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How To Self-Host Your Own Email Marketing

Email Deliverability | Self-Hosted Email Marketing Application

Self-hosting your own email marketing campaign is the best thing a business can do. As it allows them to control their email marketing campaign, greater security and email design customization options that are not available with third-party services.  

Moreover by managing your email server will allow you to monitor your email list and a complete ownership over your data, ensuring data privacy and the ability to perform specific security measures if any security breach occurs. Now, learn more about self-hosted email marketing and the key factors to consider before switching to it. 

What is Email Self-Hosting?

Self-hosting email allows businesses & marketers to set up and manage their email marketing campaigns on their servers. Instead of entrusting them to a third-party provider like Gmail or Outlook. Selecting this for your business will be very beneficial for you. Shifting to this will give you full control over your email infrastructure like including date, security, and the ability to customize configuration. In simple words, you are building your email marketing infrastructure instead of relying on free-service providers.

The Key features of self-hosted email marketing include:

  • You are in charge of your server
  • Greater control and design customization options
  • Latent for enhanced privacy and security
  • Requires technical expertise
  • Alternative to commercial services

Key Steps That Help You Choose The Right Self-Hosted Email Marketing Application

You might be thinking that switching to self-hosted email marketing would be expensive and difficult to handle, but it’s not. By learning these steps in choosing the right self-hosted email marketing application will be beneficial and cost-effective for your business rather than doing email marketing on expensive third-party service providers. The steps you must need to follow for choosing the right self hosted email marketing are mentioned below:

Choose Your Email Marketing Software

Choosing the right and cost-effective email marketing software is the first and most important step for the success of self-hosted email marketing campaigns. Thinking that open source software would be a good choice for this?….. Naah! It’s an affordable option, but not the best option for email marketing, as they offer limited features like list management, email templates, and campaign tracking. 

So you should focus on paid but affordable email marketing software that fits in your budget. Don’t look at those email applications that are out of your budget. To help you in this, we have mentioned the best, reliable, and cost-effective self-hosted email marketing software (Relayzo) that suits your marketing campaigns. The features it offers:

  • Email Campaign Management
  • Subscriber List Management
  • Automation
  • Personalization
  • PowerMTA
  • AI Integration
  • A/B Testing

Set Up Your Email Server

After selecting budget-friendly email marketing software, the next step you do is to set up your email server in your self-hosted email marketing system. It depends on you whether you want to use an existing email server for this platform or create a new one. 

Having no existing servers, you can consider a hosting provider that specializes in email hosting, like:

  • Amazon Web Services 
  • Google Cloud
  • DigitalOcean
  • Zoho Mail
  • Proton Mail
  • Fastmail

Configure Your DNS Records

The next step you do is to configure your Domain Name System records that will help you in monitoring whether your email traffic lands on your email server or not. For this, you must need to set up an MX record that directly points to your email server’s IP. 

Along with that, you must have an SPF record that showcases the legitimacy of email messages and prevents them from going to spam. Moreover, performing this step correctly will enhance your email deliverability and protect your sender reputation. The higher the sender’s reputation – the higher the chances of building customers’ trust and getting sales or leads. 

Create Your Email Lists

For effective email marketing, organizing your email list is very important as it helps you to differentiate your customer types and interests according to specific campaigns. Moreover, by creating an email list – you can determine whether the list is GDPR compliant or not. So, you have the permission of your subscribers before sending emails. Also, appropriately segmenting your email lists will lead to a higher engagement rate and better overall campaign performance.

Email Template

Creating your email template is a tricky and the most important task in email marketing. As it is the first point of interaction between the sender and the recipient. For this, Relayzo has already added some email templates for brands so they can use them and run their email marketing campaigns.  

These pre-designed template layouts can be customized with your brand’s fonts and logos. Also, this can make sure the consistency of your emails across your campaigns. You can also create your own email template, as having a library of well-designed email templates can save you time and effort when crafting new email campaigns.

Send And Monitor Your Email Campaign

After your email list is confirmed, you can start sending emails. But make sure to do it in a small quantity, not in bulk. So the spam filter considers them authentic and your email lands in the recipient’s inbox not in the spam. Moreover, a self-hosted email marketing platform helps you in monitoring your email campaign and in identifying areas where improvement. 

This will also help to track the open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rate. So you can evaluate the success of your campaigns. After knowing these metrics, you will have an idea of audience preferences and engagement. So refining your email marketing strategy and campaigns will be an easy task and lead to better results.