Technical Validation on Email Product
Problem:
So I work at a digital agency and for we have a popular whiskey brand as client which we send emails for using mailchimp. We have multiple templates going to multiple lists and using mailchimp is a nightmare to manage this and it takes way too long.
I started building a SUPER simple MVP that let you select a HTML template file and CSV of recipients from your computer, add a subject line and send. Think WeTransfer for Email Campaigns. I've been using Mailgun for transactional emails and assumed it would be as simple as adding a "from" email to the api call to make it look like the email campaign came from the user's domain.
So my question is would there be an easy way to send these campaigns from the users domain (or at least appear as if it was, without hitting Junk folders) avoiding adding DNS records etc. Would anybody here be interested in a product like this?
You can technically send from a users domain without setting up DNS records, but it's not recommended and deliverability would take a hit.
How would users manage unsubscribes and bounces too?
Yea deliverability is a must, an email would be sent with a private url link with the analytics from Mailgun/SES, this was for one time lists, our scenario was we collected requests to attend whiskey tasting events in typeform on the website so we only wanted to use the addresses once to let them know if they had been accepted or declined. I'm going to just build as an internal tool instead of a platform I think.
Well, email plateforme are expensive because it's hard (and cost many $$) to keep IP clean, and avoid beeing sent in the spambox.
I would recommend you to not create a new tool, but use (and re-brand) some existing one & sell to your clients.
The php tool sendy + AWS SES do the job for cheap, and almost as powerful as many email plateform.
If you need a "more powerful" SMTP/API, you can use sparkpost also (this company is used by many largeeee companies like fb,twitter....)
Hey thanks for the reply, yea I agree. I was trying to scratch a personal itch and it will work well for me sending via SES but not feasible as a platform unfortunately.
The answer here is no. Imagine if there was a way, I could simply send e-mails on your behalf, on your customers behalf, etc. Building an infrastructure to verify the authenticity of messages through DNS records, etc. proved to be a reliable way of building trust on e-mails.
Yea I never really thought of it from that angle, just thought it would be handy to do a one off campaign without the need to start verifying and importing for such a simple task. I'm going to just build as an internal tool instead of a platform I think.
Unfortunately, not really. Email delivery relies heavily on DNS these days, with receiving servers checking DMARC, SPF, DKIM, A-records and whatnot in order to combat spam.
Also, I suspect sending newsletter campaigns via transactional email services might be against their terms of service, which doesn't mean it isn't possible, your milage may vary.
Perhaps you could rely on clients existing setups within Mailchimp or whatnot, supposedly they already have DNS record set up there, and those services might have an API you could hook into for delivering your emails?
Yea I agree, I looked at SES because I would definitely be breaking rules with Mailgun. I think I'm going to just build as an internal tool instead of a platform, the product will work well for sending to small lists from our business domain.
Jamie - could you clarify exactly what the product is?
Is it a service to be able to send emails from your clients' domains without having to screw with DNS records?
And would it also be an entirely new marketing automation platform, or would this functionality plug into third party marketing automation platforms directly?
It was an internal tool that let me just drop a HTML template (zip folder with all the assets etc) and then attach a CSV file and subject line and send from our company domain, but I thought about turning it into a tool for anyone to use which is when I noticed these technical issues.