Your Email List Recommendation

[PFZ_Ken]

Hi all,

It's been a while since I posted here which means things have been going smoothly with 68c.

I'm wanting to start sending out a "Hot Sheet" to prospects containing newly arrived items, items of special interest etc. and of course I need to go the "opt-in" route so as to not incur the wrath of the Anti-Spam Gods.

To be clear and inform any reader who is not familiar with our implementation of 68c, we do not have so called "external" users. We are the only ones posting listings on our site, so there is no log in etc. visible on our pages. I said all this to say that what I'm talking about here is not a mod, add-on or anything else that should be integrated into, or work with the 68c script. I imagine what I'll end up doing is creating a "content" page or add some code to a template to allow those who wish to to sign up for the sheet.

Of course if you Google "email list" or "opt-in list" or some other similar phrase you get a gazillion hits from those offering email services, list management etc.

I just wanted to ask you guys if there is anything you've had experince with or knowledge of that you'd feel comfortable recommending. Of course we're "on a budget" which means I won't get approval to spend money on something I can do myself.

And again, I'm not looking for something to add to 68c, I fully expect the solution once I find it to be wholly external to the script with only a "gateway" of sorts which could be nothing more than a new content page added to 68c.

As always thanks for your time and I look forward to benefiting from your wisdom and experience.

Ken

PFZ Recovery

[Eric Barnes]

From what I mentioned I can think of two options.

1. This would work for newlistings only. Basically signup for the feedburner rss feed management and allow people to signup with their email. Then any new items posted will automatically be sent to them.

2. You could go with an external email newsletter script or service. We are using sendstudio from Interspire for our email list.

[PFZ_Ken]

Eric,

Thanks for the prompt reply, hows that pitching arm these days?

With what I'm talking about here I don't really want to have the contents of the mail to be tied to the listings in any way. The purpose of "the sheet" will be to inform prospects about items before they are even listed or on site here. We often start a project and have actually acquired items that may be weeks away from arriving here and/or being listed on our site. It is to our benefit to sell as much as we can from the project location thereby avoiding the expense of shipping items, clean up, research time and the time it takes to list an item.

I will check in to sendstudio shortly.

Thanks again for the input.

Ken

[PFZ_Ken]

I just checked out "Interspire Email Marketer" as SendStudio is now known and it looks good, a good chance it's what I'm looking for.

This is why I asked about this here, I knew someone would have a great recommendation.

Thanks Eric!

I'm still open to suggestions even though it looks like Eric has a great one.

Ken

[Eric Barnes]

Thanks for the prompt reply, hows that pitching arm these days?

Not much better still not much movement I go to the doc next week though and see what they have to say.

The sendstudio program has worked very well for us. Especially the portion that allows you to create a newsletter in advance and send on the day you want.

I do know of some hosted apps to that I have great things about:
Email Newsletter Software for Web Designers - Campaign Monitor
Email Marketing Solutions from Constant Contact