The right email service for the job.
“I’m having trouble sending emails to my group!” Was how the call began.
A friend that runs a great non-profit describes herself as being at a 3rd grade level when it comes to IT.
She has a group of about 175 folks that all email each other for help and support in their little community. Every time she wants to email them, she pulls up a list she made in her Gmail, and emails all of them. Anytime they want to email the group, they copy and paste the whole list from the last person’s email, paste it into a new list, and off the go.
You can see where there would be problems here.
Security Problems in Group Emails
Maybe not everyone wants to see who all is in the group. Maybe some people don’t want anyone to know they are in the group. Also, any one of those people could copy that list and give it to their Uncle Larry at the car dealership. Now they’re all getting SPAM emails about the latest coupe from Uncle Larry.
Or, maliciousness aside, if somebody got a virus in their email, that virus is going to send itself to everyone on that list. That’s how older viruses worked, and some still do. They draw from your contact list and email away, making it look like you sent it.
List Management Problems with Mailing Lists
Another problem with copy/paste group management is that you don’t have a stable way to keep track of who is on the list and who isn’t. Every time you get the email, you are assuming it’s the same group of people, but someone could easily be left off, or somebody you don’t know could be added.
When you combine that issue with the difficulties of selecting, copying and pasting on a smartphone vs. a desktop, you magnify this problem. As an administrator, you also have no control on who gets the emails or who posts to the group. The only archive you have is your past emails that you’ve sent.
You also have no real control over who doesn’t want to be in your group anymore. This makes it like those awful group texts that you can’t escape. This is also why these bulk mailings have an increased SPAM rating.
High SPAM Ratings from Bulk Emails
Since you are emailing 175 people in a single email, the SPAM rating of the email is going to be high. Various things can affect your SPAM rating, and the higher it is, the less likely it’s going to reach its destination. Click through rates, the words in your email, the number of recipients, and your sending patterns all affect your SPAM rating.
For a long time, you couldn’t use the word “Specialist” in any email newsletters, because in the middle of that word is a popular pharmaceutical name. If the bots thought you were selling Cial— whatever, you’d get flagged as SPAM right away.
Mailchimp Wasn’t the Answer This Time
I’m a Mailchimp certified whatever, so typically I steer folks to use Mailchimp for their bulk email needs. Mailchimp would give them a great looking email, all kinds of data and statistics about who is opening, reading, and forwarding, and a lot of other easy features.
But she doesn’t need that. This is just an email group. They email each other about links to helpful websites, recipes, events coming up that they should all go to, etc. They didn’t need templates of cool designs or even pictures.
They also wanted to treat it like a forum, where anyone can email to anyone, as long as they are part of the group. The emails don’t have to go out into the world, and they don’t have to be found by a search engine. (Both reasons to use other forum SAAS)
And, here’s the one you were already thinking of, not everyone is on Facebook, but they all have email. That’s always a factor to remember. Email adoption is way higher than Facebook adoption. 90% of adults in America have email. Only 73% have some sort of social media and that number isn’t only Facebook.
Google Groups for the Free and Easy Win
So I took her big old copy & paste list and added them all to a Google Group. It did everything they needed without any extra bells and whistles. Everyone in the group can post to it and all they have to do is remember one email like [email protected].
We left it open to anyone with the link for the first few days. That gives them a chance to email the link around to anyone that we missed in the initial import. After a week, I’ll switch it to “by invitation only” and add the occasional new person myself.
We don’t have analytics – We don’t need them. We don’t have fancy templates – We don’t need them.
All we needed was an easy way to lower their SPAM score and for this group to stay connected via email.
The Flashiest New SAAS isn’t What You Need
It’s worth taking some time in your project to really list out what your goals are and what you want from your service. We knew what she wanted and what she didn’t want, so it was easy to line up the solution.
Another win I’ll selfishly give them is that this wasn’t decision by committee either. The main person in charge of the email list was given a task: solve the problem. They talked to me and we solved it. We didn’t wait through 6 meetings, get everyone’s take (who doesn’t even use the thing in the first place) and shop for “what else is out there.” We took the Occam’s razor approach and kept it simple.
If their group grows to 500, we’ll regroup and see how it’s going, but I think Google Groups will even serve them at that scale too.
