Email Server Software

There are several options when it comes to connectivity services, the most common being ADSL, SDSL, Leased Lines and Ethernet. Dial-up connections using a modem is good to have for a backup option, in case of problems with routers and is a good means for support to have remote access. There is a connectivity option for all budgets.
Depending on your needs, ADSL brings connectivity with speeds of up to 8mb/s and gives you high-quality, always-on connections for one or more computers. You can get a plug and play kit that is easy to install, so you don’t have to wait for weeks for this option. They are the most affordable option that gives you unlimited email addresses and SMTP access for any domain name. It’s worth noting that ADSL lines can take 5-10 business days to be installed.
SDSL has uncapped usage and low contention; it is great for home-workers that need a higher upload speed and is a middle range product between ADSL and Leased Line services. It can enhance the quality of video streaming and video conferencing. They provide you with voice-quality, business grade access without port blocking or proxy servers. You can get multiple static IP addresses and high availability SDSL lines that can take up to 15 days lead time for installation and cost more than ADSL.
Leased Lines give dedicated bandwidth and is the best option for heavy users that need reliable uptime and connectivity. While they cost more than ADSL and SDSL connectivity options, they have higher network and internet speeds available and allow you to use VOIP or voice over internet protocol phones, which can save money on long distance and phone access charges.
Leased lines can offer much higher speeds, 99.9 % guaranteed uptime and a managed Cisco router, and they have predictable high levels of service for improved employee productivity. Ethernet offers high bandwidth from 10 mbps to over 1 Gbps for Internet and site-to-site connectivity, which can provide a stable and secure network, an advantage over wireless options.
When choosing connectivity options and services, it depends on your particular circumstances and the volume of usage or number of computers utilizing the same bandwidth.
There are lower cost programs for users that don’t need the speed and IP options that heavier users might require. You will want to select the option that allows for enough speed of file transfers and enhanced quality of video streaming, if you need these options as part of your business, even if they may require a better and more expensive connectivity package.
There are different levels of service plans available, so depending on your choice of connectivity options, you may need higher levels of service support, depending on the purpose of your usage. While home users may not need as much speed and reliability as business users with multiple computers, there are custom options available and a service plan to fit your data transfer, multiple static IP addresses and Internet usage.
You may need domain name hosting and email hosting services, so once you have determined the service you need, the size and capability of data uploads and downloads, you will want to choose the optional services, such as level of support, domain hosting and email hosting, if required.
It is possible to get a flat monthly fee that can be budgeted while offering you the connectivity services and options you need for the most reliable services and support.

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Making business contacts with potential buyers is often a time consuming task, especially if you use direct mail or create ads for local newspapers or online classifieds. One way to save time and money is to promote your business with email marketing. Website marketing through email enables you to contact qualified leads and even your current customers using special email software. With this software, you can send out thousands of emails in just moments, without spending time or money on printing and mailing letters.Major Benefits of Email MarketingEmail marketing affords several major benefits to you as a business owner. As mentioned, you can send out thousands of emails in no time using software and never leave your computer desk. With most software programs or bulk email services, you can log in to your account, type in a message to your recipients, and then click a button to send your message to your list.If you don’t have an email list yet but want to get the word out about your products to targeted recipients, there are some affiliate marketing sites and other marketing services that enable you to send your promotional message to their list of emails. With services such as these, they build a list of qualified, opt-in leads in certain markets, and then you can pay to become part of the affiliate team or simply pay to use their list. The company might have a list of hundreds or thousands of prospects that are interested in products or services like yours. The more targeted their leads, the more likely you’ll get guaranteed visitors from your offer.Another benefit of email marketing is its tracking capabilities. You can include specially created links within your email message to track how many visitors (and orders) your page received from your email campaigns. This gives you an idea of how well your sales message pulls response. If you don’t get the response rate you were hoping for, you can always tweak your message and test it again. Testing the written sales message, link placement, and headlines or subject line will help you maximize your email marketing results.Email marketing costs only a fraction of the price typical to other forms of advertising. When compared to television ads, banner advertising, printed ads, etc., email marketing is very inexpensive. You can easily insert sign-up forms on every page of your website to begin accumulating the emails of interested visitors. If using a bulk email service, you will usually only pay per number of emails sent so you won’t waste dollars not knowing how many people were reached. You can also buy your own software, but beware of spam laws when doing this. You must be compliant with all laws before sending emails to a group of people, whether large or small in number.What is Opt-In?Opt-in means the recipient requested or agreed to receive your emails through some sort of sign-up form. They “opted-in” to your list so to speak, so you have permission to send emails to them. Some email marketing services and software tools will keep records of the opt-in process so you’ll be protected in case someone accuses you of spam. Don’t ever think it can’t happen to you. People sometimes subscribe to receive emails and then forget they subscribed within days or weeks of signing up. When they receive your email, they might think you’re sending spam to them even if you’re not. All it takes is one accusation to shut your website and operation down for days, weeks, or eternity!It’s a good idea to study the pros and cons of email marketing, and how to avoid spam accusations. To be on the safe side, use the services of a professional email marketing company if you’re not sure of the process. It’s better to spend a little more on your campaigns than to spend time worrying about possible spam issues.Whatever avenue you choose for website marketing, seek the advice of a mentor that can help you learn the ropes of email marketing. Success may be just around the corner for your business!To learn more about subjects like email marketing please visit the web site at: http://www.theadstand.comFor more information and informative related articles and links about this subject matter and content, please visit Majon’s Business | Industry | Economy directory: http://www.majon.com/directory/business-industry-economyAbout the AuthorChris Robertson is a published author of Majon International. All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2009 (Fri Sep 11 2009) Majon International. Majon International is one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing and internet advertising companies on the web. Visit their main business resource web site at: http://majon.com(NOTE: Content article shown above may be linked and circulated freely on web sites, as long as ALL article content, links, author and copyright information remain UNCHANGED in any way whatsoever.)

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Before launching an email marketing campaign, it is important that you realize that email marketing is of two types. One type of email marketing consists of sending spam mails. Spam mails are unsolicited mails; emails that have been sent to people without their permission. The other type of email marketing consists of sending emails to people who have subscribed to your emails or newsletters. This means emails are being sent only to those specific people who have given their permission to receive your mails.Avoid sending spam mailIt is easy to see that the first type of email marketing should be avoided at all costs. Sending spam is the quickest way to ruin your reputation. That being the case, you can see why getting permission for carrying out bulk email marketing is so vitally important. Today, bulk email marketing is considered to be of the most successful and cost effective methods of marketing your company’s products and services. Different free permission based softwareFor this reason, a number of email marketing software has been created especially to help you send bulk mail in the right way – with the permission of those that are being sent your emails. Such software is available in many different types and a lot of them are absolutely free of cost. You can use such free software without spending any money at all. The free software versions may not contain the full gamut of features that are available in the paid for software versions. However, if your email campaign is small sized, the free versions would have sufficient features to satisfy your requirements. Variety of basic featuresBulk email software comes with a variety of basic features. Such software has tracking systems and is capable of managing your contact list. Permission based software lets you create newsletters with minimum stress. It also allows you to look after your subscribes and unsubscribes and even manages your bounces. Using such software also makes it possible to analyze important statistics such as your open rate as well as your click through rate. Helps decide on communication type and frequencyUsing bulk email marketing software also makes it possible for you to make a decision regarding the kind of email communication that you plan to send as well as the frequency of the communication. The software makes it possible for your emails to be sent out automatically at the date and time chosen by you. This is a very important feature as it results in your subscribers receiving the number of emails that they have given you permission to send, at consistent intervals.Effective templatesEmail software is also able to provide you with effective email templates. Most software has a full fledged range of template designs that you can choose from.  Such software provides a vast number of design templates at absolutely no cost and is also able to design custom templates at a very minimal cost. Now that you are aware of the importance of carrying out an email campaign the right way, make sure that you follow the rules and do not get accused of sending spam. Take advantage of the software available and get permission for your bulk email marketing!

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Email campaign software is a specialized tool used to conduct bulk email marketing or more specifically, an email marketing campaign. The distinction is crucial for this discussion on creating a permission list because of the active word here – permission. Most spammers are surprisingly also considered to be bulk email marketers. After all, they are also just selling products. However, the distinction lies in the fact that a spammer will not ask a prospective customer before mailing him or her to the point of filling up their inboxes. Spammers rely on mailing a mass bunch of people for the few who will actually take the bait. Spammers are not even this specific, what they are satisfied with is just the fact that someone actually opened the mail. The average figures for spammer success rates is something like 15 opens for a million mails that are sent out. One can therefore imagine how many mails it takes for a spammer to sustain.
The other group of bulk email marketers is a more genuine lot that actually get the permission of the people they want to mail and update on products and sales promotions. Once an entire list of people who have expressly stated their desire to receive updates has been created, you have a permission list. From here, it is just a matter of loading it into the email campaign software.
The really difficult part is actually acquiring the permission list itself and an even more arduous task is to maintain it. There are many ways of getting permissions. The first is using the humble registration form during sign-ups. This is a simple act of just adding an extra text field for the email address and the using a checkbox to confirm the decision. It is a good idea to also send a confirmatory mail after this procedure because the real objective is not to be caught by a spam filter. When you send a confirmatory mail, the user is then forced to unmark the mail as spam, making you a friendly sender.
The other ways of getting permission lists is to use the vehicle of surveys to ride proxy on and add the opt-in information as part of the survey results. Yet another method that is available to software vendors is to add the opt-in question as part of the installation wizard.
Once you load the permission list into the email campaign software server, the next task is to maintain it for future use. For this, you must form profiles of the clients so that they are slotted into the correct categories for the correct mails; otherwise, for example, you must just end up selling Viagra to post-menopausal women. After this comes the task of analyzing your tracking reports and understanding the most active members of your permission list. It is important to periodically weed out the members who have been inactive for too long as mailing these people is probably just a waste of internet bandwidth for you.

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Email campaign software is all about ensuring maximum utilization of the mailing list that is stored in the database part of the software architecture. Mailing lists are the bread and butter of any bulk email marketing venture and, to this effect, there is a lot of maintenance that must be done for it. This is not from the perspective of database maintenance as a software component but maintenance from a customer database perspective. Customers and mailing lists are extremely dynamic and the size of your mailing list can change on a nearly daily basis. There is another important factor to bear in mind and that is the security of your database as well. Spammers are always on the lookout for weak networks to exploit and steal addresses from.

The first step to managing your lists is to ensure that all of the people on your list have been legally added there. This means that you should have gotten an opt-in permission from each and every person on that list before mailing them. This may sound like an arduous task but it is a legal and logical requirement. A logical requirement because if your email campaign software sends out email to recipients that have not opted-in for the service, then those users will mark your emails as spam and this will start to accumulate spam complaints. Once these complaints reach a certain level, you will be blacklisted by an ISP and this can have disastrous consequences for your business. Don’t be surprised if your ISP even takes down your website for being connected to spamming practices.

Some addresses on a mailing list might not be active. This is because after signing up for receiving mails and updates, these users might have just lost interest in the product. If this is the case, you will notice that many of the customers on the mailing list are idle and non-convertible. Give these customers some time but at the end of the year, you should send a mail stating that the subscription to the email service is going to expire unless expressly renewed. By using this method you can weed out the prospects that were not active and non-convertible.

Security of your database is of prime importance on the internet in general but with a special twist when it comes to email addresses. Spammers are always on the look for weak security in the email campaign software of legitimate businesses and these people will try and hack your database or they will deploy worms that will transfer that database back to them. To avoid this, ensure that you have the best and most up to date software on hand to prevent malware attacks on your database server. It also pays to be offline most of the time until necessary.

Finally, you must continuously add addresses to your database to ensure that the opt-outs are matched by opt ins and that your business is never starved of people to mail to.

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Email campaign software is the first step to establishing yourself as a legitimate email marketer. This is because the use of campaign software is against spam philosophy since most spammers cannot afford to have a dedicated server with an IP address that will give away their identity. However, just having one of these is not enough. There are many practices that you must keep in mind when you are in the business of bulk email marketing. The basic thing that you have to avoid is being termed a spammer and to that end must be all your efforts.

The first thing that you must do is to ensure that you have a clean mailing list. A clean mailing list basically means that all of your subscribers must have opted in for receiving updates and email from you. While this may not exactly be a legal requirement, it is a logical one since mailing people without their permission will cause spam complaints against you. This will result in you ending up on a blacklist. From here the word will spread of other ISPs and spam filters. Therefore, stop things before they get out of hand and clean out your database.

Blacklisting is an especially bad thing that can end up happening to you. Organizations like Spamhaus are the guardians of regular email users against the onslaught of spam and email fraud. When one ISP blacklists you and you don’t try to get yourself delisted and go to another ISP, you notch up one strike. Notch up three strikes and you make it to the Spamhaus Block List. This list is referred to by spam filters all over the world and if this happens, not even one email can end up getting out of the server.

This makes whitelisting a very important aspect in bulk email marketing. This is basically a list of bulk email marketers maintained by ISPs that allows those marketers to mail users en masse. Getting on this whitelist is therefore crucial to your marketing effort. This can be done by paying the ISP to be added on the email marketing whitelist or just sticking to proper rules of email marketing and not getting any spam complaints against you. Assuming that your email campaign software database has addresses using legal means, blacklisting is not something that you should really worry about.

Sending useful emails also improves your reputation. When people receive email, they prefer to like what they read and to that effect, you must ensure that the quality of content, topics, and copy are of the best quality. Do not make silly content errors that will just demean you as a sender of bulk emails.

Another important step is that you ask your recipients to add you to the safe senders list in their email clients. This can work in your favor because this will allow automatic download of any downloadable information that you code into your HTML emails for delivery.

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Email campaign software is a crucial component of an internet marketing exercise. This is because at some point in time your business should grow to the point where you have to take the hard labor out of the mailing exercise, which would otherwise just end up taking unnecessary time and money. There are two options that you can try out in this discipline of internet marketing: the online software and the offline software. Online email marketing software is basically a user account created with a service provider where you are provided with a repository to store your email addresses and then the mailing occurs from the servers of the service provider.
There is much to be said about using an online service because it will substantially reduce some of the more infrastructure ridden costs that are associated with an email marketing campaign. These infrastructure costs include the site costs, the utility cost, and the purchase and maintenance cost of the physical architecture used. However, it can be said that with an increasing scale of operations, it is necessary to carefully evaluate whether having your own setup or going in for an outsourced model makes more sense. There is also much to be said about the security of your email database as well. When you have your own email campaign software, the database is a secured one where access is severely restricted, if you define it to be so. An online setup might not have that level of security though this depends on the service provider that you opt for, as some more prominent service providers might even provide better security than what you can afford.
Offline campaign software, as can be guessed is run out of your office with a physical server and mailing application. This has benefits from the perspective of security and control. At the end of the day, you actually have more control of your email marketing exercise if you control the mailing application. Additionally, since the database can be totally modified by you, there is much benefit in being able to make more accurate profiles of the prospective customers. Accurate profiling is probably something that an online vendor may not be able to provide.
At the end of the day, there are some things that still require some in depth intervention from your side. The first of these activities when you deal with email campaign software is the maintenance of the database. This is an activity wherein you continuously add more email addresses to refresh the database and you weed out some of the non-purchasing, dead lead mail addresses. This is important because mailing costs money, especially in an offline set up. This is from the perspective of bandwidth costs, which are incremental from a per unit standpoint.
When you opt for an online option, you should ensure that the service provider follows CAN SPAM guidelines. If this is not the case, you could end up in a lot of trouble and possible be classified as a spammer because of the methods of dissemination or any other discrepancy.

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Successful online business can’t be led without email marketing.
Many people know that it is very important to have a web site
but having a web site is only one step in creating successful
online presence. You have to stay in touch with your clients and
prospects. You need to have a two way communication with your
clients and prospects and best way to do this is to have an
email newsletter. To send emails to your customer you need the
right email marketing software.

Choosing your email marketing software is one of the most
important steps you have to take in e-business. What are those
necessary steps in choosing email marketing software?

Free or fee-based

The first thing you will have to decide in choosing software for
your email campaigns will be whether you want to use free or fee
based software. Some people may say: “There is much free
software on the Internet. Why would I pay for email marketing
software?” This is because some people still don’t have a habit
to buy things on the Internet, especially non-tangible items
such are software and services. Many people still don’t realize
the power of email marketing so they think that can be satisfied
with a free service.

One of the most famous contemporary economists, a Nobel Prize
winner Mr. Milton Friedman said that there is no such thing like
free launch. And there is another statement that says “You get
what you pay for”. I usually agree with these two statements.
These have been proven on many examples, especially on the
Internet.

You can choose to use free software for email marketing but you
will be limited for some more advanced options. Some big portals
offer free services for creating groups. This is OK, but in this
case you will send your email messages without many important
features like personalization, email tracking, sending SMS,
using CSV files etc. I don’t have to mention that many “free”
email marketing software providers will include their ads in
your email newsletter. I guess that you don’t want that in your
business email communication.

Some other free software like the free version of Group Mail
will have limitation on the number of subscribers per one
session. In this case you will be able to send your email
newsletter to 100 subscribers at once and in paid version to
unlimited number of subscribers and create unlimited number of
lists.

It is recommended that you use fee-based email marketing
software for your business email campaigns. However, you always
have to look for a provider who offers a free trial, as well.

Important features

You have to check if your email service provider offers these
several important features.

1)Personalization – personalization is one of the most important
things that email marketing software has to provide. With good
personalization you will have better open rates and click-thru
rates. Some more advanced email marketing software like Group Mail
paid version offers if-then personalization for users who want
to get the maximum personalization.

2)Monitoring – email marketing is popular and useful because
results can be measured very effectively. You have to ask your
email service provider if their product offers ability for
detailed reports for open rates, click-thru rates,
deliverability…If their main product doesn’t offer that it is
important that they offer additional service that can be easily
integrated with their main product.

3)Scalability – one of the main features of modern software is
scalability. At this moment you might need software that will be
able to send 1,000 emails at once but in 3 years your membership
base can be 5,000. Will your software be able to handle that?

4)Creating HTML newsletters – HTML newsletters have better
response rates than email newsletters in plain-text format so
this is also another thing you have to consider in choosing your
email marketing software. Without sending your email newsletter
in HTML you won’t be able to do email tracking.

5)Integration with existing applications and databases – your
email marketing software has to offer you ability to import data
from existing applications and databases like SQL Server,
Oracle, MySQL, Access, FoxPro and Excel. Also, it is very useful
that it can be integrated with popular email clients like MS
Outlook.

6)International Character Support – Online businesses have to
have a global focus so it is useful that email marketing
software provides support for International Characters.

7)Plug-ins and updates – it is very important that the email
service provider constantly works on creating useful plug-ins
and updates in order to make your work easier and more
effective.

8)Technical support -If you are an average Internet user without
technical knowledge you will probably want to get support for
your software. How good is your email service provider when it
comes to technical support?

Desktop email software vs. Hosted ASP

Now when you know do you want free or fee-based software and
what to look in your email marketing software you have to decide
do you want to have desktop email marketing software or so
called Hosted ASP. Both types have limitations and advantages.
You have to choose the best option for you.

Desktop email software like Group Mail Plus, one of the leading desktop
email marketing software, has several very big advantages. The
most important is that details of your subscribers are kept
private and secure on your own computer. Dot com crash is not so
far behind us. Imagine that you have several thousand clients
and use web based service from a company that will later go out
of business. You can only imagine how that could affect your
business and credibility! With Group Mail Plus you can manage an
unlimited number of groups with unlimited number of recipients
in each. You will have a larger initial investment than with
Hosted ASP which charge a monthly fee, but you will a full
control of your email campaigns and after some time of using
your software you will repay it.

With Hosted ASP you will usually have a lower initial
investment. You don’t have to buy hardware and software.
However, price is usually determined by the number of emails you
send so you will pay more how your membership base gets bigger
so this option will be much more expensive than a desktop email
marketing software option in the long run.

You can see that choosing the right email marketing software is
very important. You have to bear in mind that the biggest
investment is one that it is paid – twice. So, choose your email
marketing software wisely

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It is important to know that email marketing software is of two types. One type is known as online software and the other type is known as offline software. Both these software have benefits. However there is a huge difference between the two when it comes to their cost, attributes and availability. If you cannot decide on which type of bulk email software to select, take a look at some pros and cons for both these software and then make your selection.Offline SoftwareSoftware that is available in a box, on a disk or can be downloaded online is known as offline software. Such software performs functions that range from reporting to segmenting lists. Certain people prefer offline software because with this software they can send their emails independently through their personal server. Advantages and DisadvantagesOffline software is advantageous as it provides its users with a certain degree of control that they may not experience when they use online software. Offline software gives email marketers the discretion to make their own decisions and allows them to place guidelines for the usage of this software. Offline software also makes it possible for email marketers to decide on the servers that will be used. This is huge advantage for a lot of email marketers. However, this same advantage is seen as a drawback for some email marketers as they may find that using offline software takes up too much time. Another disadvantage of offline software is the cost of this software. The price of offline email marketing software can go up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The cost depends entirely on the actual software.Online SoftwareWith online software you can access the Internet and go to a portal to send emails, upload lists, read reports and carry out various functions. Usually online software does not have any downloads and does not require any confusing setups. Advantages and DisadvantagesA lot of email marketers are drawn to online software due to their inexpensive cost. The cost of offline software can range anywhere from hundreds or thousands of dollars at one time whereas the majority of online software charges begin at a nominal fee of about $10 for a month. The biggest selling point of online software for email marketers is the fact that users of online software can read reports, send mails and make layouts from any location on the globe; the only requirement is access to the Internet. When it comes to drawbacks, the problem with online software is that it is prone to technical difficulties. However, this is not really an issue as most of the well known software available have systems to back themselves up. In fact, almost all big online software brag about having 99.999% online rates.Both online, as well as offline bulk email marketing software comes with its own share of advantages and disadvantages. You need to take a look at the pros and cons of both to see which one appeals to you the most. When it comes to selecting software there is no right or wrong decision. Just go with the software that you think will benefit you the most!

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