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Ask YC: Email marketing tool

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Ask YC: Email marketing tool

#1
I am looking for a low-cost email marketing tool that I can use to start sending newsletters and messages to potential customers. I want to find a reliable provider that has high deliverability, but that isn't too pricey. I'm a start-up, after all.

I considered building this myself, but I'm guessing that there are lots of good products already on the market. Can anyone suggest something that they've used?

Re: Ask YC: Email marketing tool

#5

CampaignMonitor.com is outstanding unless you're doing high volume/spammy stuff. I'm concerned that you say "potential customers". Where are you getting the list of people/emails?

Fair question! I won't be mailing anyone that doesn't give me permission...my application will require people to login and give me permission to email them...after I do that, they may or may not become customers. But I won't message anyone that doesn't opt-in!

Re: Ask YC: Email marketing tool

#7
I was in the same position about two years ago and, due to the high cost of services like ConstantContact/CampaignMonitor, I voted to build my own. After two years, I had built my list up to about 10k users and my web host finally came to me and asked me to move it off to another app/site/VPS.

It took me about a day to implement, I guess, and I think it saved me probably $2500-$5000 even when I consider the time value of my development time.

I advise that, if you can charge yourself less than $150/hr for your time and you will be sending to a small amount of ppl initially, build it yourself.

Re: Ask YC: Email marketing tool

#10
post #6

try http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp : it was free for 60 days - dont know whether they still run that offer.

I use ConstantContact for my email distribution at http://OnStartups.com. Has worked well for me.

Disclaimer: Gail Goodman, the CEO of ConstantContact is on the board of my startup. But, I was a fan of the company well before that.

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