Printer Friendly Version
Email this thread to a friend
|
Couple Questions on Affiliate Programs (In: Members Lounge)
Featured Web Site Template |
|
There are 0 guests and 1 members in the forums right now.
Reflects user activity within the last 5 minutes
|
|
| Member |
Message |
him8nc
Joined: Apr 10, 2005
# Posts: 1
|
Posted: 2005-Apr-10 21:31
Hi folks,
I just joined this forum and read back in the posts to 2001 looking for answers to my questions.
I really, really need some advice. This is kind of long. Sorry.
I'm a writer and I also do layout and design of print newsletters, and I'm learning about web design (just finished level II Dreamweaver) so I know a little about this stuff but not a whole lot. I'm fine as far as writing the newsletter, getting people to my web site, etc.
I'm here to ask for professional guidance. Maybe you know of a book, ebook or web site that could help me learn about the different options for doing e-newsletters. I need to learn, both for my lawn greetings biz and also for a project for the company my brother works for.
He works for the local franchisee of a national company, and they are looking for a company to do newsletters each month. But it wouldn't be just one newsletter that gets sent out. More like one basic newsletter, then most of the franchisees want to include their local contact information and details about their local offices -- broker profile, client profile, events, etc. And that's great -- it makes more sense than sending out just one generic newsletter for all franchisees and pointing their customers to the home offices, which would be inundated with phone calls that should be routed to franchisees.
A national company quoted them $40,000 per year to do a 4-page, monthly newsletter in Microsoft Word. They proposed locking three of the four pages so the franchisees can't change them, and the fourth page (which wouldn't necessarily be page four) would be blank for them to add their local info. Then the $40,000 company would email this to all franchisees, they would open the fourth page to personalize, then print and mail them out.
Personally, I don't think four print pages is enough to get into enough meaty information for their customers to think, "Hey, this was a great newsletter, full of helpful information." They're business brokers, so their clients are buying and selling businesses and franchises. But tha'ts just my opinion. For now, we're going with pricing it as a four-page print newsletter because that gives us an apple-to-apples comparison with the folks that want $40,000/year.
But these offices want to send BOTH email and print newsletters. Sounds like they want to rely more on email than print to save mailing costs, which makes sense. But I'm concerned that I would end up doing twice the work each month.
I've got Quark XPress and know how to use it well. At first I thought I'd do the whole print newsletter in Quark and send the pdf files to these offices as attachments so it would also be their "email newsletter." Then they could print them to mail, and also send them on to their email address books full of clients and potential clients.
But then I learned they wanted their own page to personalize and email newsletters too.
My brother (who is great at writing/marketing/sales) is acting as our contact person and negotiator for this deal since he workers for this company. But we're butting heads because he doesn't know diddly about how all of this works on the web.
He doesn't understand that if I do the newsletter in Quark and email pdf files to the franchisees, they can't open the pdf and personalize one of the pages, then turn it into a pdf AGAIN and send that out as an attachment. It would be one 3-page pdf file (which I did) and then another 1-page pdf file (the local page they did). And that would not look professional at all. "Our email newsletter is attached. Be sure to open up both files because we're sending it as two files instead of one..."
Personally, I don't think people would be too excited about having to open up one pdf attachment, let alone two. People are busy. They don't want to wait for something to open in Acrobat. I know when I get stuff at work (I'm a reporter at a newspaper) I don't want to wait for it to open.
If I create the newsletter in Microsoft Word like the $40,000 people said they would do, it might solve a few problems (because the franchisees could then personalize their own page), but I don't think Word can do as much cool stuff as Quark. Plus what would stop the franchisees from dropping out of our gig and doing future newsletters totally on their own if it's in Word? They've got Word, but they don't have Quark. I feel like I'd be giving up some security of repeat sales if they are able to use the template I set up to do future newsletters.
I finished my Level II Dreamweaver class at college and I'm feeling a lot better about doing web sites, although I haven't had time to dig in because I have a huge deadline for my master's right now.
Forgive my ignorance since I'm new to the html/web part of this, but if I create an html newsletter, does it actually exist on a web site (like the way it exists when you put it into your web site archives), or is it only in that email message? Because I'm thinking why not copy the same basic newsletter for each franchisee, and then go in and change the local stuff for each one and give them a different URL?
What if I did that and the franchisees sent out an email to all of their contacts saying their newsletter is available, along with a lnk for people to go read the enewsletter online? Could set up a free YahooGroup or Google Group for each one to take care of that, right?
But would I be doing twice the work?
1. One version in Quark or Word
2. Another version as an html email or as a web page
That's another area my brother and I are butting heads on.
He says he doesn't know why we would need to use something like Constant Contact or Bravenet's email newsletter database management tools. Just set up separate email accounts for each franchisee for us to manage (like in Yahoo) and we can maintain them for the franchisees if they email us to say drop so-and-so from the list, add so-and-so, etc.
But I don't like this because:
a. Maintaining databases for 200 franchisees could take a significant amount of time.
b. Don't some email accounts limit the number of emails you can send within a certain period of time?
c. A Yahoo account for something like this won't look professional.
d. The features built into CC don't compare to doing it on our own with a regular email account.
The more I read about newsletters (and I've been scanning the Internet lately to learn more), the more it seems like SOMETHING must be used. How would it work otherwise? It might be a mess.
My preference would be to do this as an html email newsletter, and if I need to go in and change their contact info and some local stuff, we'll have to consider that when we pitch the job and make sure we charge enough to make it worth our while.
And what is a reasonable amount to charge? I don't want to end up committed to doing this job for peanuts. We got quotes from a few places. One wants $40,000/year. Another wants $25,000/year. That's for the four-page print newsletter in Microsoft Word, leaving the fourth page to be personalized. We're no longer comparing apples-to-apples, and he thinks he'll seal the deal if our price is way lower than the $40,000 people.
I'm so frustrated I could scream.
He's ready to pitch this to his boss by having me create a prototype print newsletter in Quark, print it out, show it to his boss, and go from there. He thinks asking for $1,200 down as a retainer, $1,000 per month, and a committment for 12 months is reasonable.
I'm thinking that for 1/2 of that $1,000 each month, I'll be messing with 200-some franchisees each month (let's say 250 franchisees). So that means I'd be paid about $2 for taking care of each franchisee's newsletter.
I don't see how it would be worth my while.
Any opinions? Comments? Advice? Run screaming from this project?
When I search for info about email newsletters, it's hard to sort through the many, many sites that are like infomercials and end up selling the very basics as far as how to why you need a newsletter, how to write it, what to write about, etc. I know all that stuff. I need to find reliable sources to learn more about the actual nuts and bolts for this stuff.
I guess I need to learn more about:
* Html newsletters -- The basics. Is it any different from creating a web site in Dreamweaver?
* Whether to do the print version in Microsoft Word, leave a blank page, let them customize. Or do it in Quark, which I already know?
* Posting the newsletter online instead of sending as html, and emailing them the link to go read it.
* How to manage the database of email addresses. Definitely would need to include the cost of using CC into our fees so we don't end up spending more money than we're making on this deal.
* If we're underpricing for this service and a better idea of what a reasonable pricing structure would be.
Thanks for any info you can share or for pointing me in the right direction! I appreciate it!
- Jill -
|
 |
unreviewed
Joined: Dec 07, 2000
# Posts: 6776
|
Posted: 2005-Apr-10 23:23
>>Html newsletters -- The basics. Is it any different from creating a web site in Dreamweaver?
You can create the page with Dreamweaver. However, there are several things you need to understand.
1. The average viewing area in an email reader, such as Outlook, or an online service such as Hotmail, is much smaller than the viewing area given in an Internet browser. Design with that in mind.
2. The graphics used must be sent with the email, or linked to from a publicity available web site. Also, the new default behavior of Windows XP with service pack 2 installed, is not to display graphics that are simply linked to, so it all most forces you to include the graphics with the message. This can make for a slow opening email if you are not careful.
3. Most spam filters will send HTML messages directly into the spam box and chances are, your message will never be seen.
4. Big email handlers (Internet Service Providers) such as AOL, MSN or Yahoo, will block all your email if they receive spam complaints from some of their customers, and it takes only a few.
>>Posting the newsletter online instead of sending as html, and emailing them the link to go read it.
Much better idea, but even then, number 4 above will still apply.
In short, email is very hard to send these days. Expanding on number 4, other things that will get your messages blocked by the big ISPs are sending to many messages to accounts that no longer exist. Email addresses are disposable and are constantly being changed. So you need to track email messages that are bounced back, and you need to be diligent in removing the addresses from your database. You will lose 10 to 25 % of your database per month, and most of the rest will need to flag your address as trusted to keep it out of the spam box.
As I have already mentioned, it takes very few complaints to have all of your messages blocked if you have even a few people complain that you are sending unwanted email.
There are a couple of ways to send your email.
1. Using a list server.
A list server can be free, if your web hosting company has one available. If not, you would need to pay a third party, and they will demand that you prove the email addresses on your list are opt in. With a list server, you would create as many lists as you like, perhaps one for each of the franchisees. Once that is done, you end up with one email address for each list. You then send one email to that list, and the list server forwards that message on to all on that list. Very simple. A list sever also provides an automated way for email recipients to remove themselves from the list if they no longer wish to receive emails, and usually can be setup to remove messages that are bounced back as undeliverable.
2. Use a bulk mailing program, such as http://www.infacta.com/ which is a Windows program that runs on your own computer. When you first look at this program, you will realize that it does most of what you want to do. However, there are again some “Gotcha’s” when you use this type of program. The biggest problem is that big ISPs block email sent from computers on residential Internet connections. The solution is to get a business ASDL connection (100 to 150 bucks per month) with a static IP address, and set up with a reverse lookup record that matches the domain of the return email address you will use to send the messages. Again, keep in mind, that IP will be blocked and become useless if you receive complaints about your email. This could happen using a list server as well. If you don’t want to get a business connection, you can set the program to send the email through your local ISPs mail server, but that is slow, and only good for small lists, under a couple of hundred email address. Try to send more than that, and your ISP will block all your emails. For large lists, you can setup the bulk mailer to send through the national company’s email server. But again, if you end up getting their email server blocked, how quickly will you be fired?
The fact is, email sucks.
Even if you are sure you have good opt in lists, you still need to get by the spam filters. Most messages you send will never be read or seen. Even the “40 thousand per year” company can not help in that. They may be willing to do the work for their fee, but they do not have a free pass to email boxes.
|
|
beth_lk
Staff
Joined: Jun 23, 2004
# Posts: 1308
|
Posted: 2005-Apr-11 00:46
unreviwed is correct - most places I sign up for newsletters at now days have me go and add them to my email address book and click that that specific email address is not spam, and even then this is not a 100% I will get their newsletter any ways. Plus not very many people want to mess around with doing this in order to get a newsletter.
It takes very few people complaining for you to lose your ISP...
Why don't you consider putting your newsletter online at the web site and sending out snail mail post cards with the URL on and a little "meat" to entice them to go read the newsletter online.
No spam dangers and should greatly lower your costs.
Hope this helps 
Beth
|
|
robdawg
Joined: Jan 03, 2005
# Posts: 55
|
Posted: 2005-Jun-26 19:57
Anyone have any luck with news letters?
|
|
You are not permitted to post messages in this forum or topic, because of one or more of the following reasons:
- You have not yet logged in, or registered properly as a member
- You are a member, but no longer have posting rights.
- This is a private forum, for which you do not have permissions.
If you are a recent member, it's possible that you simply have not yet confirmed your account. Please
check your email for a message entitled 'JimWorld Forums: Confirm Your Account' and follow the instructions
contained within.
If you cannot find this message, click here to Re-Send it.
|
If you are still experiencing problem, please read the
Login Assistance
Article for some advice on what may be causing your login not to work properly.
|
Switch to Advanced Editor and ...
Create a New Topic
or Reply to this Thread
|
|
Inbox
