Automation of mailing lists. Mailchimp: Advanced Methods for Automating Your Anniversary or Birthday Emails

Send email

For everything to work, jQuery must be uploaded to the landing page. To do this, add:

And now the main script that does all the work:

$ (document) .ready (function () (

var url = window.location + ”;

var urlAux = url.split (‘=’);

var leadEmail = urlAux;

$ (“# Email”). Attr (“value”, leadEmail);

4. Integrate Mailchimp with other services and tools

You don't have to write any code to integrate Mailchimp with other applications. To do this, you need the Zapier.com service. It will help you set up automation with Google Docs, Gmail, Dropbox, Evernote and other popular services.

You can find a complete list of automation for Mailchimp using the Zappier service.

Finally

Mailing lists are one of the most inexpensive and at the same time effective ways transfers to potential clients commercial offers, as well as familiarizing them with company news and changes in the price list, informing them about software updates and promotions, etc. However, often the usual distribution of messages with relevant information using Microsoft Outlook (which in most cases is used to organize corporate mail) may not bring the expected effect, since it will not be personalized. In addition, conducting such a mailing may be difficult due to the lack of tools in Outlook for effective management lists of subscribers, as well as due to possible problems with the mail server when sending a large number of messages.

To maximize the effect of mass email marketing, you should create lists of subscribers, automate their processing (for relevance, eliminate duplicate addresses, etc.), prepare personalized letters based on these lists and send them to recipients. If you plan to conduct such mailings on a regular basis, you will have to provide customers with the opportunity to independently adjust the status of the subscription. It is very time consuming (if not impossible) to carry out all of the above actions using only the built-in Outlook tools - it is much more efficient to use third-party solutions, with which it is relatively easy to automate the process of working with mailing lists. The easiest and most accessible way is to install a set of Outlook plugins that allow you to carry out all operations with mailings in a familiar environment. However, you can go the other way - use stand-alone solutions. We'll look at both options.

As for Outlook plugins, the most famous are software products from Western companies Sperry Software and Genius Connect and Russian MAPILab. In terms of their functionality, they are about the same, but packages from Western developers do not have Russian-language versions and are more expensive, so they are less attractive for Russian users.

Among the stand-alone solutions for Russian users in terms of price / availability of Russian-language localization, the most interesting programs are Russian companies Tweak Marketing and Business Software Products. The first offers a set of programs designed to solve different tasks email marketing, and the second is a comprehensive AMS Enterprise solution that covers almost all aspects of working with mailing lists (see table).

Preparation of personalized mailings

Typically, when sending many identical emails from your Outlook email client, it's a common practice to create distribution groups, which is really handy. However, there is one "but" - in this case, it is not possible to create personal letters, that is, letters with an appeal. But this is very important, since the recipient is much more pleasant when he is addressed by name, and not as a faceless "respected client". In addition, a personalized letter may contain information that is specific to a given client, for example, data on the conditions for the provision of services or delivery of goods, depending on the region in which the client is located. It is also important that in personal letters the final recipient in the "To" field will not see information about all other addressees (but only his name and address Email), which would be inevitable when forming a regular mailing list.

When creating personalized mailings, you can limit yourself built-in Outlook features using your contact list and mail merge technology. In this case, at the first stage, it is required to determine the list of contacts to whose addresses the correspondence will be sent, which is easiest to accomplish through categories (for this, all contacts must be pre-divided into categories). Then you need to apply the command Service ® Merge ® Selected contacts only, enter the general (unchanged) text of the letter and supplement it with the required references by inserting the appropriate merge fields, and when finished, click on the button To combine and by choosing from the dropdown list Appointment option Email, configure message parameters. After that, in the folder Outbox personal letters will appear to all selected contacts, in which, unlike the option of sending letters to the distribution group from Address Book, there will be a personal appeal, and the addresses of other correspondents will not be displayed (Fig. 1).

Rice. 1. Preparing a personalized mailing list
built-in Microsoft Outlook
and one of the ready-made mailing lists

From the above, it is clear that the built-in Outlook features allow you to automate the process of preparing personal correspondence, but it may not be convenient enough for regular bulk mailings. Much more effective in this regard are specialized solutions, thanks to which the preparation of personal messages will be both easier and faster.

The most in a simple way creating personalized correspondence is the use of the Outlook plugin Send personally... It is an alternative way of preparing and sending letters of the same type from Outlook, in which a message is generated for each recipient (with its own name in the "To" field). At the same time, thanks to the support of basic macros (% USERNAME%,% USEREMAIL%,% LIST%, etc.), which are replaced when sending a message to the data of a specific recipient, the text of sent letters can contain not only constant, but also variable information (Fig. 2) although complex merges are out of the question.

Rice. 2. Personal letter prepared for sending
via Send Personally (in its original form - on the left, received
user - right)

Solutions such as the Mail Merge Toolkit and AMS Enterprise offer greater flexibility in embedding variable information in personal messages.

Mail Merge Toolkit extends the built-in merge capabilities in Microsoft Office allowing you to merge not only from Microsoft Word but also from Microsoft Publisher with the ability to send generated messages directly from these programs. In this case, personal information can be embedded not only in the content (a full set of built-in macros is supported), but also in the subject line, hyperlinks can be inserted into HTML messages (which are embedded in Microsoft Office built-in tools, but do not work in mailings) and attach files to messages (fig. 3). In addition, when sending from Microsoft Publisher in GIF format, you can specify different HTML links for individual areas of the image (image map). Moreover, the mail merge toolkit practically does not differ from the standard one, since you need to perform the same set of actions, except that at the last step ( Completing the merge) you need to select the item in the merge task pane Mail Merge Toolkit(instead of paragraph Email).

An even higher level of personalization of mailings is achieved in the case of a comprehensive solution AMS Enterprise, which can not only automatically insert data from any fields of mailing lists into the body of the letter and into the subject of the letter, but also dynamically change the content of the letter depending on the state of certain fields in the list (Fig. 4). The latter is implemented using MailMerge rules, due to which the information sent in different mailing messages is different. For example, the program can substitute information about various goods and services in the letter, depending on the interests or field of activity of the recipient. In addition, AMS Enterprise (like the Mail Merge Toolkit) allows you to use hyperlinks in HTML messages and attach files to messages.

Rice. 4. Personal letter prepared in the environment
AMS Enterprise (in its original form - on the left and with preliminary
viewing - right)

Mailing list management

In general, it is not difficult to create the required set of distribution lists using built-in Outlook tools, but it will take a lot of time, since adding each new contact to the list is done manually. With a large number of respondents, this happens rather slowly, and besides, it often leads to numerous errors, since the same address can be entered twice, but some, on the contrary, can be missed. In addition, the management of mailing lists is not limited to their initial preparation - it is required to keep the lists up to date (since some of the addresses are outdated), and this is not provided at all in the functions of the Microsoft mail client.

Therefore, at active work you cannot do without specialized solutions with mailings. They will allow you to quickly import email addresses into mailing lists, check for duplicate addresses and keep the lists up to date, thereby significantly reducing the volume of returned mail that could not be delivered due to invalid addresses. In addition, they can provide additional options for processing lists, allowing you to combine lists, compare them, remove the contents of other lists from one list, segment them to achieve the best distribution results, etc.

Formation of lists

To form large mailing lists, Russian users should pay attention to such specialized solutions as Mailing List Service, Mailing List Wizard and AMS Enterprise.

Program Mailing List Service, included in the MAPILab Toolbox utility package, allows you to quickly export contacts and distribution lists from the Outlook address book or sender / recipient addresses from in / out folders to text files, as well as import contacts from a text file or sender / recipient addresses from in / outgoing messages to the Outlook address book, including in the form of a distribution list (Fig. 5).

The Mailing List Wizard will guide you through the processing and conversion of mailing lists. Most importantly, it knows how to exclude duplicate addresses from the lists (Fig. 6). In addition, the program can be used to merge lists and exclude them (when addresses of an additional list are excluded from the main one), remove names of address owners from mailing lists, filter lists by various criteria, sort addresses, etc.

Rice. 6. Removing duplicate addresses from the lists using
Mailing List Wizard

Functionality AMS Enterprise wider (Figure 7) than the Mailing List Wizard. AMS Enterprise's built-in list manager allows you to import existing mailing lists from text files of various formats and CSV files, Windows and Outlook Express address books, as well as from other sources (Excel, Access, FoxPro, MySQL, etc.) via ADO / ODBC. At the same time, during the import process of lists, all duplicate addresses are automatically eliminated and addresses with incorrect syntax are ignored. With regard to imported lists, versatile processing is provided - you can combine lists, delete the contents of others from one list, compare and sort lists, change their structure as required, remove addresses that meet specified criteria from the lists, etc. It is also possible to exclude entire recipient lists from mailings.

Rice. 7. Working with lists in AMS Enterprise

Checking list addresses for relevance

To check the existence of an e-mail address programmatically, you should perform the same actions that the mail server performs when delivering a letter to the addressee. First, you need to determine the address of the server that receives mail for this addressee (for this, a request is sent to the DNS service) - if one could not be found, then the address can be immediately rejected as non-existent. And secondly, you need to connect to the identified mail server and send it a request to see if it can accept a letter for a user with such and such an email address. In case of a positive response from the server, the address is considered valid. This approach of checking addresses for relevance makes it possible to identify about two-thirds of non-existent addresses. The rest of the non-existent addresses cannot be detected programmatically, since some mail servers are configured so that they accept all letters for their mail domain (including letters with non-existent mail addresses). And only after accepting letters to a valid address, the server informs the sender that the letter cannot be delivered.

According to statistics, about 30% of addresses that are recognized as non-existent during a program check are identified at the first stage of the check, and 70% at the second. At the same time, the second stage of verification requires on average 10 times more time and five times more. network traffic than the first. Therefore, for multi-million dollar lists, such a thorough check is not always advisable - in such cases it is often wiser to limit ourselves to only the first stage of the check - a query in the DNS.

You can check mailing list addresses and identify nonexistent addresses by using solutions such as Advanced Maillist Verify, Mail List Validator, High Speed ​​Verifier, or Actual Contacts. The first two carry out verification in two stages, which allows for higher verification accuracy, but takes a lot of time. At the same time, the Advanced Maillist Verify program (Fig. 8) can process only small (no more than 50-100 thousand addresses) mailing lists. But Mail List Validator(Fig. 9) is designed to work with lists of any size (including multi-million dollar ones) and is free, although not all list export options in it work correctly.

Rice. 8. Checking addresses for relevance in the program
Advanced Maillist Verify

Rice. 9. Checking addresses for relevance using Mail List Validator

Utility High speed verifier(Fig. 10) is positioned as a high-speed program for checking mailing lists and can process up to several thousand addresses per second. It copes well with mailing lists of tens of millions of addresses, and thanks to the built-in caching, it is on lists of this size that the maximum performance of the program is achieved. But High Speed ​​Verifier performs only the first stage of verification (that is, it determines the reliability of the DNS server address, which means that it can only identify those non-working addresses whose domains no longer exist), and therefore the percentage of non-existent addresses detected by this utility is much lower than that of the above solutions. For this reason, the program is effective as a solution for quickly removing garbage from multimillion-dollar lists, when a thorough scan is not practical due to the time and network traffic. At the same time, it should be noted that the Mail List Validator, if necessary, can be limited to only a quick DNS check.

Rice. 10. Checking addresses for relevance in the program
High speed verifier

Concerning Actual Contacts, then its possibilities are somewhat wider. The program can directly check mailing lists (DNS and SMTP) - fig. 11, and also knows how to carry out a similar check in the merge mode. It harmoniously complements the Mail Merge Toolkit, although it can also be used for regular merge with built-in Outlook tools. True, the percentage of identified working and non-working addresses by means of Actual Contacts is much lower than in other considered solutions (a considerable number of addresses remains in question), and the program works noticeably slower.

Rice. 11. Checking addresses for relevance in the Actual Contacts program

Automation of subscription and unsubscription from mailings

If it is assumed that the mailing list will be reusable (for example, mailing with company news), then the recipient should be able to unsubscribe or, conversely, subscribe to it. It is better this process automate, especially if you have more than one thematic mailing list, as otherwise manual processing of subscribers' wishes can turn into a sheer nightmare. This can be done in various ways - in particular, using the Outlook plugin. Subscription Manager, included in the MAPILab Toolbox utilities package (Fig. 12), or the already mentioned package AMS Enterprise... Both solutions allow subscribers to independently subscribe and unsubscribe from mailings, for which they only need to create and send you a special type of mail message (request), which is a regular mail message, in the "Subject" field of which the request command is indicated. The programs analyze incoming correspondence and if the letters meet certain criteria (for example, if they find keywords subscribe, unsubscribe, etc.), update the mailing lists accordingly and inform the user about the status of his subscription. As a result, you no longer have to be distracted from your work by constant requests to add / remove a subscriber from the mailing list. If there are problems with unsubscribing / subscribing (for example, if the request specifies a nonexistent or currently unavailable mailing list), as well as in the case of a subscription, a message is sent to the subscriber with information about the error. All messages automatically generated by the named programs are formed on the basis of built-in editable templates.

Rice. 12. Setting up automatic subscription / unsubscription
by means of Subscription Manager

In AMS Enterprise (Fig. 13), the automation of subscribing / unsubscribing is implemented through the additional utility Input Mail Processor, which is designed to solve all tasks related to automating mailing lists. And the possibilities it provides in terms of subscription management is somewhat broader, since there is an independent setting of rules (Fig. 14) for making a decision on adding or removing an address in mailing lists; detailed statistics are kept on the operation of each of the rules.

Rice. 13. Setting up automatic subscription / unsubscription
with AMS Enterprise

Rice. 14. Adjustment of subscription / unsubscription rules in AMS Enterprise

Scheduled mailing

Many mailing lists are periodic (for example, price lists updated on Thursdays, company news published at the beginning of the week, etc.). And some of the mailings, which may not be periodic, simply for certain reasons, it is more profitable to launch at a certain time of the day (for example, at night, so as not to interfere with the company's employees to work on the Internet). In this case, mailing planners will come to the rescue, allowing you to automate the process of sending letters on a schedule. The role of such a scheduler can be played by the component Email Scheduler from the MAPILab Toolbox utility package or the utility AMS Scheduler included in the AMS Enterprise solution.

The principle of operation of these schedulers is practically the same - it is enough to prepare a mailing list and set up a schedule for launching it in the scheduler (Fig. 15 and 16), after which the mailing will be launched and executed automatically at the specified time. The only difference between the solutions is that AMS Scheduler has more capabilities in terms of setting up a schedule, although in most cases the functionality of Email Scheduler is sufficient. In turn, Email Scheduler allows you to attach files to messages sent on a schedule, however, AMS Enterprise (which includes AMS Scheduler) also implements this functionality.

Rice. 15. Configuring the schedule for launching mailings using
Email Scheduler

Rice. 16. Setting the schedule for the distribution in the environment
AMS Scheduler

Fast mailing

Some mail servers have restrictions on the number and volume of messages sent over a certain period of time - this is done to prevent the spread of spam. Alas, such restrictions create certain problems not only for spammers, but also for those users who have to send a large amount of e-mail every day to legitimate subscribers of certain corporate mailings. However, with the help of specialized software solutions, you can bypass such restrictions and thereby save yourself from the need to re-send correspondence.

So, using the component Batched mail from the Mail Merge Toolkit package will help organize the sending of letters, taking into account that their number does not exceed the maximum allowed for a specific mail server. You can, for example, send a fixed amount of correspondence within an hour (Fig. 17) or send consecutive letters not immediately, but with some interval. Of course, this is not a solution when working with millions of mailings, but with small mailings it is quite reasonable.

Rice. 17. Regulation of dispatch of letters through Batched Mail

In the case of large mailings, you will have to resort to solutions such as, for example, Advanced Direct Remailer or AMS Enterprise(fig. 18 and 19). Both solutions deliver outgoing mail directly to the recipient's mail server, bypassing the provider's server, thereby eliminating the restrictions set on the provider's server. At the same time, they deliver in several streams, the number of which for Advanced Direct Remailer can reach 399, and for AMS Enterprise - 500. As a result, messages are delivered an order of magnitude faster than with regular sending from an email client, for example, in AMS Enterprise, the delivery speed reaches about 250 thousand letters per hour. In the process of sending letters, bad (non-existent) and incorrect syntax are automatically detected postal addresses based on a series of rules. It is possible to carry out mailings through proxy servers.

When using Advanced Direct Remailer, you can create mailing letters in your usual mail program(for example, in Microsoft Outlook or The Bat!), which must be pre-configured to work correctly with this package. In the case of AMS Enterprise, the preparation of correspondence is carried out in the built-in html-editor, while it provides the opportunity preview of created emails in Microsoft Outlook emulation mode.

Briefly about the products

Actual Contacts 1.16

Developer: MAPILab

Distribution size: 3.28 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98 / Me / NT / 2000 / XP / Vista

Distribution method: http://www.mapilab.com/files/actual_contacts.zip)

Price:

Actual Contacts is a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook XP / 2003/2007, designed to maintain the relevance of addresses and other contact information in the address book. It allows automatic updating of information in the address book by sending messages with a form to all contacts and processing the updated data received from respondents. In addition, the plugin can be used to check addresses for relevance.

Advanced Direct Remailer (ADR) 2.2

Developer: Tweak Marketing

Siteprograms: http: // www. massmail.ru/adr/

Distribution size: 1.88 MB

Work under control: Windows NT 4/2000 / XP

Distribution method: shareware (15-day functionally limited demo - http://www.mailutilities.com/adr/adr.zip)

Price:

ADR is a utility designed to massively send e-mail bypassing the provider's server (that is, directly to the mail servers of correspondents). It uses multithreading (which allows an order of magnitude increase in the speed of mail delivery) and, unlike many competing programs, is tightly integrated with well-known email clients (Microsoft Outlook Express, The Bat !, Eudora, Pegasus Mail, etc.), which allows you to use them to prepare correspondence. ADR supports mailing lists of any format (including those imported from Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, or Microsoft SQL Server) and Windows address books.

Advanced Maillist Verify (AMV) 4.27

Developer: Tweak Marketing

Siteprograms: http: // www. massmail.ru/amv/

Distribution size: 1.44 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98 / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP

Distribution method: http://www.mailutilities.com/amv/amv.zip)

Price: 59.95 USD, for Russian-speaking users - 700 rubles.

AMV is a program for checking the relevance of email addresses in mailing lists, databases (via ODBC SQL - from Microsoft Excel to Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle) and address books Outlook, TheBat! and Eudora. It performs a thorough check of addresses (DNS and SMTP), but is recommended only for checking relatively small (no more than 50-100 thousand) lists.

AMS Enterprise 2.7

Developer: Business Software Products

Siteprograms: http: // www. bspdev.ru/index.php?ams20

Distribution size: 8.22 MB

Work under control: Windows 98 / Me / NT / 2000 / XP

Distribution method: shareware (20 days demo - http://www.bspdev.com/down_load/AMS272e.zip)

Price:$ 289, for Russian-speaking users: when paying via WebMoney, Yandex-Money, Sberbank - 8250 rubles, for non-cash payment - 8980 rubles.

AMS Enterprise is an effective tool for working with mailings that provides a solution to almost the entire range of email marketing tasks. This package allows you to manage mailing lists, prepare personalized messages based on them using MailMerge templates in the built-in Html editor, and quickly send mail to recipients. In addition, with the help of AMS Enterprise, you can organize automatic subscription / unsubscribe of addresses to mailings and set schedules to automatically start mailings in the right time and also receive detailed information based on the results of mailing (the number of delivered / undelivered letters, the number of open letters and the number of clicks on the links indicated in the letters).

High Speed ​​Verifier (HSV) 1.21

Developer: Tweak Marketing

Siteprograms: http: // www. massmail.ru/hsv/

Distribution size: 1.51 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98 / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP

Distribution method: shareware (functionally limited demo version - http://www.mailutilities.com/hsv/hsv.zip)

Price: 59.95 USD, for Russian-speaking users - 700 rubles.

HSV is designed to quickly check email addresses for their existence (DNS only). It does an excellent job with mailing lists with tens of millions of addresses and is very fast, but it detects only about 20-30% of non-existent addresses, while competing solutions that perform two-level verification (DNS and SMTP) can detect up to 60 70% of similar addresses.

Mail Merge Toolkit 2.5

Developer: MAPILab

Siteprograms: http: //www.mapilab. com / ru / outlook / mail_merge /

Distribution size: 5.93 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98 / Me / NT / 2000 / XP

Distribution method: shareware (30 days demo - http://www.mapilab.com/files/mail_merge_toolkit.zip)

Price:$ 24, for Russian-speaking users - 700 rubles.

Mail Merge Toolkit is an add-on for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Outlook that allows mailing from Microsoft Publisher in HTML, RTF and GIF formats and from Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook in HTML and RTF formats while maintaining the functionality of Internet links, as well as Allows you to substitute data fields in the subject line (sending letters with personalized not only content, but also the subject line) and attach one or more files to the sent letters.

Mailing List Wizard (MLW) 1.32

Developer: Tweak Marketing

Distribution size: 1.81 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98 / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP

Distribution method: shareware (functionally limited demo version - http: // www. mailutilities.com/mlw/mlw.zip)

Price:$ 40, for Russian-speaking users - 500 rubles.

MLW is designed for complex processing and transformation of mailing lists and allows you to exclude duplicate addresses from the lists, filter lists by various criteria, combine two lists into one, exclude from the address list using an additional list, etc.

Mail List Validator 2.1

Developer: Business Software Products

Distribution size: 2.2 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98 / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP

Distribution method: freeware (http://www.bspdev.ru/down_load/MLVLD21.zip)

Price: is free

The Mail List Validator utility is designed to check email addresses for their existence. It thoroughly checks addresses (DNS and SMTP) and even knows how to work with lists containing several million addresses (although the size of the database should not exceed 4 GB). At the same time, if necessary, the program can only perform a DNS check to quickly clear the lists from those addresses whose domains no longer exist.

MAPILab Toolbox 3.0

Developer: MAPILab

Siteprograms: http://www.mapilab.com/ru/outlook/toolbox

Distribution size: 2.66 MB

Work under control: Windows 98 / Me / NT / 2000 / XP / Vista

Distribution method: shareware (30 days demo - http://www.mapilab.com/files/toolbox.zip)

Price:$ 24, for Russian-speaking users - 700 rubles.

The MAPILab Toolbox package unites 18 add-on plugins for Microsoft Outlook 2000/2002 / XP / 2003/2007, including the components discussed in the article:

• Batched Mail - used for scheduling mail distribution, taking into account the restrictions imposed by the mail server;
• Email Scheduler - designed to automate the process of sending individual letters or launching mailings on a schedule;
• Mailing List Services - used to quickly generate lists of the necessary addresses, including mailing lists (the source of addresses can be letters, contacts, files on disk), and also allows you to search for contact addresses in Microsoft Outlook folders and text files stored on your hard disk ;
• Subscription Manager - Provides automation of the process of processing requests to add and remove addresses from mailing lists, and can also be used to add and remove mailing lists available to subscribers.