Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Yep. Load emails into excel. Open outlook. Copy entire list and paste in bcc field.

You still have to write a good email and subject line.

Michael

Perfumefairy,

I read with interest your post and then asked myself if the restaurant that you represent gives free meals? There is always a perception of poor quality or a lesser service when something os offered for free. It has no perceived value if it is free.

Those who hand out business cards that are free from Vistaprint or one of the other print organisations on the internet never provide any quality stock for the cards to be printed on so they look poor quality and feel poor or cheap. If you receive a business card that is pointed on a quality bond card then it says that the person handing you the card has pride in their quality business and will deal with you in the same way. If the quality of the card is poor then the service will also be poor.

Yes there are free email systems that can be used but they will not give you the same outcomes that a quality system will. If you have the time to do the work then there are systems such as Market Mailer that you can do all the set up and transmissions and all it costs is a few dollars a month to transmit the emails.

You have not stated the restaurant’s positioning and so I cannot tell what prices they charge for items on their menu but I would advise you to consider the message you are giving your clients if you are looking for ‘Free’ then either you are not very good at your job or you are targeting the wrong type of business as clients if they are not willing to pay for your service and the on-cost of emailing. If you are good at what you do then the client will pay a premium price for your service.

It is worth remembering that only 10% of people look for the cheapest prices and at the other end 10% do not care what it costs they want the best. This leaves 80% of the buying public who want VFM - Value for Money. This does not mean cheap. It means they want to feel they have had good value. Do not compete on price and if you want quality or service then be prepared to pay for it.

I wish you luck with your email campaign and please read up as much as you can on how to be effective. If the emails cost a few pennies to send out and you get a 10% take up what is the value of the campaign to the client. Surely it is worth them investing for a god return.

Kind regards

Nigel T Packer

Nigel said it well. Free services are worth what you pay for them. Don't do that to your restaurant's image. Commercial email services are not that expensive, and they provide a valuable service. Your customers will respect you more if the eblast is professionally handled.

Thank you for all your comments. We are doing a lot of advertising so we have to choose where to spend the money and we figured if there is a system to send out email blasts for free we could use the money on other advertising needs. I understand your points on the value of spending money on advertising to get customers, but if I can do it with not much headache than it's worth their money to pay me than some other company and use the advertising budget some where else. That was why I was inquiring for a "free" system. Thanks for all your ideas

Michael, Thank you for your response. Do you know how many email addresses Outlook can send at once? We have about 2,400 emails so just wondering how many it can handle at once. Thanks

Thank you so much for all your feedback! This has definitely given me a direction to go that I feel good about! Thanks!