11-04-2009, 06:16 PM
I have a client who has a FM database with a list of customers with whom she is in regular communication by email.
Up until recently she accomplished this by creating a find request in FM to gather the appropriate customers, and then used global fields to compose the email content, and then a FM Mail script to send the emails out to the "found set" via the Apple mail.app.
Since she rarely needs to email out to her entire customer list of 1000 names, (300-500 is the usual max), this has worked well until recently.
However, her webhost is DreamHost, and apparently they are now throttling down to a MAX of 100 emails per hour, before a 1 hour lockout kicks in. This makes it impractical to continue as she has, even though she has legitimate reasons for sending these emails out.
So we are exploring whether she can use Constant Contact but using "find requests" in FM to export a contact list from her database. This is important, as she tracks many different pieces of information that might be used to determine if a particular customer should be getting a given email.
My understanding of Constant Contact (CC) is that you upload your ENTIRE contact list and then create groups WITHIN CC to send specific emails out to. The problem is that instead of creating say 3 groups that she manages and reuses many times... what is more likely is that EACH mailing will have a unique collection of addresses based on the search criteria used in FM.
How do you create a group in CC using the exported "found" list from FM.
Can it be done?
Or is the only way to do this to completely delete your CC address book, and re-import it with the found set each time? Seems like that might be frowned on by CC, or at the very least might limit many of the valuable tracking features found in CC.
I'm about to sign her up for the 60 day trial with CC, but wanted to see if anyone here had experience with trying to do something like this with CC.
Thanks,
Jem
Up until recently she accomplished this by creating a find request in FM to gather the appropriate customers, and then used global fields to compose the email content, and then a FM Mail script to send the emails out to the "found set" via the Apple mail.app.
Since she rarely needs to email out to her entire customer list of 1000 names, (300-500 is the usual max), this has worked well until recently.
However, her webhost is DreamHost, and apparently they are now throttling down to a MAX of 100 emails per hour, before a 1 hour lockout kicks in. This makes it impractical to continue as she has, even though she has legitimate reasons for sending these emails out.
So we are exploring whether she can use Constant Contact but using "find requests" in FM to export a contact list from her database. This is important, as she tracks many different pieces of information that might be used to determine if a particular customer should be getting a given email.
My understanding of Constant Contact (CC) is that you upload your ENTIRE contact list and then create groups WITHIN CC to send specific emails out to. The problem is that instead of creating say 3 groups that she manages and reuses many times... what is more likely is that EACH mailing will have a unique collection of addresses based on the search criteria used in FM.
How do you create a group in CC using the exported "found" list from FM.
Can it be done?
Or is the only way to do this to completely delete your CC address book, and re-import it with the found set each time? Seems like that might be frowned on by CC, or at the very least might limit many of the valuable tracking features found in CC.
I'm about to sign her up for the 60 day trial with CC, but wanted to see if anyone here had experience with trying to do something like this with CC.
Thanks,
Jem
