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Mailloop
- a personal review
I want you to meet my secretary. Her name is Marge, well that's
what I call her anyway. She's a little different than most secretaries
I have met. She's actually not human. She's an electronic secretary.
She's extremely efficient. Once I tell her what to do, I can rest
assured, safe in the knowledge that the task I have given her will
be completed perfectly every time, in a matter of seconds. Yes I
love Marge…
'Marge' is really the name I have given to an incredible email marketing
product called "Mailloop". It's a way to automate your online business
and free you up to do more creative things. Frankly, I'm not sure
I would know what to do without Marge at this point. I would probably
have to hire a couple of people to do all the mundane tasks. Let
me explain how this all works, 'cos it's pretty unbelievable…
Mailloop essentially does three things:
1) Sends out bulk mail
(Outgoing e-mail processor)
2) Filters incoming mail
(Incoming email processor)
3) Edits mail lists and other text messages and makes them ready
for processing.
(List processor)
If you run a website, the chances are you need to collect opt-in
subscriber's e-mail addresses. You will no doubt have a subscribe
box, that says something like;
"Enter your email address to receive our monthly newsletter and
receive a free gift blah blah blah…"
With Mailloop you can personalize everything. For example, you can
collect "First Name" "Last Name" "Email Address" and any other info
you need, let's also say "Company". You can run the incoming email
processor (a simple mail filter) which will then save this data
to a text file. Here's the fab part: Mailloop can send your newsletter
for you, and it will automatically personalize the e-mail when you
add a [field] such as:
Dear [first name]
Or:
Dear [first name],
We understand that at [company] you may be looking for products
we have etc etc…
Mailloop sends out an e-mail to your whole list as if you are personally
writing to each subscriber. When it reaches the subscriber it will
look like this:
Dear John,
We understand that at Johnson, Finestein and Co, you may be looking
for products we have etc etc…
Cool huh?
Let me talk a little bit more about the Incoming Email Processor...
The incoming email processor is essentially a mail filter that interacts
with your email. What this means is this for example:
You sell a downloadable e-book on your website, and every time a
purchaser completes a sale you get an email from your credit card
server (assuming you use a third party). The email includes the
name, email product order, address etc. Mailloop can read this email
for you, store the data to a file (so you can refer to it later
if you need to) save the buyer's email address to another file,
send out an autoresponder to the buyer with the e-book login and
password info so he can download his e-book, send an autoresponder
to the credit card company saying "this order has been shipped",
and play a sound on your computer so you know in real time when
a purchase has been made. It can do all this in about three seconds!
This is just one simple example. The options are limitless when
it comes to business process automation. You can have the software
running in the background 24 hours a day and it'll do all the work
as it comes in.
Another amazingly cool thing...
When you send out your newsletter, or any email for that matter,
there will inevitably be a slew of email addresses that are bad
or no longer exist . You can set up a Mailloop filter so if an email
is returned with a message that includes "user unknown" or "permanent
fatal error" etc, you can have Mailloop remove that email from your
list. This way you always have a clean mailing list.
This is stunning as far as I am concerned. For many months I ran
my newsletter through a third party list server. When I closed the
account and received my list, there must have been over 1000 bad
addresses still included. Now I will never have this problem! Marge
does it all!
Let's talk about The List Processor
The other thing this program does is process mailing lists so they
are in the appropriate state to work with Mailloop. (Mailloop likes
to put emails in "this format" as opposed to say <this
format>. You can extract outlook express info and add it to your
mailloop mailing lists. You can sort your list alphabetically, clean
the list (ie: remove bad e-mail addresses) and remove duplicates
(I love this part, subscribers are always subscribing more than
once, it happens all the time doesn't it?).
There is also an email extractor. I'm sure this aspect of the software
is somewhat controversial. However, I have had files on my hard
drive with email addresses in them littered amongst other text data.
I personally didn't want to pick each email out by hand to build
a list. I ran Mailloop and extracted a few hundred addresses in
about one second. All returned alphabetically.
Mailloop will also extract email addresses from newsgroups. Personally,
I have no interest in this facet as it wreaks of spam and can only
get you in trouble. It's there if you dare however.
And this is just the beginning. Pretty much whatever you need it
to do, you can find a way to configure Mailloop to help you do it.
Now having said that, there are one or two things you need to be
aware of before you purchase this software and I can tell you what
they all are 'cos I've been there and come out the other side eventually
smiling....
Firstly, I need to mention, that if configured correctly, Mailloop
works like a charm. That is to say, if you can't get it to do something
that you know it is supposed to do, the problem will be that you
haven't set up up the account properly, or you haven't checked a
box or you configured your web form wrong, etc. The software works
if it is configured correctly. (The company offers great
live online tech support by the way!)
Now here are the things you MUST think about first:
The outgoing email processor.
Sending bulk mail is something that needs to be studied a little.
You cannot simply buy software and just send tons of mail out. Most
ISP's frown upon bulk mail as they are cautious of spam, and rightly
so. They do not want people using their mail servers, upsetting
people who haven't personally subscribed to a list. Whether you
are actually spamming or legitimately sending newsletters to opt-in
subscribers, the very fact that you are sending that much mail out
at one time will inevitable cause anger from one or two individuals.
Perhaps they forgot they subscribed. Who knows. It happens.
In order to get over this first hump, it is important to make sure
that the mail server you are using allows you to send a large list.
Some ISP's have a limit of say 50 emails that you can send out at
one time. This of course is no good at all. Before you configure
Mailloop, you might want to check with your ISP that you are allowed
to do send out bulk mail. Personally, I don't go through my ISP,
I go through the mail server that hosts one of my websites. You
can do this too, but again, make sure they allow you to do this.
Explain that you have an opt-in list only (which you should
have!).
Mailloop built their software with a built in SMTP server because
they knew about this problem. What this means is that you can, technically,
send out a large amount of mail using their software with the "Act
Like A Mail Server" box checked. This way, it does not go through
an external mail server.
Ok, here's the problem with this. A few of the larger ISPs such
as Earthlink, AOL and MSN are completely hip to this and have decided
to block e-mails that don't run smoothly through an SMTP server.
They need to recognize a proper address connected to a legitimate
mail server. That means that, quite possibly, a third of your list
won't receive their emails if you decide to send your list using
this method. Ludicrous! In my view, the only way to send bulk mail
is through an SMTP server that allows you to do so. There are tons
that do, trust me. Make sure you have this sorted out or I guarantee
frustration.
Any other problems you come across with this software will be teething
issues only. Either you haven't configured the software correctly
or you have not quite got the hang of it yet. It's not rocket science
but there is a learning curve.
Personally, I absolutely know this software will take your
online business to a whole other level and you will wonder very
soon how you ever made do without it. I can tell you that since
I installed Marge, my sales have at least tripled. Yes, tripled!
But the amazing thing is that I do a third of the work I used to
in order to make the income I now do. I find myself sitting around
wondering what the heck to do. That's probably why I decided to
write this review. I've got to do something haven't I? :)
You
can read more about Mailloop and order online here
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