4 ms·

Startups can do email marketing for free, from CakeMail

11 points by zoyth 19y ago

CakeMail offers free email marketing accounts to startups, up to 25,000 emails per month.

mixmax 19y ago
Does this have something to do with this thing they call "spam" that is supposedly a problem for a lot of people on those intertubes?
- zoyth 19y ago
  Of course not. It's called newsletters, like to one you can subscribe to here: http://www.37signals.com/ http://www.37signals.com/
  - mixmax 19y ago
    Aaah I see. I have to learn about those newsletter things sometime. Maybe that's why I get so much mail everyday.
- logjam 19y ago
  I have to agree. How again is this not a free way to spam 25,000 people a month?
  - zoyth 19y ago
    "Account usage should be in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Anti-Spam Policy." This is of course strictly enforced and thoroughly monitored. Letting people use our system to spam would definitely damage our reputation and negatively affect our (paying) customers.
    - kingnothing 19y ago
      From their Anti-Spam Policy: Acceptable Use Explicitly opted in with you online. Explicitly opted in with you offline. Gave you their business card at an event. Explicitly opted in for the subject you are contacting them about.
SwellJoe 19y ago
I guess sending large volumes of mail must be difficult...somehow. There are several services like this (and sure it's cool that it's free and all), but I've never been able to understand what's so hard about sending a few thousands emails. I've built bulk mail senders on a whim on several occasions...when we re-launched our website, and the passwords had to change because of different encryption, I sent out 5000 messages by writing a 25-ish line perl script to pull addresses from the database and queue up the messages. Put a 1 second sleep after each message, and things never get out of hand, as far as server load or bandwidth usage--in fact, it was completely unnoticeable and the system was in service the whole time as both our web server and email server. I've done the same with as many as 20000 recipients and multiple sending SMTP servers. It's just such a simple task that it wasn't even worth looking on the web for an off-the-shelf solution. What is it about sending out a large volume of mail in one burst that frightens people so much? I'm sincerely curious...I see it brought up quite frequently among startup founders as a serious problem worth spending money on. If your list isn't a spam list--e.g. 90% bounces and errors--sending out mail is trivial, right? I guess if we're talking about a million recipients...but, I can only think of a few companies that could possibly send to a million recipients without it being unsolicited (and those folks are dropping it into mailboxes on their own systems in a large percentage of cases...Google to gmail, Yahoo to @yahoo.com, MS to hotmail.com, etc.). Heck, many of our non-technical users use off-the-shelf stuff, like PHPList, to send out newsletters to a few hundred or thousand users, without giving it a second thought. What am I missing?
- zoyth 19y ago
  Sending emails is not rocket science. But it begins to be more complicated when you want to serious about it: First, you’ll want to automate bounce processing. There is typically a 2.5% churn rate per month on average on a list. You'll start to be blocked at 10% at many ISP. Second, you’ll want to be authenticated if you don't want to be tagged as a spam. Think of configuring SPF, SenderID, DomainKey and DKIM. You'll also want to remove recipients that will tag your email as spam, and that will happen, no matter what. For that you'll need to have your feedback loops configured at major ISP, and unsubscribe the plaintiffs as you get the reports. And we’re still not talking about calculating open-rates, click-rates and reporting them in a way that is efficient and gives you insights about your marketing operations. It all depends on how your value your time. We think you have better to do than tweak yourself an email marketing solution.

11 points by zoyth 19y ago

CakeMail offers free email marketing accounts to startups, up to 25,000 emails per month.

Does this have something to do with this thing they call "spam" that is supposedly a problem for a lot of people on those intertubes?

zoyth 19y ago
Of course not. It's called newsletters, like to one you can subscribe to here: http://www.37signals.com/ http://www.37signals.com/
- mixmax 19y ago
  Aaah I see. I have to learn about those newsletter things sometime. Maybe that's why I get so much mail everyday.
logjam 19y ago
I have to agree. How again is this not a free way to spam 25,000 people a month?
- zoyth 19y ago
  "Account usage should be in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Anti-Spam Policy." This is of course strictly enforced and thoroughly monitored. Letting people use our system to spam would definitely damage our reputation and negatively affect our (paying) customers.
  - kingnothing 19y ago
    From their Anti-Spam Policy: Acceptable Use Explicitly opted in with you online. Explicitly opted in with you offline. Gave you their business card at an event. Explicitly opted in for the subject you are contacting them about.

SwellJoe 19y ago

I guess sending large volumes of mail must be difficult...somehow. There are several services like this (and sure it's cool that it's free and all), but I've never been able to understand what's so hard about sending a few thousands emails. I've built bulk mail senders on a whim on several occasions...when we re-launched our website, and the passwords had to change because of different encryption, I sent out 5000 messages by writing a 25-ish line perl script to pull addresses from the database and queue up the messages. Put a 1 second sleep after each message, and things never get out of hand, as far as server load or bandwidth usage--in fact, it was completely unnoticeable and the system was in service the whole time as both our web server and email server. I've done the same with as many as 20000 recipients and multiple sending SMTP servers. It's just such a simple task that it wasn't even worth looking on the web for an off-the-shelf solution. What is it about sending out a large volume of mail in one burst that frightens people so much? I'm sincerely curious...I see it brought up quite frequently among startup founders as a serious problem worth spending money on. If your list isn't a spam list--e.g. 90% bounces and errors--sending out mail is trivial, right? I guess if we're talking about a million recipients...but, I can only think of a few companies that could possibly send to a million recipients without it being unsolicited (and those folks are dropping it into mailboxes on their own systems in a large percentage of cases...Google to gmail, Yahoo to @yahoo.com, MS to hotmail.com, etc.). Heck, many of our non-technical users use off-the-shelf stuff, like PHPList, to send out newsletters to a few hundred or thousand users, without giving it a second thought. What am I missing?

zoyth 19y ago
Sending emails is not rocket science. But it begins to be more complicated when you want to serious about it: First, you’ll want to automate bounce processing. There is typically a 2.5% churn rate per month on average on a list. You'll start to be blocked at 10% at many ISP. Second, you’ll want to be authenticated if you don't want to be tagged as a spam. Think of configuring SPF, SenderID, DomainKey and DKIM. You'll also want to remove recipients that will tag your email as spam, and that will happen, no matter what. For that you'll need to have your feedback loops configured at major ISP, and unsubscribe the plaintiffs as you get the reports. And we’re still not talking about calculating open-rates, click-rates and reporting them in a way that is efficient and gives you insights about your marketing operations. It all depends on how your value your time. We think you have better to do than tweak yourself an email marketing solution.