Programs for mailing letters. Mailchimp: Advanced Mailing Automation Techniques Automatically Sending Emails
Organizer Exiland Assistant for Windows (Windows) allows you to conveniently store all your contacts in a structured form (contacts of customers, partners, friends, relatives, acquaintances, etc.). The same software is program for sending emails(by e-mail) and has a special built-in module that allows you to send e-mail messages to.
There can be many reasons for sending e-mail:
- Congratulation;
- Invitation;
- Price list delivery;
- Commercial offer(information about promotions, discounts);
- Notification;
- Announcement;
- Reminder of something, etc .;
Bulk email distribution in Exiland Assistant
The diary has a function for automatic bulk sending of e-mail, which allows you to send letters to multiple recipients:
- your contacts stored in the Exiland Assistant database;
- an arbitrary list of email addresses that you store, for example, in Excel;
Thus, you can exercise bulk email mailings of the same type of letters, created according to the template, to any addressees of their base. A separate letter is sent to each recipient.
The program supports 2 letter formats:
- Plain Text;
- Rich text (HTML) to create colorful messages;
Rich Text (HTML) allows you to insert images, logos, photos directly into the body of the message, as well as highlight text bold, in italics, underlining, centering text, inserting tables, choosing a background color or background images, and much more - all this makes messages more structured and attractive. Exiland Assistant has a built-in editor for creating beautiful templates.
The template text can contain tags (variables), instead of which at the time of sending field values from the database (DB) will be substituted... Example: <Наименование организации> to which you are sending the letter. In the simplest case, the text may not contain any tags.
Fig 1. Mailing list How to send bulk emails?
When you click on the "Create" button, the following window will appear on the screen:
Fig 2. The window for creating a mailing list (mailer) Specify the name of the mailing list, in the "From" and "Template" drop-down lists, select the sender settings (SMTP profile) and the message template.
On first use, the dropdowns are empty. It is necessary to press the "..." button located to the right of the corresponding drop-down list.
Step 1. Create an SMTP profile for sending emails
The SMTP profile is the sender's settings, that is, from which mailbox and name the letters will be sent. You can send e-mail messages from any of your mailboxes created on the servers gmail.com, mail.ru, yandex.ru, ukr.net, etc. One specific SMTP profile that you create can be used for several mailings in the future. You can create any number of profiles.
Click on the button with three dots "..." and a window with a list of SMTP profiles will open in front of you.
To create a new SMTP profile, click "Create" and fill out the form.
Fig 3. Creating an SMTP profile Fill out the form, indicating the sender's box and click "Check". If the settings are correct, click "Save". In the list of SMTP profiles, select the created profile and click the "Select" button.
Step 2. Create a mail template - letter text
To select a template, click on the button with three dots "...", to the right of the drop-down list of templates, and a window with a list of mail templates will open in front of you.
As with SMTP profiles, to create a new template, click "New" and fill out the form.
Fig 4. Creating a mail template in a convenient built-in editor If you plan to insert tags into the body of the letter, select from the list for which section the template is intended. Specify the subject, format, as well as the text of the message itself and insert tags into it, if necessary. The format is switched in the "Format" drop-down list above the text. You can attach files (attachments) to the letter.
To insert a tag, place the cursor at the desired position in the text and on the left click "Insert tag", selecting the required field from the database.
Step 3. Selecting recipients of your e-mail letters (to whom to send)
While in the settings edit window, click "Add" and select the appropriate item.
Selecting recipients from the Exiland Assistant database
Select the entire group or section on the left. On the right, specify the recipients for this group. By default, "All, including subgroups".
Choice of arbitrary e-mail addresses
If you have a list of addresses in Excel, Word or a text file, you can copy it via the clipboard (Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V) and paste it into the recipient list.
After selecting the appropriate menu item, an e-mail list entry field will appear on the screen. Each line contains one address. The address can be entered in the format: " [email protected]"or" Ivanov Ivan
Fig 5. Saving settings How to start a mailing list?
While in the window with the mailing list, select the one you need and click the preview and send button.
Fig 6. Start Since e-mail addresses can be stored in several fields of the Contacts or Organizations card, when you start sending you the program will ask you from which fields it should take the e-mail address.
Fig 7. Preview and start sending Above is the theme and text of the template. At the bottom is the list of recipients. For each recipient in the list, you can see to which addresses the letter will be sent, as well as from which fields of the recipient it is taken. If the recipient does not have an e-mail address, then the "E-mail" column will be empty and this recipient will be skipped by the program when sending a message.
Viewing letters. By placing the cursor on the line with the recipient, the values from the base are substituted at the top of the template instead of tags, unless, of course, tags are present in the body of the template. Thus, even before starting the mailing list, you can see in what form the message will be sent to each recipient.
Checking sending. You can send a test letter to your e-mail to make sure that sending works and see the final form of the message in your mailbox. To do this, in the lower panel in the "E-mail" field, enter your address and click "Send test".
Delay in N seconds between sending letters it is sometimes necessary if the mail server from which you are sending letters does not allow sending too frequent. Usually a delay of 3-5 seconds is sufficient.
Request a read receipt. This option includes in the header of each message a request to send a read receipt. This request will be made in the form of a dialog box at the moment when the recipient opens the letter for reading.
Launch. By default, the program offers to send correspondence to all recipients, starting with the first one. However, you can select recipients with check marks and send emails only to them.
For each recipient in the list, the time of sending and the result is written. If the message could not be sent, the error text will be displayed in red.
During the mailing process, you can cancel the process by clicking on the "Stop" button, and later - continue.
During this time, task alerts and automatic database backups, if configured, will not be triggered.
Mailing history
Nice addition to the utility for sending letters in Russian Exiland Assistant is the ability to view the sending history (when, to whom and what was sent), as well as the ability to re-sending, for example, to those to whom the letter for some reason was not sent or the process was interrupted (computer rebooted, program crashed, etc.). Also, stop sending is useful if you need to go somewhere and need to turn off your computer, and later you would like to continue.
To view the history, you need to be in the window with the mailing list, select the desired one and press the history button.
Fig 8. Viewing history While viewing the history, you can repeat sending either to all recipients, or only to those to whom the letter was not sent last time for any reason. If the last send was interrupted user, you can continue to send to those to whom the letter was not sent.
Conclusion
Automatic sending of e-mail messages is available only in paid, not expensive versions of Exiland Assistant Personal and Exiland Assistant Enterprise. You can download the mailing program for free on the official website, but in the free version of Free you can only set up the mailing list, but you can only send a test letter to the address you specified. This is enough to check the sending and correct delivery and display of the message.
Mikhail, developer of Exiland Assistant
"Subscribe to the newsletter!" - yelling pop-ups on information sites. No wonder they scream, because every subscriber is worth its weight in gold, especially for young projects. Each subscriber is a regular reader who will come to you again and again.
But only if you run new project, there may be a problem - letters need to be sent somehow. Do not sit down yourself and do it manually!
No, you don't need to bother yourself with such routine work. Because there are special services for mass mailings.
There are a lot of them, and today we will introduce you to the ten most popular. Let's dwell first of all on the tariffs of each, but detailed analysis features and advantages - this is the topic of another article :)
Mad Mimi is a simple service to create, send, share and track emails in the Internet. Founded in 2008.
More than 40 million emails are sent from it every day.
The service offers 4 tariff plans:
Forms, templates, letter themes are available. Mad Mimi uses SSL to protect the transmitted information - this is the same technology used by banks and large electronic stores to prevent eavesdropping, falsification or counterfeiting.
Without exaggeration, the most popular service is primarily due to pleasant rates. It has been operating since 2001 and is trusted by over 12 million users.
The Russian-language version of the site is lame, so it is better to contact here if you have at least basic knowledge of the language.
If you have 2,000 or fewer subscribers, you can send up to 12,000 emails per month for free.
Another foreign service for email newsletters, with a convenient and intuitive interface. Uses cloud software technologies.
Streamcontact is reliable: the email will be delivered at the right time without delay.
Using the service, you can schedule mailings, create new ones, conduct testing before mailing, track direct mailings, send messages automatically.
Domestic mailing list service, founded in 2002. It is very popular among small and medium-sized businesses in Runet.
Service rates are quite reasonable:
Provides a visual editor, detailed statistics, full subscriber management, automatic mailing, polls and testing, and many other useful features.
Domestic project founded in 2008. UniSender allows you to create both email and SMS-mailings, set up a chain of letters, embed social media buttons in a mailing list.
Service tariffs are very democratic:
For mailings from 50,000 contacts, the conditions are discussed individually.
A unified platform for email, SMS, push notifications and transactional emails. The service is easy to use, suitable for solving most of the standard tasks: sending an e-mail newsletter, available for viewing, including from mobile devices; make a series of letters, create letter templates, test, and much more.
Most ordinary users work with by e-mail directly on the site. The functionality provided by them is quite enough for creating and receiving letters. But what if you need to send the same letter to a large number of people, you need to send a specific message at a specific time, continue to send letters without the participation of a person while he is basking on the beach on vacation? In such cases, all kinds of programs and services of automatic mailing come to the rescue. They differ in functionality, paid / free, work peculiarities and many other factors, but what unites them is that they do not need the constant presence of a person to work. Mailing of letters can be carried out around the clock with different customizable intervals.
Why are mailings needed?
The opinion that the main and most effective marketing tool is the website is far from the truth. Most buyers of a product or service are not yet ready to make a purchase decision after a single visit to a web page. The reasons may be different, and not in the last place is banal forgetfulness. Customers simply don't remember seeing something that caught their attention. Some potential buyers have to be reminded of themselves repeatedly until they finally make a purchase. And the automatic email is that reminder.
Features and services
There are many programs and services for automatic mailing of correspondence, both paid and free. Their functionality is not limited only to sending letters without human intervention, its capabilities are much wider:
- Before mass mailing, the effectiveness of letters can be tested on a selected group of users by examining the statistics of sending and delivering these letters, the activity of customers after receiving them.
- The services allow you to regularly update the list of subscribers by processing service messages about delivery errors. Thus, system resources are not wasted on useless actions to send messages to addresses that no longer exist.
- Statistics on clicks on links in emails will help you evaluate the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.
- The built-in technology for determining the location of subscribers will allow you to select letters for mailing based on geography.
- The base for sending letters can be replenished in various automatic ways, for example, by scanning sites on the network.
Automatic replies to letters are also configured. This will be useful, for example, when leaving. The contributor can be informed that the letter has been received, but the answer will be on his return after some time. If there was a change in the e-mail address, then it is very easy to receive the mail sent to the old address - just set up the forwarding. But how to inform everyone who writes that the old address is no longer up-to-date, and next time it is better to write directly to another one? And automatic writing will help with this.
Such programs usually have templates of typical letters that can be easily modified to suit your needs. Thanks to all this, automatic mailing allows you to promote goods and services with minimal cost time and money for advertising, processing and analysis of correspondence.
Send what?
The most popular are letters of welcome (for example, after registering on the resource) and gratitude (for example, for a completed order or long-term cooperation with the company).
Cheers are the most readable letters... People are used to seeing them, most of them open in search of some useful or interesting information.
Thank you letters may contain information about the order, delivery method, various promotions and discounts. regular customer... All this attracts people, and such letters, as a rule, are read or at least casually overlooked.
An automatic letter can suggest products that are related to topics that the person has purchased or was interested in. Letters will allow you to congratulate, for example, on your birthday, making an individual advantageous offer.
To deal with complex customer problems, of course, you will need specialists. But more simple questions thanks to automatic emails, they can be resolved around the clock and daily when users need them.
Among all the variety of programs and services, the Outlook program from Microsoft is well known, therefore, the methods of creating mailings, automatic replies and forwarding certain letters to other addresses will be considered using its example.
Newsletter
For a large group of people, there is no need to manually add them to the mailing list every time. To do this, you can create a mailing list. On the "main" tab in the program, you must select the item "create a contact group", then specify a name for this group and add members to it. The list of participants and the name of the group, if necessary, are edited or deleted completely. One and the same contact can be included in an arbitrarily large number of user groups to whom automatic mailing will be performed. This saves a lot of time.
Automatic writing: how to do
Sometimes it is necessary to send an automatic letter at a strictly defined time, and in the absence of the sender himself at the computer. Automatic email sending Outlook allows you to do this too. Should write regular letter, if necessary, attach the necessary files to it, specify the addressee (s) or mailing list, and then go to the "parameters" section of the menu. Further in this section, select the item "Delayed delivery", and then - "Do not deliver until". Then all the necessary parameters are configured, including the date and time of sending the letter, the presence or absence of delivery and read notifications, etc.
After specifying all the necessary data, you should send a letter. It will be saved in the folder of sent letters, but in reality it will go to the recipient only on the specified day and hour. It is important that at this time the computer is turned on, the program is running on it, and there is also an Internet connection. If these conditions were not created at the right time, then automatic sending of letters will occur at the moment when they are finally met. It is not very convenient, but there is nothing you can do about it.
Automatically forward Outlook emails
Messages can be forwarded from the first addressee to others in two ways - forwarding and redirecting. Forwarded letters are distinguished by the presence of the abbreviation FW in the subject, and the recipient sees from which address the letter was sent initially, and from which it was later sent to him. The redirection is not noticeable to the recipient, he sees the letter as sent by the first sender.
Shipment management
You can configure either the forwarding of absolutely all letters, or create rules governing what should be forwarded and when. In this case, the forwarded letters are saved in the "Inbox" folder. The program analyzes the sent letter, and if it meets the conditions specified in the rules, then it performs the action specified by this rule. This can be not only automatic forwarding of letters or replies to them, but also transferring them to a specific folder, i.e. sorting, deleting, etc.
To create rules for processing incoming correspondence, you must select the "rules" item on the main tab of the program. Further, in the menu "managing rules and notifications", algorithms for processing received letters are already directly configured.
No forwarding
Some letters cannot be forwarded - this happens when the sender has installed a protection on the correspondence sent to them, which does not allow the recipient to share this information with anyone else. This restriction is removed only by the sender, the recipient cannot do this in any way.
Also in companies, the system administrator can set own rules that restrict or prohibit completely sending letters outside the enterprise network, and sometimes inside it. This is done to protect corporate information.
Auto-replies
In the absence of the addressee on the spot due to a business trip, vacation, illness, or for some other reason, automatic replies to letters can be configured. If the mail is located on the corporate one, then you can also create various responses to letters coming from other employees of the company, and to those received from outside.
To enable this function, in the program menu, in the "file" section, select the "auto-replies" item, where you need to select "send auto-replies". In this section, the text of the letters itself is written, as well as the period during which these responses will be sent. If the user appears online before the end of this period, he will be prompted to disable the function.
For the period of validity of auto-replies, you can set the rules for processing mail, for example, for sending them to other employees of the company who can resolve the issues that have arisen, etc.
Detailed help is available in the program, as well as help to avoid common mistakes when working with it.
Marketing automation involves working with audience segments. Start by categorizing and assigning visitors according to the stages of the sales funnel. To do this, you need to assign an identifier to each stage - Lead Score. You can use any designation, the main thing is that you can easily determine what the letter “A”, “B”, or “No. 42” in the name of the segment means. You can also name the segments according to the stage of the sales funnel.Concisely and succinctly about the principles of Lead Scoring in a 90-second video:
So, we have finished with the theory, now let's move on to practice - we need to automate Lead Scoring.
To do this, go to paid account Mailchimp. The minimum paid account costs $ 10. You can register with Mailchimp through our partner link (Powered by MailChimp), activate the minimum tariff plan and immediately get 30 USD. to your account.
Now that you've activated your account, let's go directly to the settings:
Step 1: Go to Mailchimp. Select “Lists” then “Settings” and “List fields and * | MERGE | * tags”
Step 2: Create a new field and uncheck “Visible”.
Step 3: Define a sales funnel. To do this, you need: an identifier for a segment (Lead Score) and a behavioral attribute that characterizes this segment.
In our case, the segments are named “Prospect”, “Warm”, “Customer”. To update the identifier for each of the stages - add the Lead Score field, as we did in step 2.
This is the code for the “Prospect” segment:
Ready! In the following example, we will describe how to use this option to configure advanced automation. Already, you can identify segments based on their actions and use this data in various e-mail campaigns.
2. Advanced automation in Mailchimp based on actions
For this, user or behavioral data and the Lead Score parameter, which we described in the first automation method, can be used. For example, we want to send a letter not to the entire “Prospects” segment, but only to those who have performed certain actions.
Step 1: Go to the “Automation” section and select “Custom workflow”.
Step 2: Configure the trigger:
Here you can configure the action after which the message will be sent. If you have configured the Lead Score as described in the first example, then you can select the item “Merge field value changes”.
Then select “Based on merge field” - “Lead Score” from the drop-down menu. In the “When merge field value is” field, enter the name of the segment to which actions the mailing list will be linked to.
3. Autocomplete Landing Page Forms Using Mailchimp
You've probably seen examples when, when you go from a letter to the landing page, the fields of the registration form are automatically filled with your user data. Let's see how it works:
Step 1: Instead of just adding a link to the landing page in your email, specify a parameter for storing information (http://yourdomain.com/?email=*|EMAIL|*), as shown in the example below:
Step 2: Now, when a visitor follows this link, we need to enter their details into the form. Add the following script to your landing page: