ASI's CRM Blog

E-mail Marketing with GoldMine

DID YOU KNOW. Not too long ago, e-mail marketing was a very new concept. “CAN-SPAM” really meant “I can spam” and mass e-mailing meant “just BCC everyone”. E-mail marketing was limited to large corporations who could afford expensive enterprise e-mail marketing tools. Then came GoldMine.

GoldMine allowed companies and small businesses to create and send e-mail to large numbers of contacts...as easily as sending to a single contact. Instead of BCC'ing recipients, e-mails could be individually-sent with contact information merged from each contact’s GoldMine record!

In today’s world, GoldMine’s e-mail marketing capabilities remain, but e-mail marketing has become increasingly more complex. CAN-SPAM and provider blacklists meant that e-mail marketers had to jump through hoops to work their magic.

Today’s post will compare the top three ways that GoldMine can be used for e-mail marketing, by comparing the legacy GoldMine functionality with that of external ESPs (e-mail service providers, e.g. MailChimp, Constant Contact) and of a GoldMine-integrated option.

Legacy GoldMine Use

Included in ALL versions of GoldMine (1999+)

Advantages

• No extra cost
• E-mail send history is shown in Contacts’ history

Disadvantages

• Very difficult to create professional-quality HTML e-mails. External program (or custom-designed template) is recommended
• Domain used to send e-mails could be blocked for blacklisting
• No way to track performance - clicks, opens, etc.
• Manual bounce management (3rd party program available to handle bounces)
• CAN-SPAN compliance must be manually-implemented
  
  

External ESPs

Cost: $0-$75/mo. (Cost is approx. range; Varies based on need)

Advantages

• Easy-to-use interface (streamlined for e-mail marketing)
• Relatively low cost, especially for
• Other integrations may be available (e.g. HubSpot, Google Analytics, EventBrite, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
• E-mail campaign results (possibly including Social Media results) in easy-to-use formats
• CAN-SPAM compliance is mandatory for many ESPs
• Many e-mail templates to choose from
• ESP’s domain used for sending, so less chance your own domain will be blacklisted

Disadvantages

• E-mail history is not easily available in GoldMine. E.g. “Who in this company is reading my e-mails?” cannot be answered using the contact record in GoldMine
• Keeping contact information synchronized between the ESP’s site and GoldMine is not easy
  
  

GoldMine-integrated Option

Cost: $1,695+ setup; $995+/yr. (Varies based on need)

Advantages

• Tight GoldMine integration: Use GoldMine e-mail templates, Groups, Merge Codes, etc.
• Track not only e-mail campaign performance, but also resulting website visits back into GoldMine
• Even personal e-mails can be tracked!
• E-mail Campaign results reported in GoldMine (Crystal reports, Dashboards for GMPE, etc.)
• Many e-mail templates to choose from
• ESP’s domain used for sending, so less chance your own domain will be blacklisted

Disadvantages

• Initial cost is high
• CAN-SPAN compliance must be manually-implemented
• Some aspects of e-mail creation are not as streamlined as the purpose-built ESP tools available
  
  

Looking for more? Contact Anton Systems to learn more about how the e-mail marketing methods compared above can work for you!