address list into a text file, one address to a line, or Excel file, one address to each row in the same column. Put the name of that field ("email" for example) as the first item in the column.

Now the merge function will not let you get by without putting at least one merge field into the body of the message. I just create an empty field for that purpose. I call it "null" and include it in every record in my address source file (the data source in merge) and put nothing into that field in every record. Just add a second column, in Excel, or separate the email address by a comma in a text file.

During the merge process, I create a message body and insert the "null" merge field, then merge to email, specify a subject line and voila' Word fills my Outlook or Microsoft Outlook Express outbox with a copy of my message aimed at every address in my list. I have used this approach to send over 6,000 messages at one sitting. This is better than sending in batches because it is server-friendly. All your messages will be interspaced with the other mail being sent, so that you do not hog the resource.

WARNING: be sure to turn off the autosend feature in Outlook before you hit the merge button. To do this, uncheck the two boxes under "mail account options" on the dialog box that appears when you choose the following: Tools:Options:Mail Delivery. This will let you look at the messages you have created, before they leave--and delete them and start over if you have an error--which I inevitably do.

Now back to our question of the moment. But, how do you get your HTML newsletter to go? Once you have your HTML newsletter successfully installed in a message body and it is ready to send, you can create new contact lists to which you wish to send the newsletter. You can import your lists of addresses using File:Import and Export... It can be a little tricky, but take it one step at a time and refer to the Help documentation.

Do not send a message to more than 30 addresses at a time. Many ISPs will bounce the whole batch if you exceed 30 addresses. This is a conservative figure that will work with all the ISPs I know about. Some will tolerate more, but the chance is not worth taking. Make sure you put all the addresses in the bcc: field rather than the to: field so that no one will be able to see all the other addressees. Outlook requires something in the to: field, so just put in a dummy address, like "(YourTitle) Newsletter: (issue date)". If you set up your contact lists, 30 to a folder, you can select all the addresses in a folder then drag them onto the inbox to create a message addressed to all of them. You will need to cut and paste the addresses out of the to: box and into the bcc: box, then put your newsletter into the body of this message. Once each such message is created and addressed, hit send and off they go. This approach will quickly become a real pain, but for small lists of just a few hundred when you are getting started on a shoestring, it can produce a very nice result.

If you need merge along with HTML mail and/or you have a larger list, you will need to move up to some better solutions for sending and managing your newsletter. Here are several options:

My best recommendation:

1) ListBuilder by Microsoft
http://www.bcentral.com/services/lb/pricing.asp

This online service starts at $149 a year for up to 1000 emails per month. The next step is $299 a year, or $29.95 a month for up to 10,000 emails a month. The next increment is $40 a month additional for 40,000 additional emails. This system has everything you need to effectively manage your list and to send your mailings without a lot of trouble, and it can grow as your needs grow.

ListBuilder offers a 30 day free trial.

2) MailKing
Most options less robust than ListBuilder will be PC based and prone to slow transmission, system conflicts and other quirky behaviors. They all use your regular ISP connection to send the mail and a filtering approach to managing bounces.

The one standout program is MailKing PC software by MessageMedia http://messagemedia.com/solutions/mailking/ which costs about $199. Because it is used as a gateway product to their higher priced solutions, I think it is a much safer bet than other stand-alone PC-Based solutions.

3) High-End Systems
Everything above the ListBuilder system is very expensive, starting at $5,000 to $67,500, depending on the vendor, and they mostly all require high level server installations. The best of this group are

http://lyris.com/

http://messagemedia.com/

http://boldfish.com/


I hope this answers some of your questions. Sorry I did not get to all of them in the first place. Still have more questions? Feel free to write me at tbergman@tkb.com.

Beyond these technical details, if you really mean to get serious about using email newsletters to promote your business, get the book: The Essential Guide to Web Strategy for Entrepreneurs. It really will help.

Now, go make some money{:)