This article is prompted by a reply we got to a recent newsletter...

please explain the difference between your service and us sending our own

It's a great question and as these types of questions always do, it generated a long reply! When asked any question about our service we always give totally honest answers, even if it means not "selling" our service. We don't do hard sell, just honest (hopefully) helpful advice.

Our reply...

*Morning. It really depends on how you send your own newsletters, and what they contain.

If you want to and are able to create HTML newsletters, and have the facility to send them with full GDPR compliance then there is no difference, so anyone would have to advise you to continue doing it yourself, assuming you have the time etc.

But lots of people either don’t have the time, or the skill (or need) to produce HTML newsletters, and/or don’t have the facility to send them with, as mentioned, GDPR compliance. This is the person my service is aimed at.

By GDPR compliance I mean things like an unsubscribe facility etc.

Then there is cost if you have a large mailing list. I know some services offer free distribution if you only have a few hundred subscribers, but once you go over that limit it get’s really expensive really quickly.

The only other thing to mention is getting your email address and so domain name blacklisted. If you were for instance to send your newsletter from news@yourdomain.com and for some reason you got a high level of bounces, it's highly likely the various SPAMguards around the web would tag the domain keeling.com as a potential spammer, so you’d get added to blacklists. This will seriously effect the ability to send normal emails as these will likely get tagged as spam and the recipients will never get them.

Of course, if you have stuff like this covered you’re all good, but these are the main differences. The other I guess is as mentioned, time. I do this for a living and take over all aspects of production and distribution. Which can save some people a bucket of time.

Happy to chat more if you want. We’re not a big faceless business based in some random offshore country, the business here is me and two staff, we’ve been doing this (and making websites) for 20 years and always happy to chat with people like yourself, even if it’s just to offer a bit of help/advice.*

They came back to say they presently use Mailchimp and only have a few hundred subscribers, and we agreed; if they have the time and ability to create HTML newsletters Mailchimp is a great option, until you get over their free subscriber service, at which point they start to get really pricey.