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MaxBulk Mailer already allows you to unsubscribe people from a list but what happens if a recipient is subscribed to more than one list and he explicitly asked not to receive anything else from you?

Well, you have the choice between processing each list separately and unsubscribe the recipient from each of them or use the Global Blacklist feature. In fact, the Global Blacklist prevents you from sending messages to given addresses whichever the list you have selected. In other words, you just need to add the address once to the blacklist to get it automatically blocked everywhere else!

As unsubscribed addresses, blacklisted recipients are automatically discarded by MaxBulk Mailer when sending messages.

Blacklisting an email address is very simple. Let’s see…

Blacklisting Al Capone

Select your list and highlight the address(es) you wish to blacklist. Then either right-click your mouse and select the "Add to Blacklist" menu or select the ‘Recipients -> Add to Blacklist’ menu from the top menu.

Al Capone has been blacklisted

Blacklisted addresses appear in red with a different icon so you can easily tell them apart. The whole entry appears in red and the card icon with a green check mark has been replaced with a card icon with a prohibition sign. Al Capone will never receive any more message from us!

Let’s check the Blacklist

The Blacklist is accessible from the List manager pull-down menu like any other list. Just select it. Here is Al Capone!

Since the Blacklist is similar to the other lists you can add more addresses to it by using the ‘+’ button, by dropping text with addresses or by importing files. To remove addresses from the Blacklist you just have to select them, click on the delete button ‘-’ and then on the ‘Save’ button. Yes, it is the same as with any other list. As a result It is really easy to maintain a blacklist. You don’t have to learn anything more.

Just remember that:

- Blacklisted addresses will never receive your messages whichever the list they are on.
- You can blacklist an address selecting it and using the ‘Add to blacklist’ menu.
- The blacklist is like another list you can select and open from the list manager pull-down menu.
- Everything that works with a regular list will also work for the Blacklist.

MaxBulk Mailer blacklist

When sending e-mail you have the choice between using your ISP, your web host or your own dedicated SMTP server (An SMTP server is a mailserver that you use to send email. It stores your messages and ensures that your messages are either delivered or returned to you with a failure message).

Your ISP usually will provide an SMTP mail server but most ISPs will not want you to send bulk email through their mailservers. Many have restrictions on the number of messages you can send per hour.

Your web host should provide you with a dedicated SMTP server. Particularly if you are a business and you have a legitimate need to communicate with your customers, then your web host should provide SMTP server service as well. They may also have sending limitations, but they are likely much less restricted than an ISP mailserver.

Your own dedicated SMTP server is also an option. You will need to make sure that your IP address is not on any listings of dialup or dynamically allocated IP addresses (Residential IP) and make sure the IP address you are using is registered to a domain name preferably with an MX record.

Note that MaxBulk Mailer has no SMTP server built-in because nowadays it no longer works well with most big ISPs. Some of them like AOL will bounce your messages as soon as they detect they have been sent from a residential IP, an IP that belongs to a range of IPs for DSL/Dialup connections, including static IPs, or that IP has no reverse DNS (PTR) or no domain assigned to it. Following our tests, using your own SMTP server or an application with a built-in server will cause between 20 and 30% additional bounces. The question is, can you accept that up to 30% of your customers will never get your messages?

In addition some ISPs like Hotmail and MSN are also using Greylisting. In short, greylisting is a method where a piece of email being relayed by a mailservers is initially deferred. This means that it is not accepted upon the first attempt, rather, the sending mailserver is told to relay it again at a later time. With standard mailserver configurations, such as those generally maintained by your ISP and free email service provider, the email will be re-sent at a later time, usually anywhere from 5-20 minutes. Bulk mailing software with built-in server however generally don’t operate like standard mailservers, and usually won’t relay their email again at a later time.

MaxBulk Mailer key advantage is that it fully respects and follows the SMTP protocol. MaxBulk Mailer is a conventional email client using the standard email delivery system. As a result the delivery bounce rate is extremely low.

MaxBulk Mailer

A new entry has been added to the MaxBulk Mailer Support Page about SMTP Server Response Codes. SMTP servers use to respond to commands using a defined set of codes. This page is a small guide to the codes mail servers may produce when you try to send mail along with their meanings. They are part of the SMTP protocol (the set of rules used to send emails).

MaxBulk Mailer

So you have lent an amount of money to a friend and you are interested in reflecting the exact transactions in iCash. It is easy but it requires several steps you need to understand well.

You have to create your lending account first, as a portfolio account as it is an investment. Once done you have to create a starting transaction from your checking account to that lending account. That transaction represents the money transfer between you and the borrower:

For this example let say the borrower will give you the money back in 12 months with an annual interest of 5%. First payment will be enterred that way:

where ‘Interests’ is an account of type ‘Incomes’ you have to create as well so you can gather the interests.

Why 2 transactions? Simple, just to keep track of incomes. You could simply create a single transaction from the borrower to your Bank account but if you do that you will end with a negative Borrower account and no trace of incomes. Note that you can group those 2 transactions together to match your Bank statement. Use the ‘Transaction | Group’ menu:

After payment 12th you will have the following balance:

- My checking account: +10,000.00
- My Borrower: 0.00
- Interests: 272.84

Note that the calculation has been made with our Loan Calculator Loan Calc
iCash is a Personal Finance Application available for Mac and Windows in 8 different languages. You can get iCash here.

iCash

If your messages look like regular private e-mails and you use tags to make them different and customized with recipient data, you will get much better results. You can also use ‘Bonded Sender’ https://www.bondedsender.com or ‘Habeas’ http://www.habeas.com so your messages will be recognized as legitimate.

Furthermore you can run your email through some of the spam filters available online, or install some end-user antispam applications on your own computer, and send an email to yourself before attempting to email end users.

There are some services you can use to test the spam quotient of your e-zines and e-mail offers before sending them out.

- SiteSell SpamCheck Report tests your message at no charge using SpamAssassin and sends you a report. Send your test e-mails to mailto:sales-spamcheck@sitesell.net Be careful, however, that you put the word TEST as the first word in the subject — and make sure it is capitalized. Otherwise, the system will delete the mail, thinking it’s spam. Following the word TEST, add the subject line that would appear in the email normally.

- Assurance Systems offers three functions as part of a paid service. (1) Message Checker rates your e-mail message for spam. (2) Mailbox Monitor checks test addresses for each of the major ISPs to make sure your e-mail is being delivered. (3) Blacklist Alert lets you know what blacklists you are appearing on so you can work to get your domain or IP number off the list. http://www.assurancesys.com

In addition current MaxBulk Mailer includes several documents about this issue well worth a read and v4 a built-in Spam checker.

MaxBulk Mailer

You have read over and over that it is less expensive to get an existing customer to make a purchase than to get a new customer to make a purchase. The most recent figures suggest that it is six times as expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain a customer. You have also read that the least expensive way to market to existing customers is via targeted e-mail.

Email Marketing is spreading around the whole world because of its high effectiveness, speed and low cost. If you want to introduce and sell your product or service, the best way is to use e-mail to contact your targeted customer. Targeted e-mail is no doubt very effective. If you can introduce your product or service through email directly to the customers who are interested in them, this will bring your business a better chance of success.

Read this interesting tutorial here:

- English: How to create and publish your first newsletter
- German: Beginnen Sie mit Ihrem Newsletter
- French: Comment démarrer votre propre bulletin d’information
- Italian: Come creare la tua newsletter
- Spanish: Como publicar un boletín electrónico
- Dutch: Hoe je eigen nieuwsbrief uitgeven

MaxBulk Mailer

You just need to gather all those subscribe and unsubscribe messages to a couple of folders applying some rules and using the scripts we wrote for adding or deleting addresses from a Mac OS X Mail (or Entourage folder). They are called ‘Adding recipients from Mac OS X Mail’ and ‘Deleting recipients from Mac OS X Mail’ (we also include Entourage and Powermail scripts). Those scripts come with MaxBulk distribution, inside the example/AppleScript/Mac OS X Mail import folder and are also accessible from both the import menu and import button. They are very easy to modify if you need to and automatically process a given Mail folder and take the From and Reply-To headers using their contents to add/remove the addresses from the currently selected MaxBulk list.

Also note that users may have several addresses and sometimes forwards so the e-mail used when replying will not always match the one used for receiving your message. The trick here is to add a [E-mail Address] tag to your unsubscribe link this way:

mailto:stanley@roche.org?Subject=Unsubscribe&Reply-To=[E-mail Address]

The [E-mail Address] will be replaced at delivery time with each recipient address so if one of them decides to unsubscribe the Reply-To header will contain the address you originally used. As my script process this header as well you will be 100% sure that you are removing the right addresses. If you don’t want to use that header just use the subject or the body modifying the script accordingly. An example could be:

If you decide to use the subject:
mailto:stanley@roche.org?Subject=Unsubscribe%20[E-mail Address]

If you decide to use the body
mailto:stanley@roche.org?Subject=Unsubscribe&Body=Unsubscribe%20[E-mail Address]

Note that you should never use spaces inside this URL but ‘%20′ codes to avoid breaking the link on recipient mail reader. Also the first mailto argument is always preceded with a ‘?’ mark and then ‘&’ for the others.

Hope this information will help you build a solid subscription system.

The scripts are available inside MaxBulk Mailer distribution: http://www.maxprog.com/shareware/MaxBulkMailer_X. dmg

MaxBulk Mailer

Selling products online gives you a chance at thousands of new customers but it is no simple task, and the past few years have seen many people trying their hand at it. Many of them walk away disappointed a few months or years later, but some manage to significantly subsidize their income. The reality is that having the perfect product to sell just isn’t enough, there are a lot of new challenges that come with selling over the Internet so it’s important to keep track of your sales and know detail-fully how your business is doing, how each product is performing over time and where your marketing dollars should be spent. After years selling online we have created the ultimate tool for handling your online sales and take decisions.

Transaction is an easy-to-use, full featured and multi-purpose interactive data analysis and reporting tool intended to help you control your online sales. Transaction can serve several small to medium management needs for either private users, software developers or small businesses making keeping track of online sales a snap. With a few clicks you can start importing your existing transactions and create reports and charts in minutes.

Transaction is versatil and user-friendly. Thru its all-in-one interface you can easily create new products and customers or add new transactions or expenses in a few clicks. But the best of it is the possibility to import your existing transactions and start creating reports and charts right of the box. Transaction uses a state-of-the-art fast SQL engine with user-defined smart lists so your reports and charts can be tailored to include all your products, user-defined product categories or only ones meeting specified criteria.

Transaction doesn’t use technical jargon making it much easier to be used by people with very little or no computing knowledge at all. Simply create or import your products and transactions and start reporting! Transaction also allows you to find out how each of your products perform, the impact of your advertising campaigns, the total refunds and chargebacks, units sold… and gives you a chance to take in-time decisions.

Transaction web page: http://www.maxprog.com/Transaction.html

Transaction for Mac OS X: Download
Transaction for Windows: Download

Transaction