Bulk Email Sender Choice: Top 10 Questions To Ask Before Spending Your Hard-Earned Money

Building your list, distributing email newsletters, and increasing sales with email marketing is the hottest lead generation trend on the web today. Mass emailing is one of the fastest and most cost-effective, yet tedious processes. Some companies choose to outsource their email marketing tasks, while others run email campaigns in-house.

How do you choose the best bulk email sender to distribute email newsletters on your own computer? Follow these tips to avoid wasting your hard-earned money on bad software.

Here are my top 10 questions to ask your software sales company so you can reach your goals and benefit from email marketing:

1. Once I have purchased the software, are there any monthly subscription costs? If you have to pay monthly, you’ll get the same features and capabilities for more money than if you paid just once. Just one example. If you have a list of, say, 25,000 subscribers, you pay $149 per month using an email service provider. This makes $1788 per year vs. $349 one-time fee for desktop bulk email sending software.

2. How many email addresses can I send the message to with your software? Ask the company about the list size limitation. If your mailing list is growing rapidly, you’ll be wasting your money if the program can’t work with large lists. And ask them if you need to upload your list to their server or database, or will your list be stored internally on your own computer. It is important for the privacy and security of your list.

3. Does your software have an integrated SMTP server? Ask this question if you do not have your own mail server through which you can send email, and if you cannot use your ISP’s SMTP settings due to email sending restrictions. If the software doesn’t support free SMTP delivery, or any other delivery method like Amazon SES API integration that you could use instead, it simply won’t work for you.

4. Is your program capable of processing bounced email messages? If not, you’ll either have to spend more money on a bounce processing tool, or do this tedious task manually because you can’t afford to send to invalid email addresses. You care about the validity of your email list and the reputation of your email sender. That’s why ask the selling company if they’ll be able to easily process bounced emails with their software and remove them from their list. Any reputable software should have bounce processing capabilities.

5. Does your software provide some kind of subscription link? Never buy or collect emails on the internet if you don’t want to end up blacklisted after sending a couple of emails. Ask the company if and how they will be able to collect opt-in recipients through their system. They probably have some free tool or plugin that you can use to put a signup form on your website or blog. If possible, ask yourself how you will be able to send email newsletters to your subscribers. Is there an export option? Or is your software capable of connecting directly to the subscriber database on your server?

6. Can I add the unsubscribe link using your software? Only software from reputable companies provide users with a CAN-SPAM compliant unsubscribe link when the recipient can unsubscribe with two mouse clicks. Ask the software developer how the unsubscribe process is done. If they attach the unsubscribe link to a mailto: email address, you’re in for a headache. Unsubscribe requests will arrive in your inbox and be mixed in with other messages. You’ll need to check dozens of emails every day to not miss a single unsubscribe request. If the software is integrated with an online email tracking service, ask if you can customize the unsubscribe page for your company brand and what else it will be able to track besides unsubscribe emails (e.g. email opens, forwards, link clicks, email clients, countries, etc.).

7. Does your software allow for easy email customization? It’s not a stupid question at all. They may advertise that their software has mail merge capabilities and that you can send personalized emails. So far, so good. Ask them if you’ll be able to create your custom fields to import contact information and merge those fields into the email. So ask yourself if you can automatically attach a personal file to each recipient using your software. This is also done with the merge capability when you use the variable in the name of the file you want to attach. This way, you can send a single report, invoice, or any other file to each recipient on your list.

8. Will I be able to share my address book with other software users in our office? It is very convenient when you can put the workplace (address book, email messages, account settings) on a shared drive and allow multiple users to use it without having to re-import the email list before each email campaign. Even better if you can create multiple workplaces within the program and maintain unique email lists, accounts, and email templates at each workplace. Ask the selling company about this possibility. Don’t you see the potential here? You can run email campaigns for third-party companies and individuals and see the cash flow in your pocket.

9. Will I receive any delivery reports? The best email sending software can not only show you how many emails were sent and not delivered; they can also send you all these statistics by email. This way, you can receive email delivery reports after each campaign. You can even configure the software to send the report to any email address you want, for example, you send the newsletter to the list and send the delivery report to your boss. Also, ask if you can customize the report or if it comes only in the predefined format. If you have to submit delivery reports to your customers, software capable of automatically creating and sending reports will save you a lot of time and effort.

10. Is there a backup and restore feature? In our experience, users often lose everything, including contacts, emails, and account settings, if their system crashes and they don’t have a backup. Therefore, ask if and how you will be able to restore your database if you need to reinstall the software or move it to a new computer. The best programs should support a quick backup and restore feature. If the software doesn’t have that option, ask what files you need to back up so you can quickly restore your workplace on installation of the new program.

You want a bulk email sender that will ensure your email marketing success. Many cheap email sending tools are just a waste of time and money. If the price seems too low, remember the old saying, “You get what you pay for.” Do your research and see if the trading company has a legal address or if you are about to buy cheap junk from an anonymous seller who will soon be gone leaving you penniless and without support.

Make sure the email blast software you choose fits your email marketing goals and target audience, reduces the cost and complexity of your email marketing efforts, and that support guides you every step of the way. Follow these tips to make sure you get what you pay for! If not, you could be heading for failure.