Ask HN: How do I contact 65,000 people?

[garazy]

Hi,

My first submission to HN, hope I've done it right.

I have a web application that has 65,000 signups over a 4 year period. I want to launch a new version of the application and tell all of the users about it.

How do I go about emailing 65,000 people? I'm pretty sure some are going to hit the 'spam' button and that is my biggest concern from sending them out on the server.

What does everyone recommend?

Thanks!

[ScottWhigham]

Yes, MailChimp, ConstantContact, AWeber, CampaignMonitor are all good ideas.

But...

Here's the first thing you need to consider: why do people use these services instead of writing their own? You already answered - you want it to reach the person's mailbox instead of being marked as spam. That means that these services (and others like them) depend on their reputation as good mailers for delivery. They've built that reputation over millions/billions of interactions.

So here you come with a list of 65,000 - that's a lot of folks. You can't tell them/us how many of these are still active. You don't know how many will hit the spam button.

Where I'm going with this is to consider this question: Why would any of these services risk harming their reputation by sending 65,000 emails for a first-time bulk emailer like yourself?

I suspect (but don't know for sure) that you will get resistance from the companies. Let's just say that 15,000 of your addresses are gmail accounts and that, after they send your email, 1000 of them fail as "Invalid email account", another 1000 mark your email as spam, another 12,000 do not even open your email, and 1000 open it. Of the 1000 who open it, 100 click through.

How will Google react to that? I'd guess they would start lowering their trust for that bulk mailer.

Anyway, I'm rambling. I remember years ago signing up for ConstantContact and they made me do a phone interview and a test run of 1000 emails. They told me that if I ever received more than 1 spam report per 1000 emails, I would likely be asked to leave. I don't know how serious they were and, since it's been several years, I don't know if they still do it.

Just something to consider!

[PonyGumbo → ScottWhigham]

>They told me that if I ever received more than 1 spam report per 1000 emails, I would likely be asked to leave. I don't know how serious they were and, since it's been several years, I don't know if they still do it.

They do, but it's not an automated process. I was sending to a customer list of about 20,000 emails on a monthly basis, and got a phone call when I added an older (3 year old) list to the mix. They asked me about the source of the list, walked me through best practices (e.g. don't send to old lists - your customers might not remember who you are), and things were fine after that. So, unless it's a blatant situation, I suspect that you get fair warning.

I think in this case, the greatest concern -is- going to be the age of the list. I'd be wary of sending mail to anyone you haven't had some contact with in the last six months.

[_b8r0]

The low impact version would be to use the existing application to communicate with the users. You can either tell them there's a new version coming (with a link to a landing page with a call to action) or you can ask them if they want to opt in to announcements regarding the new application.

Alternatively you could use a service such as mailchimp to send emails to all 65,000 users. If this is the only time in 4 years that you've emailed them, then I don't think many people would react badly as long as you introduce yourself, let them know why they're getting the email and give them the opportunity to opt out (which they'll get through a service like mailchimp). It also helps if you keep things completely on topic (i.e. "you're receiving this because you signed up to our app and we wanted to tell you about some of the new features we're rolling out in the next version").

If you're getting a 1-2% conversion rate from mail shots you're doing well, so you might want to consider both (I'd probably do the mailshot first, then the page rather than the other way around).

[garazy → _b8r0]

Wow thanks for the quick reply. I've had a look at some of the rules attached to CampaignMonitor and looks like I can only send to the last 2 years worth with them -

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/anti-spam/

[RiderOfGiraffes]

It's nowhere near the same scale, but when I wanted something to email all the people registered for the MathsJam (this weekend - geting nervous and excited!) I just wrote a script that connects to my SMTP server and sends an email. That way each email is personally addressed and only has the single recipient, making it less likely to be considered spam. The text is personalised as well, populating various fields from the data I have on that individual. Because the email goes only to them, that's OK. I don't believe that would be possible with a bulk emailer.

I'm only emailing about 200 people and it takes about 2.5 seconds for each email. To hit 65000 people would take about 2 days, but at least each person would get an email sent specifically to them.

[d_r → RiderOfGiraffes]

But how do you know that the individual recipient's mail client/service doesn't categorize your message as spam? If you're baking your own e-mail solution, you need a 'good' IP address, correct SPF/reverse DNS/headers/obscure SendMail tweaks, and much other magic.

[RiderOfGiraffes → d_r]

I'm using the SMTP gateway that my well-known ISP provides, just as if I'm sending each one, lovingly hand crafted, via a standard email client from a regular desktop.

So here's the question: how do my regular emails not get classed as spam?

[rlpb → RiderOfGiraffes]

It's fine unless you have many recipients on one particular domain (or one particular MX). Then it'll notice.

For example, I recently did an email shot for someone. Of 3936 registered users, 924 are @hotmail.com and 357 are @gmail.com.

(these were sent from a server which has built up its reputation over time; I assume there would be a problem with an order of magnitude more emails arriving from a new location)

[benjam1n]

http://www.mailchimp.com and http://www.campaignmonitor.com are probably two best options

[fabiandesimone]

Try Madmimi. I use them constantly and they are solid. Their stats are a bit weak, but they are more relaxed as to the origins of the email list.