Email Marketing

[autotech]

My objective is to automatically send bulk emails to my client address list, containing the most recent updates from an RSS feed from my site. Weekly, containing only the new stuff from the feed, and also having an on-site form to subscribe to the email campaign.

With Google's Feedburner I can set up the RSS email campaign, but only for users who subscribe through the on-site form. As far as I can tell, there is no way to add my list of client addresses.

I've looked into email marketing services that accomplish what I'm looking for, but it's very expensive. They charge monthly by the number of emails sent.

So I think the best method is to implement an email marketing program myself, so it will only be a 1-time fee.

Who knows of a quality email program for a website, which can send the RSS data on a schedule, and does not cost a fortune?

I'm not sure if I should use a desktop program or a php mysql script on the server. I know there can be issues sending large numbers of emails through an ISP from your desktop.

Any and all info and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[opifex]

Are you trying to generate a newsletter from your RSS or something like that?
I don't know of anything that is out of the box, but you could modify most any newsletter script to grab its content from your feed without much trouble. Run a chron job to send it at intervals or trigger it from your feed generator to run whenever you update the feed.

[autotech]

I found a pretty good program that does just about everything. -- ActiveCampaign Email Marketing -- not cheap.

[opifex]

I have always been a little cautious using third party feeds and mailers. Guess I like to be in control... RSS and newsletters are handled on my servers... my own sites and my clients' sites. I'm just not very trusting I guess.

[autotech]

No, this is not a pay-per-email online program. This is a PHP mysql script. I control everythiing on my server-side.

I looked at those pay-per-email programs, but like you, I like to be in control of this kind of stuff. And I'd rather pay a couple hundred one time, as opposed to $50 per month forever.