# efficacy of mass emailing previous customers?



## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

Hi all,
I do custom screen printing. I went through all my 500+ contacts in my gmail, basically anyone whom I have ever exchanged emails with. It didn't take too long to go through them all, and check the emails to see if it was an order or an order inquiry. I put over 100 contacts into a group so that I could send a mass email to everyone to advertise or try to drum up repeat business, or first time orders from those people who never converted into a real custom sale. (I'd put the contacts in bcc: so as to not expose their contact info to other recipients.) 
I was wondering who else here has tried this and how well it worked?
If 5% of the contactees responded and converted, I'd be thrilled. I am thinking I will try it if a coming week looks slow, and I don't plan to do it often.
I'm also thinking I would validate it further by offering some small sale, and most likely a time sensitive sale, like 50% off set up cost for the first color if you order by January 15th or whatever.
Interested to see what you guys think.
Thanks in advance


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## lifestar (Mar 18, 2007)

Hi Stuart- we have found that sending emails to our previous customers is the most cost effective way to go. We have been doing this since 1999 for all of our businesses. A 5% return is a very good number to shoot for... Also you may want to look in to using some sort of email marketing software (we use ContstantContact.com ) so that your efforts can be tracked. Constant Contact provides easy to edit templates (no web building knowledge necessary) and you can track which links are clicked within your email, who opens your email and which links they choose to click on... You can offer coupons too. It also offers a way for the person who is receiving the email to unsubscribe if they do not want to receive the emails. Very simple to use with great tracking results! Best of luck!


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## pwapparel (Feb 16, 2007)

Make sure an opt-out is possible.

Also make sure you are compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You wouldn't want to run into any trouble. It sounds like a good idea though!


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

Oh yeah, I plan to have opt-out at the bottom, and explaining that they are being emailed because they ordered or expressed interest previously.


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

How do you interpret this line, from the wiki article?

"There are no restrictions against a company emailing its existing customers or anyone who has inquired about its products or services, as this constitutes a "prior relationship" under CAN-SPAM."


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## kriscad (Dec 18, 2006)

this is what we use...

Email Marketing & Surveying Software - iContact


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

kriscad said:


> this is what we use...
> 
> Email Marketing & Surveying Software - iContact


Is that worth the cost? What services or products do you yourself sell?


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## peteVA (Nov 11, 2007)

"There are no restrictions against a company emailing its existing customers or anyone who has inquired about its products or services, as this constitutes a "prior relationship" under CAN-SPAM."

That seems pretty cut and dried - you CAN safely email somone who has bought from you or previously inquired about your products. 

WAIT! I just said the same thing.

SPAM is Unsolicited Commercial Email. By them contacting you first, through an order or an inquiry, they opened the "conversation". Therefor, you contacting them is not "unsolicited".

There are any number of ways to send the emails. I won't go into them all, you've had some suggestions here.

BUT, I'm going to tell you one way NOT to send them. Don't use any of the MS Office / Outlook kind of stuff that sends out everyone you send to email address to everyone else in the group. 
.


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## karlking85 (Sep 26, 2007)

Sounds like a good idea to me. Even if they don't place an order, you are keeping your name fresh in their minds, and when they DO need to fill an order, they will think of you first.


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## MiNGLED (Aug 22, 2007)

All of the more established/larger online t-shirt stores I've bought from send me email newsletters every so often. As you would expect they are a mixture of new products, news and special offers. As long as they are done well and are not too frequent I don't mind them, after all I have already bought something from them in the past.


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## maddog9022 (Sep 5, 2006)

my advice would be to add pictures to you email because i will be more likely to go to a site if i see something i like.

my 2 cents


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## mshakir (Jul 7, 2006)

Thanks for all the information provided by every one on the forum. I have been thinking about it. This gives me an idea on how to go about it.


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## mshakir (Jul 7, 2006)

kriscad said:


> this is what we use...
> 
> Email Marketing & Surveying Software - iContact



This one requires a service, though cheap because low cost getting into it, but over years it can get expensive.

Anyone know a software that we can buy it once and get it over with?


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## bergenandco (Jul 30, 2007)

MiNGLED said:


> All of the more established/larger online t-shirt stores I've bought from send me email newsletters every so often. As you would expect they are a mixture of new products, news and special offers. As long as they are done well and are not too frequent I don't mind them, after all I have already bought something from them in the past.


TRUE THAT! Tshirthell.com sends out like 1 email ad every week! Its frick'n annoying. So watch how frequently you send them.


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## bergenandco (Jul 30, 2007)

maddog9022 said:


> my advice would be to add pictures to you email because i will be more likely to go to a site if i see something i like.
> 
> my 2 cents


Pics are good but at the same time it increases the changes of a server catching the email as spam..... and most email servers like Hotmail and Gmail dont display pictures unless they are a contact of yours.

My advice - being that I was a computer programmer- is to use pictures but dont have your entire message as a picture like some of the ones I get. That way if the pics are blocked they still have the text to see whats going on.


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## mshakir (Jul 7, 2006)

bergenandco said:


> TRUE THAT! Tshirthell.com sends out like 1 email ad every week! Its frick'n annoying. So watch how frequently you send them.


Thanks bryan for your feedback.

So far we have never sent emails to customers unless they wrote us first, except for sending order status when we have shipped customer orders.

I would not like to send an email more than once a month. It would be annoying. The idea is to stay in front of the customer, but not to turn him/her off.

thanks for the tshirthell.com info. It is good to know what other successful sites are doing.


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## Girlzndollz (Oct 3, 2007)

I love getting offers from past suppliers, especially when they contain a coupon or shipping discount for me. I will place an order earlier than needed if the deal is right, so the store gets the sale, while I sit with the inventory and not them. But not that it is so much to my disadvantage, don't get me wrong, but others have drummed business OUT of me using email contact. Do unto others as they do unto you, especially if it worked!! Haha.


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## tomstar (May 31, 2007)

I started sending out newsletters to previous customers. It showed immediate return.

Worked real well

Tom


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## peteVA (Nov 11, 2007)

After years of trying various ways of sending newsletters, including from within my user forums, emailing from within my shopping carts, using free fantastico type email scripts and a few other means, including my own autoresponder on a server of mine I finally gave up.

Few were getting through and I figured it just wasn't worth the effort. Among other things, even being in the hosting business and having pretty much control over what happens with the servers, I found the people I lease the servers from had placed a 50 emails per hour limit on them.

No one wants to be accused of spamming, so the ISPs and the server people simply restrict what you can do. Since just one bad apple on a server or through an ISP can result in the whole thing getting taken down, no one wants to chance it.

Recently I got in a situation where I had to contact 300 or so customers, all of whom where current, within 120 days. I'd been hearing of aweber.com for years, but was just convinced I could save that $ 20 a month and do it myself. If you've read any of my posts on shopping carts, you're aware I promote the free ones, and I've been doing the same with autoresponders.

Fianlly, I took the plunge. I've got to tell you, I wish I had done it years ago. They've got a "spam meter" that let's you test your messages to see what the chances are of them setting off alarms by the various spam filters. Naturally, mine come out totally clean, but it's nice to know what your chances are.

In addition, because of their clean image, emails from will get passed through AOL and other ISPs where something from you or me will never get through the gate. They've got an "opened" feature that tells you how many actually get opened, as well.

I'm not going to make their sales picth for them, I just want to tell you if you want to do newsletters or followup mailings this is the way to go. You can have prepared messages that will automatically go out 5 days after purchase, 10 days after purchase, etc. And you can have every customer automatically added as they buy. 

I'll say no more, but I will recommend you check them out. I'm way sorry I waited so long, being hardheaded about spending a few bucks. aweber.com


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

Thanks for the helpful post, Pete.

I'm just finishing up a new website that I will announce to customers in a mass email, and also offer a sale (probably reduced screen set up charge).

Does anyone know if gmail hinders sending out a mass email based on a contact list in one's gmail account? I have about 100 people on it and I would hate for some to not get emailed, especially if I don't know about it. 
I could split the contact list into smaller portions and send out multiple mass emails instead of one big one.


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## peteVA (Nov 11, 2007)

I don't know about gmail from the sender's point of view, but I will make some observations.

First, any emails from free services are taken less seriously than those from a specific domain. You do yourself no good in using a free email, even gmail, in your business.

If you have a hosting account of any sort, and I imagine you do if you have a site, then you can set up email accounts through your domain. Do this, it is much more professional. If nothing else, it gets rid of the implied statement "I'm cheap and don't want to pay for a real email account."

Many online sellers will not sell to anyone with a free email account. 

If you are serious about doing business on the net, one thing you want to do is "build your brand". You do not do that hiding behind a free account. 

Actually, emails using your domain are also free. As long as you pay your domain registration fees, you have access to those account. Depending on where you regiater / host, the amount of accounts varies, but you will always get 3 or more.

For communication with customers I use an account [email protected]. This indicates they are previous customers and have an established relationship with me.
.


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

Good point, Pete. I do have an email @vacord.com, my domain. I should take the time and set up the contact list in there. I'll check now and see how to do that.
Thanks for the tips!


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