I'm sending out a newsletter every now and then. A simple text newsletter that goes out to about 50,000 subscribers. I send it via a PHP script I wrote myself. It can do a/b tests, bounce- and optout-handling. Every time I see commercial offerings like this one, I wonder: Would I gain anything by using them? They seem pretty expensive to me.
My selfmade solution also can do HTML mailings, but I never was able to measure any benefit of styled newsletters over text. So I usually use just text.
Yeh you can better measure stats like open rate, CTR and deliverability. It's especially good for marketers and entrepreneurs that want an easy to use interface to manage their email marketing campaigns.
As far as I know, there is no good way to measure open rate. You can see if images in your html email are loaded. But that could also happen automatically or in a preview pane that is displayed by default.
The reason why I shy away from measuring CTR is that I then cannot give people the real url. I like to directly give them the final url instead of some intermediate page. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer that.
Only for repeat opens. The original open still accesses a particular URL specific to that recipient so the open is recorded even if Gmail hides IP, browser, OS, and other data via their proxy. If the user doesn't view the images, that open is never recorded anyway. So, the caching doesn't actually affect the open rate.
Could you use a url parameter on the end of the real url (e.g. example.com/page?source=email_[date]), and then use the history object to strip the param once they land on the url (modern browsers)?
Deliverability is going to be substantially better. IPs from commercial providers are trusted among ISPs and have a better chance not being flagged as spam.
You're right for the most part, but I hope that will change soon. I've been working on a new spam filter for a while, it's in testing on my mail server for a handful of customers, and quite a bit of stuff from constantcontact, sendgrid, Amazon, and even Gmail are getting caught by it.
The unfortunate thing is that every time there's a new trusted mailing service with a good reputation, spammers flock to it.
For me on iPhone, the page would be fine if only the entire almost-full-screen-size navigation didn't switch to fixed positioning and block most of the page once I scroll past it.
I have a small email marketing app, that can integrate text as well as html. (based on Asp.Net MVC and WebApi)
It also allows conditionals (Mustache like syntax) and multiple languages in one "Send"... Haven't bootstrapped it though, it's for personal use and because i have multiple clients in french, english and dutch...
Most of the time, i use it to send the "launch" letter for a new website, with the mailing list that i collected from their landing page.
Yikes, I wouldn't want to compete on price. I personally believe it's the features beyond MailChimp where the action is. Let MailChimp have the low-end. It's going to be really hard to fight them for crumbs at the table.
We use to use http://sendy.co/ which is a self hosted solution, but doesn't really offer anything in the way of templates and lacks some features. We ultimately left as we now use Intercom but I'd be interested in seeing how this service evolves.
Yeh with Sendy you need to install it and configure it on your hosting. You also need to update it every time new features get released. With SendGlide we take care of all the hosting for you. All you need to do is log in to the SendGlide app and away you go. All new features are free for customers.
We're really focusing on making sending emails and managing email campaigns easy and simple.
Maybe I'm an old fart but I don't like fancy emails because they never display right. Seems like simpler is better for email. Keep it short and to the point.
Are people finding that the fancy emails convert better?
Might want to set up redirects, canonical or robots.txt on http://www.owlsend.com/ as right now you're double serving your content to Google and is not optimal from an SEO standpoint, let alone confusing for customers.
I think there is a pretty small market for small businesses who want to use a service like this, but want to / are capable of setting up their own Amazon SES setup.
The small business market is already hard since budgets are small and support needs are high.
I'm glad to see they fixed their logo so it isn't a blue owl.
I'm disappointed to see that they still haven't made it more clear that the $29 / month is a flat rate to use their interface and the end user still pays $1 / 10,000 emails to SES. If you send a weekly email (4/month) to 10,000 subscribers, you pay $29 + $4 = $33. If you send a daily (30 / month) email to 10,000 subscribers you'll pay $29 + $30 = $59. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9070921
Having used Constant Contact for a while now I'm kind of biased towards them but I'm always looking at new ways and services for doing things. What is the biggest difference between SendGlide and them/what do you have that they don't?
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[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 93.7 ms ] threadMy selfmade solution also can do HTML mailings, but I never was able to measure any benefit of styled newsletters over text. So I usually use just text.
The reason why I shy away from measuring CTR is that I then cannot give people the real url. I like to directly give them the final url instead of some intermediate page. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer that.
How do you measure deliverability?
The unfortunate thing is that every time there's a new trusted mailing service with a good reputation, spammers flock to it.
How does your setup work? Have you thought about open-sourcing or selling the script?
I am using MailChimp for weekendhacker but i always feel like it's way too bloated for my needs.
So: 10K subscribers, Monthly charge, Unlimited sendlimit
Mail Chimp - $75 - http://mailchimp.com/pricing/all/
SendGlide - $29 - http://www.sendglide.com/
Still favourable for you but significantly different. I appreciate that pricing is always complicated. Am I missing something?
So probably they had to sort out a different name quickly...
It also allows conditionals (Mustache like syntax) and multiple languages in one "Send"... Haven't bootstrapped it though, it's for personal use and because i have multiple clients in french, english and dutch...
Most of the time, i use it to send the "launch" letter for a new website, with the mailing list that i collected from their landing page.
it just makes my life easier :)
I own 3 small retail stores. Our subscriber list is about 28,000.
Are people finding that the fancy emails convert better?
The small business market is already hard since budgets are small and support needs are high.
Potential savings over long run is pretty high once someone setups and connect SES with SendGlide.
Other than that we are always available to help incase someone needs any help in setting up their SES account.
If you willing to join us, you can contact us anytime via contact link on our website.
Thanks Neeraj
I'm glad to see they fixed their logo so it isn't a blue owl.
I'm disappointed to see that they still haven't made it more clear that the $29 / month is a flat rate to use their interface and the end user still pays $1 / 10,000 emails to SES. If you send a weekly email (4/month) to 10,000 subscribers, you pay $29 + $4 = $33. If you send a daily (30 / month) email to 10,000 subscribers you'll pay $29 + $30 = $59. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9070921
If you have 50,000 subscribers and you send bi-weekly emails or roughly 10 campaigns every month.
You would be paying $49(Flat Fee) + 10*($5) = $99
Any other email service charges roughly $250 or more for the same. So overall there is huge cost saving with SES along with SendGlide.
If you are willing to join SendGlide, Feel free to jump on the live chat on the site or send an email. http://www.sendglide.com/contact-us/