Quick Tips: Using Hosted Email Marketing Software

Being a parent, I get a fair share of email communications from school, youth sports organizations and other related groups. I also subscribe to some small business e-newsletters.

I cringe whenever I receive one and all of the recipients are clearly visible in the Sent To field. Not good!

Whether an email list is 10 or 10,000, it needs to be handled with great care.

Not taking proper precautions to collect, store and send to an email list puts the sender in certain liability. How? Just imagine if one of the email addresses on your list is a spammer. You send out an email campaign, paste your list in the CC rather than the BCC fields and bang: The spammer now has your email list to start sending a river of junk mail, or worse, a message-containing virus.

An easy and affordable way to gain and maintain the trust of your email recipients is to use a hosted email marketing software solution.

They provide secure and ethical means to:

1. Collect email addresses
2. Maintain lists in a secure environment (on their servers, not your easily misplaced thumb drive!)
3. Create professional-looking mailers on pre-formatted templates
4. Provide the recipient with a visible and simple option to unsubscribe (required by law)
5. Get your mailers successfully delivered to your recipients (loosely-crafted mailers often get caught in spam filters)
6. Find out how your mailer performed. How many people received it, opened it, and clicked through to your website.
7. Gain access from any computer. Because they are hosted, you can log in anywhere, from any computer and there is no software to download.

Another nice feature of email campaign software is it keeps your list fresh by weeding out bounced, incomplete, suspect and duplicate addresses.

Constant Contact, MailChimp and Campaign Monitor are three leading options. They all have similar features and fees. I am familiar with all three, and use Campaign Monitor quite frequently (screenshot of Campaign Monitors spiel below).



All provide a free account level where you can add and store your list(s), and only pay for sent campaigns.

For example, Campaign Monitor charges 5 dollars plus 1 cent per address for each emailer you send. So a mailer with 100 email addresses will cost you 6 bucks.

Not bad at all for a professionally sent email campaign...and better night's sleep!

Quick Tips: Pointing A Domain Name to Your Google Site

Google Sites, which a tremendous free website builder and hosting platform, allows you to point the domain you purchased from GoDaddy.com, Network Solutions, etc. to your website, replacing the Google-generated URL.

It's a heck of a lot easier to promote and market your website using the purchased domain over the default URL. For example, my personal Google Site's URL is:

http://sites.google.com/site/philleclair. But to make it more professional, I purchased www.philleclair.com.

To shield you from the same possible and nerve-wracking oversight I experienced, here's a few additional steps to complement what is provided by Google Sites Help and the domain host provider:

1. Signed in to your Google Site, go to to More actions and click on Manage site.

2. Click on Web Address and add your custom domain.

3. Login to your domain host provider and Manage Domains (may be under My Domains or Domain Manager. Click on the custom domain you want to point to the website. Look for a link that allows you to edit DNS. GoDaddy's link as shown below is, "Total DNS Options".

4. Under CNAMES, click to edit for www. GoDaddy's uses a pencil icon for editing. In Enter an Alias Name, enter: www. In the Points to Host Name field, enter: ghs.google.com (the default setting is "@"). For TTL, you can leave as default (1 hour is GoDaddy's). Click OK to save settings.

Step 4 was where I initially failed to follow the GoDaddy steps properly. In the Enter an Alias Name, I first entered the whole domain, www.philleclair.com. Strike one. The second time I entered "www" with a period (www.). Strike two. Realizing the period at the end of www was the hinderance, I avoided striking out, and my third attempt was successful. The DNS can take several hours to refresh, so your domain is not going to immediately going to point to the website.

Best bet is to complete these steps before you go to bed. It will prevent from typing your domain name into the browser every five minutes to see if your efforts were fruitful!

For a better understanding of the terms DNS, CNAMES, NAMESERVERS, TTL, spend some time reading your domain host provider's Help Pages. Wikpedia is also a good resource for enlightenment on these definitions.