Email Marketing Solutions

Email Marketing Solutions is a web-based bulk email system from Centurion, Gauteng, South Africa, for businesses that send newsletters and promotional campaigns to their own customer lists. It sends HTML and plain-text email with embedded images, groups recipients into lists you define, and reports in detail on what happens after a send. The home page says the bulkmailer is "geared towards sending thousands of emails every day". Billing is pay-as-you-go: you buy email credits in rand and spend one per email, with no monthly fee.

The pitch on the "Why Email Marketing Solutions?" page is short: the company is reachable ("help is just a phone call away"), inexpensive, "Powerful and to the point" on campaign data, and has "No Monthly Costs". Customers can run campaigns themselves or have the team help, and the site menu also carries a reseller and agency section.

What a sender gets

Formats and images. You choose the format for every email: HTML, text, or both. When you choose both, the system adds two separate views to the same message and the recipient's mail client decides which one to show. Every image in the HTML version is embedded into the email itself, so the features page says messages display correctly in Outlook 2007 and later without the reader having to right-click and download pictures.

Templates. The system works from HTML templates. A template selector adds any of the pre-loaded templates to your account, you can modify the templates already on the system free of charge, and the company's designers can customize templates with your company details and corporate identity; custom templates are quoted on request. The tutorials show how to create a first template and how to load your own pre-built HTML email and insert tags into it. The pricing page says you can have as many templates as you want.

Personalization. Smart tags personalize each email with the customer's name or other data, replaced per recipient at send time.

Lists and groups. Recipients can sit in one or many groups that you define, for example only recipients living in Gauteng, and a campaign can go to one group or several at once. Uploading a list takes three steps: convert it to a comma-delimited file, choose or create the group, and upload. Errors in the data are reported so you can fix and re-upload, and a recipient who already exists in your database is not added again. The tutorials also cover managing existing contacts and exporting the latest copy of your contact list.

Sign-up forms and surveys. A form generator exports the code for a subscription form on your website, where visitors can pick the list or group they want to join. A questionnaire generator creates a basic survey and links it directly to an email campaign.

Sending. Campaigns follow a create, test, send routine: you send a preview to yourself, then send to your database. Because your mail goes out through the same mail servers as other customers' mail, a Mail Queue view shows how many of your emails are in the queue and how many are still left to send.

Transactional add-on. A custom add-on module sends transactional email such as monthly invoices in bulk. Each email can carry the customer's personal and transaction details plus variable attachments per customer group, for example one flyer for one group and two for another alongside each customer's own invoice. The module is activated on request.

Reports. Tracking is where the features page spends most words. Reports cover returned emails, monthly billing and campaign cost, a campaign report with drill-down, mails sent in total and per hour, failures due to bad addresses, unsubscribes, spam reports, unverified new users, mails read (approximate), soft bounces, hard bounces and links clicked, including a link-click and traffic report.

Pricing

The pricing page lays out the billing model:

• Registration is free with no obligation and no credit card, and every new account gets 100 free credits to test the system.
• After that, "Email credits cost 2c each", one credit per email "no matter the size of the email sent".
• Credits are sold in packages from R75 (3750 credits) up to R13000 (650000 credits).
• "Credits never expire."
• Credits can be bought online by credit card, debit card, Instant EFT, Ucash and Mimoney.
• There is no limit on the size of your emails or on the amount of email you send through the system.

Beyond the software, the company offers campaign management and other services at an hourly rate of R350, and quotes custom template design separately.

Consent and anti-spam

The home page says that, in line with South Africa's Electronic Communications Bill, the system uses double opt-in: a new contact receives an email asking whether they want to subscribe, and anyone who ignores it never receives another email from that sender. Every email carries an unsubscribe link that removes the recipient without them typing anything and then sends them to your website, or one the company creates for you, with a goodbye message you choose. The features page says the system passes Spamhaus spam filtering rules wherever possible, while warning that content with trigger words may still be filtered.

The anti-spam policy binds customers to section 45(1) of the ECT Act and the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. It bans mass unsolicited email to anyone without a confirmed or closed-loop opt-in, mailing lists built without that consent, header forgery, spamming through third-party proxies, and "spamvertising", and it requires every customer-run list to let people remove themselves automatically and permanently. The "Why" page sums it up: "No Spam or Bought Lists".

Support

Support is by phone and through the website contact form, with a free consultation offered. The tutorials page links step-by-step videos on registering, logging in, templates, creating and testing a campaign, importing contacts, buying credits and reading reports, hosted on the company's YouTube channel, and invites requests for new tutorials. The team will also create and set up your account for you on request.

Who it suits

The system suits South African small businesses, clubs and nonprofits that send newsletters or promotions now and then to lists they built with consent, and want to pay in rand only for what they send. Credits that never expire suit irregular senders, and the 100 free credits let you test before buying. Businesses that also need to send invoices with per-group attachments can add the transactional module. Teams looking for multi-step automation journeys or a modern drag-and-drop builder should note that the pages describe template-based campaigns, groups and reports rather than automated workflows.