Making email newsletters more elastic and more cost effective: @elasticemail

elasticemailSo Scottishlaird.com has over 11,000 subscribers divided into three separate lists, and frankly we were growing tired of an ever-inflating monthly charge from our old supplier – a rather overgrown simian. Now, don’t get me wrong the service was excellent, the templates great and creating an html email a breeze to put together and design, but the cost was ridiculous.

So yesterday, in email dialogue with Julie from ACT around the mailing list for that charity, the contractor recommended Elastic Email. So me having the technicals, I gave the system a once over.  So impressed was I, that I have converted our entire list to Elastic Email and dumped Mailchimp back down to the free account.

Why keep the free gorilla account? The wonderful integration between it and my e-commerce software – we’ll be using it to collect subscribers and then transfer them over to EE. Security-wise we’re fine, given that both companies are at the top of their game, but it is a bind to have to migrate users over ….

The only word of caution I’d give, is that EE isn’t quite as user-friendly as MC – but then I *think* that’s what you’d be paying extra for with when you go ape!

(… and all of this rather explains why there has been a hiatus on the email newsletter front with Scottish Laird – sorry!)

#FabulousFriday: finally closed out the Dunans Conservation Plan books, and redesigned the greeting pack for Lairds & Ladies

interiorspread-bluefolderWatch the Scottish Laird site for news on the books (in particular our Lairds’ and Ladies’ and the PDF versions), and in the meantime enjoy the inside of the ScottishLaird welcome pack A4 folder. Gorgeous isn’t it? Lots of Dunans Rising tartan, lots of Lairds and Ladies taking the tour, and lots of new information researched through the plan.

ScottishLaird tour season has well and truly kicked off with 6 tours in 8 days!

Today I gave a tour for six lairds and ladies – a couple from Aberdeen, another from down south with lovely pooch Oliver and the last all the way over from Australia.

Oliver and people had stayed at Sandra and Michael’s at the Watermill and gave great reviews, particularly for the ever-popular big breakfast that is Michael’s speciality.

Then, given their itineraries, we recommended The George in Inveraray, The Loch Fyne Oyster Bar, The Colintraive Hotel and Inver Cottage! I always feel lucky to have so many great places to recommend in such an isolated spot.

For more information about tours and where to stay and go near us, please click here.

All the codes are in for Groupon promotions to Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark for the #ScottishLaird project

One of the major jobs needing done for every promotion we do with groupon is the generation and insertion of several thousand codes – now of course we automate this as much as possible, but the final task of loading the codes into the database is mine. It takes a while, maybe ten minutes a thousand codes and with this promo we had 8,000, so a good hour and a half with distractions, but its done now for the wonderful Nordic nations – time for a cup of tea and a Borders Biscuit.

And the image? Well, that’s the file with all the Danish codes formatted into a SQL query ready for copy and paste into phpmyadmin.

Misty, Moisty Tree Tops at Dunans Castle

The view from the cabin in the woods where the ScottishLaird team work.

X