Ask YC: Email marketing tool

Posted by mchang16 on Thursday May 22, 2008 @03:33PM
from the self-post dept.

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?

( 12 comments | 8 points | on HN )

Re:Ask YC: Email marketing tool by bigtoga on Thursday May 22, 2008 @05:49PM (#197587)

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.

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Re:Ask YC: Email marketing tool by xirium on Thursday May 22, 2008 @03:48PM (#197477)

WebPower ( http://www.webpower.nl/ ) runs opt-in mailing lists with quick import options and an AJAX interface. The client list ( http://www.webpower.nl/wp.php/webpower/klanten/ ) is quite impressive.

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Re:Ask YC: Email marketing tool by jakewolf on Thursday May 22, 2008 @11:57PM (#197765)

How come there isn't an YC company doing pretty and easy to create and manage email marketing?

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Re:Ask YC: Email marketing tool by daniel-cussen on Friday May 23, 2008 @12:49AM (#197782)

Because there aren't that many YC companies, and because email marketing is usually spam, making it morally questionable.

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Re:Ask YC: Email marketing tool by omarseyal on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @06:14PM (#307610)

is spam morally questionable? or is it just frowned upon by social norms

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Re:Ask YC: Email marketing tool by aneesh on Friday May 23, 2008 @01:15AM (#197793)

If you think there's really a need for it, start one yourself and apply to YC with it.

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Re:Ask YC: Email marketing tool by sahadeva on Thursday May 22, 2008 @11:38PM (#197760)

http://www.madmimi.com/ is new / neat / ajaxy. Check it out, it's got some nice features.

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Re:Ask YC: Email marketing tool by webwright on Thursday May 22, 2008 @04:47PM (#197546)

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?

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Re:Ask YC: Email marketing tool by mchang16 on Thursday May 22, 2008 @04:49PM (#197549)

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!

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Re:Ask YC: Email marketing tool by julieb2 on Thursday May 22, 2008 @03:35PM (#197458)

my company uses eloqua. I have a feeling that they might not satisfy the "low cost" requirement, though.

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Re:Ask YC: Email marketing tool by ideas101 on Thursday May 22, 2008 @05:25PM (#197568)

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

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Re:Ask YC: Email marketing tool by dshah on Friday May 23, 2008 @12:04AM (#197767)

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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