Ask TUAW Video Edition: bulk emailing

Please can you recommend an app that automatically sync's a USB memory stick to a folder on my Mac (in both directions) that is triggered when plugging the stick in?

Thanks

Jude

I've always enjoyed MailChimp. You can get it to do everything. It's considerably cheap for what I get out of it.
LaptopBackpacksAndBags.com

I totally agree with Simon, when it comes to email marketing, you simply can't do this on your own home machine, and are much safer using an email marketing company.

The two "big boys" are:

http://www.getresponse.com (Get Response)

http://www.aweber.com/?222304 (Aweber)

Both will do the job in a much more professional manner, without risking your ISP banning you, and with much better delivery of your emails.

Nice ad.

If you are looking for a smaller-scale solution, an app called "MailShot" uniquely lets you create distribution lists that you can use as contacts in all your favourite Mail apps, just like it was built into your device.

Its free to try, and with an in-app purchase you can mail up to 50 people from a single contact (ISP permitting). www.iTunes.com/apps/MailShot for details.

We would love to see this app covered on TUAW some time, as we know it'll be of interest to anyone who regularly emails groups of friends, team mates or work colleagues.

Full disclosure, I'm the developer :).

Peter
solubleapps.com/MailShot

Having used both Maxbulk and Direct Mail, I've landed on Direct Mail. I consistently send out 5-10k emails a week (to a community of readers that are expecting my email) and Direct Mail is simply awesome. Lots of power, fast setup, easy importing of CSVs with custom fields. Lots to love there.

To Simon's point, make sure you are using a whitelisted SMTP service. I used Direct Mail's S3 Service (I think thats the name, you buy credits to send emails essentially) but we've not switched everything over to www.sendgrid.net

Sendgrid has made email consistently delivered, with great tracking and an API to handle bounces / spam reports, etc.

DirectMail + Sendgrid = love.

Coming from an email marketing industry, I just wanted to add my two cents to this topic. I think that using a desktop software like the one showed in this article is a *very bad idea*. Two reasons:

1. Poor email deliverability.
When you send an email via your own computer to many different ISPs, you may find that your email lands in a spam/junk/bulk folder often. This is due to the fact that your computer is not "whitelisted" with email providers. Many blackhat hackers infect innocent computers with their zombie virus / trojan horses that later directly deliver spam. That's why ISPs often block IP addresses of dial-ups, DSL & cable modems, and only allow email coming from "real" servers. When you use software like MaxBulk mailer, you are essentially replicating the same type of behavior as what infected computers do. If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck...

2. Getting disconnected from the Internet for spam.
That's right. When you send out any email campaign, you will get some complaints from people who will claim they didn't ask for your email. This is inevitable with every emai marketing complain. Some complaints are more serious then others, particularly the ones where the victim complaints not just to you, but to your ISP and your ISP's ISP (the "upstream complaint"). Now, your problem here is that you are sending emails from your own IP address (your own computer), and not an external mail server. What this means is that if your ISP receives a complaint against you, you may run into a rather unfunny situation where you have to prove your innocence or *risk losing your Internet connectivity*.

If you are serious about email marketing, want the best deliverability and preserve your Internet connection, you'll want to check a web-based email marketing service. One example is GetResponse: http://www.getresponse.com (for full disclosure, I am their CEO :-)

Good luck.

Hi Justin,

Nice review. How does MaxBulk Mailer stack up against other mass emailing programs? Any critical issues we should be aware of? What is the industry standard?

Thanks for any comments you can provide.

Ryan/Lady,
Who freaken cares? Get a hobby.

Cool it works now :) Thanks , and isn't it Mac OS 10 (roman numeral X) like 10.6.6 not Mac OS X?