Here’s What You Should Look For Before Choosing The Best Email Marketing System In 2020

ByBrad Slavin

Choosing the right bulk mail service determines the popularity and goodwill of your products and business among clients and customers. Outbound SMTP is rightly called the index of commercial success. But there still exist people who refuse to believe the efficiency and marvellous results of subscribing to SMTP Services for their bulk email campaigns.

In this piece, we shall guide you through the critical Q&A of Email Marketing in 2020, which shall enable you to realize and materialize all the goals you have for your business. First things first, let’s look at the benefits of email marketing and then move ahead to find the best email marketing system.

Why Buy SMTP Servers?

An entrepreneur never takes a step if he sees no gain in it. Likewise, businesses across the world have tried and found that an investment in email marketing is unlikely to go in vain. Seventy percent of all companies invest time and money on their SMTP server. The following points justify why you should buy SMTP servers:

  • It helps you to keep your existing customers engaged and coming back to you by frequently sending convincing business promotion emails to them. These emails are not necessarily promotional, but indirectly compel the recipient to open your website or come down to your store and check out your products and services.
  • The best email marketing system also assists your business to win you a new customer now and then, which is one assurance that you will have substantial returns on investment in email marketing. A recent study about businesses based in the United States reveals that enterprises have witnessed a 4300% return on investment (ROI) in Outbound SMTP.

Choosing The Best Email Marketing System For Your Business

There are certain things to look for in an outbound SMTP service before investing. Deciding whether an email marketing service is good enough for you involves the fulfillment of some criteria. These include:

  • Immune to spam filters: The first work of the best email marketing system would be ensuring that none of your emails end up in the recipient’s spam folder. This is to say that the service should be resistant to spam filters.
  • Engaging newsletters: The SMTP server should facilitate hassle-free creation of exciting email newsletters. It should have an interface that doesn’t require any extra training. You should be able to drag and drop content and layouts if you are paying for the service.
  • Quality bulk emails: Bulk mail service is another thing expected. The SMTP server should enable you to send bulk emails that have a customized layout. This ensures that a recipient gets personalized emails without much manual effort on your part. Marketing automation, or the bulk email service, is a must in an email marketing system.
  • Contact and performance checker: The outbound SMTP service should manage your contacts by segregating users into strategic groups. It should also update you on the performance of your email marketing campaigns by tracking your performance from time to time.

With that being said, let’s now look at the steps to configure Postfix SMTP Relay (Smart Host) on CentOS 8. A Smart Host can be an external smtpd (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol daemon – used as the primary mail system of a device) server provided by either your ISP or AWS, Google Apps or Gmail. Postfix is an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) that ensures routing and delivery of emails on a Linux environment.

There is no point in spending time on sending email messages manually from your Linux host when you have the option of automating the process. You can configure Postfix SMTP Relay (Smart Host) on CentOS 8 to make it work as an outbound SMTP service.

The steps to install and setup Postfix SMTP relay on your Linux environment are provided below:

  • Update your system by running the command:

[root@admuser ~]# dnf update

  • To install Postfix, delete all other MTAs that might be existing on your system by running the command:

[root@admuser ~]# dnf remove sendmail

  • Provide the hostname by running the following command:

[root@admuser ~]# hostnamectl set-hostname [YOUR HOST NAME]

[root@admuser ~]# exec hash

  • The next step is to add the IP addresses and the hostname of your system on the /etc/hosts/ file.
  • Then add your system’s hostname and IP entries in the /etc/hosts file by running the command:

[root@admuser ~]# vim /etc/hosts 192.168.1.13 [YOUR HOST NAME]

  • Once you ensure that no other MTA is active on your device, install Postfix by running the command:

[root@admuser ~]# dnf install Postfix

  • Once the postfix installation is completed, you can enable Postfix using the command provided below:

[root@admuser ~]# systemctl start postfix

[root@admuser ~]# systemctl enable postfix

  • Once Postfix has been enabled, run the following command to verify whether the postfix service is truly up and running:

[root@admuser ~]# systemctl status postfix

Once you’ve installed and started Postfix on your device, you need to configure it by following these steps:

  • Install mailx by running the command:

[root@admuser ~]# dnf install mailx

  • You can find the configuration file Postfix at the following location:

etc/postfix/main.cf

Open the file and add the following lines provided below:

myhostname = [YOUR HOST NAME]

mydomain = [YOUR DOMAIN]

myorigin = $mydomain

Uncomment the following lines:

inet_interfaces = all

inet_protocols = all

mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain, localhost, $mydomain

mynetworks = [ADD YOUR IP RANGES]

home_mailbox = Maildir/

Add a comment to the following line by adding a # in front of the line like:

#mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain, localhost

With all this done, you can successfully install and configure Postfix SMTP Relay (Smart Host) on CentOS 8. But for the changes to take effect, you need to save the config file and restart postfix.

Final Words

Having Postfix installed and configured on your CentOS 8 will mean you have opted for the most efficient, secure, and widely used outbound SMTP for your business. This investment is sure to bring you extraordinary returns that will take your business to previously unreachable heights.

Following the steps mentioned above shall enable any newbie to decide which is the best email marketing system. As for the Linux users, the step-wise process to install and configure Postfix SMTP Relay (Smart Host) on CentOS 8 could be the one-stop guide they were looking for!