This tutorial will be showing you how to set up Mautic email marketing platform on Ubuntu 20.04 with Apache or Nginx web server. Mautic is a free open source alternative to commercial email service providers like MailChimp. Key features of Mautic includes:
- Lead nurturing and tracking
- Marketing campaigns
- Dripflow programs
- Create Landing pages
- Social media monitoring
- Install free plugins to extend the functionality of Mautic.
- Mautic can be easily integrated with third-party SMTP relay services like Gmail, Mandrill, Sendgrid, Amazon SES. You can also use your own mail server.
- and much more
Benefits of Self Hosting Email Marketing Platform
Why do you want to self-host email marketing platform instead of using third-party ESPs (Email Service Provider) like MailChimp?
For starters, self-hosting can save you a lot of money. Mautic is free and open-source software. You only need to pay $8.99/month for the VPS (virtual private server), which can run a full-featured mail server and the Mautic email marketing platform. It can easily handle millions of subscribers. So your total cost is always $8.99/month no matter how many subscribers you have. If you own millions of subscribers on MailChimp, the cost would be thousands of dollars per month.
Another reason is that Firefox browser blocks third-party trackers by default, so the MailChimp signup widget on your website doesn’t work properly and the MailChimp pop-up won’t shown to your visitors. By hosting the email marketing platform under your own domain name, Firefox doesn’t block the tracker, so your signup widget or popup can work properly. This is also true if users of other web browsers decide to block third-party trackers.
In addition, you can manipulate subscribers’ information from the database and even automate it with a Cron job. For example, I often see there are typos when a visitor enters information on the sign-up form. I use a cron job to automatically correct some common typos.
Last but not least, self-hosting can protect your freedom of speech. You never need to worry about an email service provider closing your account like Mailchimp did.
Challenges of Self Hosting Email Marketing Platform
The first problem you face is finding a good self-hostable email marketing platform. Previously we have discussed how to set up Mailtrain, which is an open-source alternative to MailChimp, on Ubuntu 20.04 server. However, Mailtrain is missing several features a typical site owner would like to have.
- Mailtrain doesn’t provide users with an easy way to insert signup widget or popup on the website.
- Users can’t set time schedule for RSS campaigns.
- No contact rating.
After all, Mailtrain is just a project of a handful of software developers.
Mautic, on the other hand, is a project of a team of developers and has developed more and more features over the years. You do have an easy way to insert signup widget and popup on your website with Mautic. There’s also a vibrant and very active community around it. Furthermore, Mautic is more than just a newsletter/email marketing platform. It’s a full-blown digital experience platform, as they call it. With Acquia (which is a company offering paid service for the Drupal open source content management system) acquiring Mautic in May 2019, the future for Mautic has never been brighter. So I feel it’s time to switch from Mailtrain to Mautic.
The second challenge is to have the technical expertise to set up the email marketing platform on your own server. Don’t worry, I will show you how in just a few moments.
The third challenge is that you need to have a good reputation for the IP address of your mail server and your domain name as well. Otherwise, your emails will land in the spam folder. Gmail Postmaster Tools can show you if you have a good reputation for your domain name and IP address. As you can see from the screenshot below, I always have high domain reputation with Gmail, because I always follow best practices to send emails to my subscribers. It’s very rare that my subscribers report my email as spam.
To send out bulk emails, you need to follow these rules or practices.
- Make sure the recipient gave you permission to send email. Use double opt-in to verify the subscriber’s email address.
- Don’t send cold emails to thousands of people who have never received emails from you before. Instead, you need to warm up your IP address. For example, send 500 emails on day 1, then send 1000 emails on day 2, send 2000 emails on day 3.
- Include your contact information and your mailing address at the bottom of the email message.
- Personalize the email message as much as possible. For example, include the recipient’s name in the email.
- Conform to CAN-SPAM Act
- Avoid large attachments.
- Clean your email list. For example, delete email subscribers that haven’t opened your email in the last 30 days.
- Get approved as Return Path Certified Sender.
- Test your email placement with GlockApps.
It’s also highly recommended to improve your IP/domain reputation before sending bulk emails. Now let’s look at how to install Mautic on Ubuntu 20.04 server.
#ubuntu #business software #email marketing software #mautic #self hosted