Sendy: The Easiest Way to Save Money on Email Marketing
You must have heard the saying that “the money is in the list.” The email list is the engine room of most successful online businesses because they are the foundation you need in order to succeed in your email marketing. No wonder a lot of business owners are spending a fortune to build their list as well as send messages across to people on their list.
It is possible you may have heard about companies such as Aweber, Getresponse, Rapid response, Mailchimp, etc. that provide mailing services and how much they charge their customers per campaign. But the question is, do you have all the money in the world to spend on sending messages to people on your list?
Well to answer this question, let’s consider a situation where one could have a system that:
– Is as good as Aweber, MailChimp, Get Response, etc. and has all the great features of the aforementioned software.
– Is relatively cheaper to run, and can save you over $1,000 monthly communicating with your readers or customers.
– You are not required to pay extra money to the size of your mailing list increases.
Would you ignore such a service provider or simply jump on the bandwagon? I am sure your guess is as good as mine. Sendy will do all that for you, and yet make your campaigns as effective and efficient as those provided by the highly expensive email service providers.
What exactly is Sendy?
Sendy is a self-hosted email Newsletter Application, which uses Amazon SES that runs on PHP and MYSQL for sending emails. Its simply means that you can install this application directly on your server. You can also install it on your subdomain such as email.yoursite.com if your host company allows that.
While other service providers charge as much as $105 to $200 per 10,000 emails, Amazon SES is only $1. What a difference! However, Amazon does not in itself provide email service tool for you to use this feature. ItThis is where Sendy comes in handy as they use their application to integrate with Amazon SES to enable you to send your emails.
How much does it cost to get this Application?
You don’t need to break your bank to get this application because it is quite affordable. All that is required is a one-time fee of $59. That is all. No other hidden condition or charges attached. The $59 includes technical team support as well as future updates. I am sure you wouldn’t afford to miss out on this.
Why I Prefer Sendy?
You might be asking, “I am already ok with my email marketing service provider, why then should I need Sendy?”
– While other self-hosted applications send email through your server’s SMTP, which counts by the hour and has some limitations, Sendy employs Amazon SeS, and no hourly sending limit is applied.
– Besides, like I rightly observed earlier, while it costs between $105 and $200 to send emails across to a 10,000 campaign list on other providers, it costs $1 to do so on Sendy thereby helping you save between $104 and $199 per month. What a cost effective way of doing business!
– Furthermore, while the chances of your mail ending up in the spam box are quite high with other providers, less than 2% of emails end up in the spam box when you use Sendy.
– Emails are sent through Amazon SES. It’s makes it easier for you to track your emails
– Tutorials are available through support as well as on their forum, to enable you set up and run your tool efficiently.
– Various reviews from the web and individuals rate them well above other providers.
The Negative Sides of Sendy
Just as there are good sides to the use of the Amazon SES, there are also a few negative ones. These include:
– The number of emails that can be sent per month is somehow limited. They are not as limitless as we are made to believe. There is the limit of 10,000 emails per day placed. In order to break this barrier, a request has to be made to Amazon. It’s can eventually raise the sending limit per day to as much as 50,000 emails.
– Sendy can only be installed on a single site. To install on multiple sites, you need to get additional licenses for each site.
– The Setup of the tool is done by you. Its is unlike what obtains in Aweber, MailChimp, Get Response, etc. Where you only need to sign up and get going. If you are unable to set up Sendy on your server, the technical team will do that for you for a fee of $79 which I think is fairly high considering it costs more than the price of buying the software itself.
– Sending emails on Amazon SES is relatively slow. You start off with sending five emails/second, with sending limit of 10,000 emails per day. So if you need to send thousands of emails per second, then Sendy might not be the best option for you.
– List segmentation is difficult. You can hardly segment your list, and the Advanced featured is not functioning at the moment as it should be.
Features of Sendy self-Hosted Email Application
All the characteristics present in the top email service providers are also there on Sendy. Those features include Autoresponder, Campaign Builder, Importing and Exporting of email lists, Automatic bounce handling, Statistical graph, Reporting, Unsubscribe, etc.
Also, Sendy has the feature that allows you create multiple accounts especially if you want to provide an email service for your client as a company. Then you can create separate logins for such accounts.
Another great feature is your ability to alternate between using single or double opt-in for your list. Its is in contrast to what happens on Mailchimp where you are not allowed to alter your double opt-in setting.
Besides, Sendy has an option that allows for email filtering. This feature helps to clean your list of emails regularly bounced by firewalls or that are non-existent, making sure emails are not delivered to them subsequently.
In a nutshell, here is a brief description of the various features available on Sendy:
• Multiple brands: If you are managing multiple brands or services, this allows you grant access to individual clients to enable them set up and send their own Newsletter.
• List and Subscribers: Here you can manage your subscribers by being able to import or delete subscribers, do a single/double opt-in, add custom fields, subscribe/unsubscribe confirmation page, subscribe form/API to add users, thank you email and good bye email, etc.
• Send newsletter: Sendy adopts multi-threading to send emails via the Amazon SES. It takes away email sending limits that would otherwise be set by your host. It’s eventually helps save a lot of money in the long run.
• Beautiful reports: You get a result of all campaigns in a beautifully formatted report. It’s easy to see results of opens, clicks, bounces, countries with charts and data, complaints, etc. You can also export segments of your subscribers from the report in order to re-target accurately.
• Automatic bounce, complaint, and unsubscribing handling: You do not need manual post campaign cleanups as all complaints, bounces and unsubscribes are automatically taken care of once you send your newsletters. The system filters out any email that is unwanted or problematic.
• Custom fields: Apart from using names and emails for your storing your forms, the custom fields allow you to use personalization tags to create more personalized experience with your subscribers in your newsletters.
• Autoresponders: With autoresponders, you can create drip campaigns to follow up with your subscribers. Besides, emails can be sent to them for signing up for your newsletter, periodically, or on a particular date just to maintain communication. Setting up the autoresponder campaigns is quite easy since the feature is built-in and not an add-on premium.
• Client Access: You can give your clients access to send their newsletter at a price that you set. It eventually enables you to make more profit. You can as well set a monthly sending limit for them.
Installing Sendy on Your Server
The moment you pay for Sendy, you are granted access to the download page where the package is downloaded and then installed on your server. Installing this script shouldn’t b a big trouble as the support/technical team is there to provide you the needed support or step-by-step guide on how to install it and after that connect your server to the Amazon SES.
Getting installation help from the technical team is not free as a fee of $79 is charged for them to set it up for you by themselves. If you believe you can do it on your own, you are free to go ahead and only ask questions whenever you get stuck. The installation process is relatively easy.
When you log in to your Sendy admin panel, you can easily see your Amazon SES Quota displayed on the left side of the panel. Information regarding your email limit, as well as the maximum sending limit per second, is conspicuously shown. You can then create your brand through this area. As soon as that is done, you are given the button with which to create your campaign messages using HTML or WYSIWYG editor. You are allowed to send a test email to verify if the system has been well set up or not. Once you confirm the workability of the system, you may go ahead to create your email campaigns.
