In our last Cool Tool discussion, I shared with you some of the benefits of using an email marketing program in your business. Today, I want to tell you about another cool tool I’ve recently discovered called Send Personally, which can also be used to connect with your clients from the comfort of your Microsoft Outlook email program.
My team and I were researching alternatives to using full-service e-marketing programs for a client who isn’t yet ready for that step, but still wants to keep in touch with her ongoing clients. This particular client was looking for a way to easily communicate with the participants in her coaching programs. She wanted something simple that would allow her to send a quick email to her coaching groups without going into an e-marketing program and setting up a broadcast. We decided to go with Send Personally, and so far, it’s a pretty cool tool! It offers too much to discuss everything now, but here’s a quick overview.
What it is…
Send Personally is nifty little add-in feature for Microsoft Outlook users. It allows you to send individual, personalized emails, but with the ease of a bulk mailing. You can send to large groups at once, and you can even include attachments and special formatting in the text that will be received and displayed properly by each recipient regardless of their email client. I love that!
How it works…
- Once you purchase the Send Personally add-in (it’s very inexpensive), and download it to Outlook, you are pretty much set to go! Hint: Make sure your Add-in feature under Options is checked to allow add-ins.
- From Outlook, create your group in your address book, and then set up your email as you normally would.
- Now this is the really important part…When you’re ready to send, click on the Send Personally button (on your toolbar) instead of Send. That’s it!
Cool things to know…
- Even though your entire group list shows in To: section of your email, each recipient’s email will be addressed only to them. They will not see the other recipients’ names.
- If a recipient mistakenly hits the “Reply to All” button, their email will still only be sent to you. None of the other recipients will receive it. Nice, huh?
- Because each email is generated as an individual message, it eliminates the size of the heading becoming huge, which occurs when an email is sent to dozens (or hundreds) of recipients at once, and can often cause issues with being tagged as spam or junk mail.
- You can use macros in your emails to further personalize your message to each recipient.
One word of caution…You do want to be very careful about using this as an email marketing tool for sending to people unsolicited. That’s called spamming, and that’s not allowed. This program is really meant for communicating with groups of people who know you and who want to receive information from you. It’s a good idea to include a message at the bottom of your emails instructing the recipients to reply to you if they want to be removed from your mailings.
If you’re not quite ready for one of the more sophisticated e-marketing programs, and you are Outlook user, check out Send Personally. We’ve had great success with it so far, and our client is very pleased!
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