You simply have to watch this - click here - it’s awesome.

OK, it’s all the more special as I’m a Villa fan, but surely this is what the beautiful game is all about.

Ten ten.

TBW

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Prezzybox, like loads of other companies send all of our weekly/monthly newsletters via a 3rd party. We currently use an Email distribution company called Email Vision but are coming to the end of our contract with them. I’m therefore looking at all the options and thought I’d share my experiences. Basically - as far as I can see, we have 3 options…

1) Don’t send any newsletters. Bit daft this option, so we’ll move on…

2) Continue with Email Vision or one of their competitors.

This would be the easiest option as we’re already good to go. Email Software providers normally ’guarantee’ deliver-ability,  the have all manner of reporting/tracking tools and claim to “talk to the ISP’s on a daily basis” to ensure that their IP addresses are whitelisted. Hmmmm.

The obvious detriment of continuing with somebody like this is the cost. It’s not cheap.

3) Send Newsletters ourselves

When we first launched we used to send all of our newsletters ourselves and even sent them from the same server as our site was hosted. So what’s to stop buying/renting our own server with its own IP address and sending out our own newsletters? Especially when there are free tools which enable us to do this such as Openemm.org or you can buy a licence from people like Lyris.com.

Newsletter providers will say that this is a complete ‘no no’ as if you do this your IP address will instantly become black listed and you’ll never get an email into the inbox of any of the big ISP’s again. But is this really the case? Surely, as long as you are sensible and don’t spam the World and his wife to death then you’ll be fine. Admittedly you need to make sure the DNS and IP address are set up correctly, and you have to ‘warm up’ the IP address but I can’t believe it is that difficult to do. Are the email providers just scare mongering as it’s not in their interest for you to do it yourself or is there really an art to ‘getting in the inbox’?

The massive advantage of sending newsletters yourself is the cost saving. It’s potentially free. And, if the worst does happen and your IP address does get black listed, then surely you can sign up with one of the Email Providers futuristically and use one of their ‘white listed’ IP address’s.

So folks, I’m really unsure which way we’ll go. As soon as we make a decision we’ll keep you posted.

Cheerio.

TBW

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OK folks, this is purely a promotional post. So, if you’re looking for some words of wisdom or something insightful, then I’m sorry but you’re gonna be a tad disappointed.

So, what can you win?

Prize 1 - Win a 5* Holiday to Tunisia  with Prezzybox.

We’ve teamed up with our good buddies at The Co-operative Travel to give away a 5* holiday to Tunisia. Pretty neat hey! All you need to do to enter is click on this link and answer the pretty easy question.

Prize 2 - Win Prezzybox vouchers by answering this quick survey.

 We’ve teamed up with some more buddies - Carrentals.co.uk to offer some Prezzybox.com vouchers. All you need do is fill in this brief survey and Dougs your uncle, you’ll be entered into the draw to win some vouchers.

Good luck and toodle pip!

TBW.

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 I’ve been meaning to post this for a while but have been snowed under lately - slapped wrists - no excuse!

So, how did the Christmas in July show go?

Well, considering it was our first ever exhibition, and although it was pretty stressful in the run up, I feel it was a massive success. We made a LOT of contacts from lots of magazines, papers and blogs. This in turn gave us a good indication of what products will do well at Christmas.

We segmented our products into categories - for him, for her, for kids and for the home and this format worked really well as it enabled us to promote 20 products in each category which we feel will be biggies this Christmas. The journos seemed to like this format too and it’s one we’ll be adopting in the future.

A number of our affiliates popped over to see us and hopefully we made it worth their while by providing them with a goody bag and a look some of this Christmas’s big sellers. Thanks for braving the rain fellas.

I’ve included some piccies of the event for your perusal.

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