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HOME · Friday, July 4, 2008

Ecommerce: A Day in the Life

MaxBulk Mailer

I finally did it! Out of complete frustration with my mailing lists, I decided to switch to MaxBulk Mailer. I really like it. It has simplified my life…. HUGE!

What I love about it is that I can preview my mail in a variety of different browsers, send both html/text emails, check my mail for spam content, and send my mail without attachments. Until now, I’ve been sending my mail as an inline html attachment, so that anyone not set up to view attachments, didn’t see my mail.
I can also take a large list and stagger it, and send out 100 every 2 minutes. Here’s the other thing that I think is very different from mailing lists… it sends an individual email to each address, instead of one blanket email to a list. It takes longer, but it runs in the background, and I believe I could schedule it if I wanted to. I have just begun using it, so I’m still learning.

I have to figure out how to handle subscribes and unsubscribes. I believe Brian from Practical Ecommerce blogged about this to me before, so I need to try to find that back in my archives.

I think that by changing to MaxBulk, more of my subscribers are seeing my mail. I would get emails daily saying that they can’t open my mail, or couldn’t see it. Lee Ann started asking her phone orders yesterday how they heard about us, and a number of them said they just saw our email for the first time today! I’d say that’s a huge success. I hope it continues. It’s a huge relief for me. Because when someones says they can’t see your mail, it’s hard to trouble shoot. And in many cases it’s user error. In most cases they just need to click a “view images” button, but that must not be obvious for all people.

ok, gotta go! The family is taking a trip to Tulsa in a few days and I have lots of errands to run to get ready. Both of my kids are in a wedding, and it should be fun!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under eCommerce Entries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Comments:

Donna Emperador Says:
April 4th, 2008 at 7:53 am

I have not been using a mailing service yet as I am just starting out, but it helps to learn from other people’s experiences. I will keep MaxBulk Mailer in mind so I don’t waste my time with less efficient services. Thanks.

A. Carter Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 11:37 am

Hi Michelle,

I was so happy when I found your blog! I have been looking for blogs about online businesses being run by moms. I am a working mom of one (soon to be two) and have been interested in starting my own online business for 4 years. Each time I start I figure out a way to talk myself out of it. I’m not sure if you blogged about this, but how did you make the leap of faith?

I have a background in web development and plan to manage the whole shebang myself. A friend of mine who is a graphic designer and I have bartered our skills (she is designing the site for me, while I built a site for her). The problem is once I get things moving I find any small obstacle to deter me. So far I have been moving at a steady pace, but feel that self doubt beginning to come in again. So, how did you do it? Did you quit your job outright or did you try to juggle both? Did you set aside a good amount of savings in order to carry the short months? Where you nervous about vendors not replying to your requests for their products or that you might not have enough inventory to catch your audience’s attention? I know these are alot of questions, but with maternity leave looming in the near future I feel this might be the best time to try out my dream. If you can answer only a few of the questions it would be immensely helpful.

Thanks!!
A. Carter

Leave a Comment:

Michelle Lambert is co-owner of an online business called Red Hats By You. Lambert handles all of the internet responsibilities related to designing and maintaining their ecommerce presence.

Michelle has been an Art Director at McCabe, Duval & Associates in Portland, Maine where she specialized in multimedia and print design. Currently, Michelle works from her home in Michigan where she lives with her husband Chris and two children, Maddie and Grady.

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