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Why and How to setup SMTP and host mailing software! (30)

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This is my 2nd post here on STM. I have been collecting and doing mailing drops since 2009. I first started with aweber and was banned from it when list reached 150,000 optins. When your list reaches above 50,000, two things happen, your spam rate goes up and you need more control over your mailing. With ESPs, you don't have control of either.

That is exactly what happened with me. With aweber anything above 0.1% spam rate was no no to them. I constantly hit 0.2%-0.3% for a month or so and was banned without warning. Fortunately, they were kind enough to send me my list. I decided to not rely on ESPs anymore.

I discovered something called SMTP relay service. Most of these services only provided the server and a ip to mail. Some examples: sendgrid, SMTP.com, socketlab, etc. To make this work, you need a dedicated server with at least 8gb ram. There are two mailing software that I have used. First one is ActiveCampaign and second is Interspire. I no longer use ActiveCampaign. They are bit expensive and have had many issues with it. A yearly licence for Interspire will cost around $750+ without extended support. This is fairly cheap.

As for SMTP server, I have been using sendgrid for 3 years, by far the best in every aspect. I have a high volume package with them which cost little over $1000 a month for 2 million emails. Any regular ESP with that much volume will show you the door or pitch your their high volume service which believe me cost you $1500+. Reason is, at this level you need your own dedicated ip. ESPs are not willing to risk their shared ips and there is no reason you should be using shared ips at this volume. If your list is over 50k emails and you're sending over 300,000 emails a month, you should get a dedicated Ip.

So, with server in place, the software and the smpt service, all you need to do is install the mailing software on your server, ask your server admin to open port 25 from smpt relays (or any port # you desire), then enter you smtp username, password, smtp server name and port details in the setting and off you go.

This setup will cost you way less than using ESPs like aweber, getreponse, etc and you will have control over your mailing and ip reputation.

Dedicated server: $2200/year ($184 a month)
SMTP service: 400 for 700,000 emails monthly
Mailing software: $750/year ($62.5/mo)
Total: $646 monthly

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This is a similar setup to how we have it, too, and for the same reasons. Nice post webdev.

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Hang on, you mentioned you're using a $1000/mo package from sendgrid .

How does that factor into your final costs?

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I save a lot. Because 2 million emails cost me $0.0005 a email. ESPs like aweber, getresponse and mailchimp will pitch their high sender service in which they offer support, their software (which you don't host) and sending services and few dedicated ips. Or you can go to enterprise level ESPs like ExactTarget or WhatCounts. I used ExactTarget for a year and was paying $3000 for 2.2 mil emails a month.

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Does your set up deliver to the inbox?

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Great post!

This is definitely the weak spot of our internal marketing efforts. We are currently using Aweber, but I feel like we're going to hit some of these issues in the near future.

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Yes. You will need to warm up your ip. Contrary to what other will say, this is a simple process. Don't make it too hard on yourself. You can warm up you ip within 2 weeks. Key is to start sending blasts on your new ip in small chunks everyday or every other day. For example, send 1000 emails the first day, 2000 on 2nd, 4000 on third day, 8000 on forth and so on. The idea is to let ISPs know that you will be sending high volume emails on this ip. Keep an eye on blocks, bounces and spams. Keep a watch of your ip score at senderscore.org. After two weeks or once your reach your full list you score should be 90+. It is not hard to achieve that if your list is clean.

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Great info, just playing with email now. Do you always double optin when capturing emails for autoresponder campaigns? I've reviewed competitor campaigns and none seem to.

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I use to use double-opt backin 2011 when clicks were cheap and competition was low. After an experiment, I found, at least in the niches I was running, single opt-in was just as effective. Only difference is you have to clean your list more often. You have to watch out for spam traps. Every three months remove the subscribers who didn't open your emails. As for bounces and spams those are suppressed by your ESP. But also remove these from your list just to keep the list updated.

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Awesome. Thanks.

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Is this cheaper than using Amazon ses? If so by how much?

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i work with this ESP and works well: http://doctorsender.com/

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doood - this is epic... we've been looking all over for this information... excellent post!

thanks for making the complex simple

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I am supposed to be doing this. I have interspire + StealthMTA (handles ip rotation and everything else with ease, no need to set this all up yourself) and training on set-up + interspire addons and all the tutorial videos in my hard drive and I am wasting time buying search traffic to send to cpa offers. I should be doing email. I just need some guidance from experienced mailers to guide me a little. If anyone is interested in creating a Mastermind for email marketing please send me an email nico_samu@hotmail.com or PM. We can use my interspire. I have the addons too: (Multiple smtp / text spinner / geo location / fbl/ social / multithread). So all of this helps to send Millions of emails and inbox.

My weakness is copyright and email lists. But I can get the emails out :/. Just need the people willing to work with me.

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Whats the best strategy to get a ton of emails? I'm looking for free methods etc primarily or buying in bulk? Ive tried incorporating collecting emails from my CPA campaigns but it just wasnt worth all the hassle in my opinion. Hurt my overall ROI as lots of people left the page and didnt sign up for the weightloss/ skincare offer i was pushing.

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Nothing comes free imho. Even if you scrape the list for free, there would still be lots of shitty emails in that list = high bounce% (unless you do data hygiene which costs anyway) = get your SMTPs killed.

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Hi
I am Abhishek Singla from India, as sir I am starting a CPL campaign from VCommission.com Affiliate Network in that I was trying to do email marketing for American Express Credit Card as per lead they pays me Rs. 295 ($4.54 USD) from mailChimp.com, getresponse.com and elasticemail.com and I done a test mail from that to me they blocked my access and they says that "We not allow to do the 3rd party advertisment" / We not allow to do the sales campaign, so I purchased sendy.co ($59) and Amazon SES ($5 - 50, 000 / Email), I have godaddy Shared Hosting and Shared IP on this I not started any campaign I will also cost me same issue, if yes so what may I do now ?

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Hi
I am Abhishek Singla from India, as sir I am starting a CPL campaign from VCommission.com Affiliate Network in that I was trying to do email marketing for American Express Credit Card as per lead they pays me Rs. 295 ($4.54 USD) from mailChimp.com, getresponse.com and elasticemail.com and I done a test mail from that to me they blocked my access and they says that "We not allow to do the 3rd party advertisment" / We not allow to do the sales campaign, so I purchased sendy.co ($59) and Amazon SES ($5 - 50, 000 / Email), I have godaddy Shared Hosting and Shared IP on this I not started any campaign I will also cost me same issue, if yes so what may I do now ? And I have 7000 Million Email ID Database which I purchased for $48 USD. So please help me regarding this matter.

And my skype id is celluloid365agency

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7000 Million data for $48 USD. Whata solid deal!

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We always worked with Emailvision for sendings. 140 million send outs for 25,000$

No inbox delivery guarantuee - no one guarantuees this apart from mailchimp which is for small email volumes/small affiliates, and is SUPER expensive.

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From http://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/ affiliate marketing is on prohibited list so I wouldn't bother with them at all.

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Hey that's great setup for super high volume. You can PM if you like to exchange info.

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Don't ask them to enter their email on the first page. First engage the user and then pop the optin box.

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Hi guys.

I've been using Ongage untill now. But i'm changing over to Interspire due to lower-costs. I have four smtp servers from a third-part with individual ip's, i just need a dedicated server to host the front-end system (interspire).

Any recommendations for such a service? I send 5-8 million e-mails a month.

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amazon

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You could also look into wiredtree managed dedicated server. They usually have coupons for new customers as well.

Make sure you get enough memory (8gb+) on your server because intersipre is mysql intensive software. mysql uses a lot of memory when sending emails.

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am i right in assuming that interspire is quite linear i.e.

It doesn't allow you to setup any sort of marketing automations utilising custom data fields?

Also, does it automatically remove hard bounces, ISP complaints and any soft bounces after a consecutive number of emails bounced?

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It has some limited bounce handling.

not sure what you mean by marketing automations.

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Hey guys , am also doing emails past 6 years . i will always prefer own setup. yes its working great. i have build my own script that will help you to build Bulk email server. There is lot of features where you can setup Postfix with Mailwizz or interspire , Auto Ip rotation , Auto Dkim setup , RDNS,SPF and lot of features. if you spent 5 to 10$ server you can sent 10000 to 50k emails per day , But your list should be clean

interested people Please ping me PM. i will help you

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If you have your own IPs, and you are not doing SMTP relays, I highly recommend on PMTA4.5, you have an auto-warmup process, so you don't really need to send every day.

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