Extracting Data from E-Mails

"When ClickBank sends me a customer's information after an e-book sale, that information needs to go to an autoresponder and then to my customer list for future e-mails. What program can you recommend to take care of customer lists and sending out newsletters?" -- Seeber Brown, Dyslexia Information

While many good programs are available to send out newsletters, for your purposes I'd recommend Online Automation's Postmaster Express (Gold Package for Small Businesses, $299; www.wilsonweb.com/afd/postmaster.htm). This is a desktop listserver and autoresponder that stores your data in a Microsoft Access database structure designed especially for this program. What sets this program apart from others is its menu-driven IES feature that can extract data from e-mails and insert it automatically into your database. Programs like this scan e-mail messages looking for specific trigger words. For example, if the data in a message from ClickBank was:

Name: John Doe
Email: jdoe@domain.com
Product: E-Mail Marketing Handbook

the program would scan the message for "Name: " and "Email: " and "Product: " and then extract any characters after that to the end of the line and insert them into the appropriate fields in the database. Postmaster Express has a free trial offer so you can get acquainted with the product.

Another program capable of automatic e-mail data extraction is Gammadyne Mailer, $149 (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/gammadyne.htm). Though Gammadyne isn't as user-friendly as Postmaster Express, it is extremely powerful and can be programmed to perform almost any action you might think of involved with receiving and sending out e-mails. I use it in my business constantly.

If you're doing enough business to warrant your own merchant credit card account, you might consider dropping ClickBank in favor of 1ShoppingCart (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/cart.htm). This hosted ASP application doesn't do e-mail data extraction, but could solve your problem in a different way. It includes a built-in listserver, autoresponder (which can be set up to be product-specific), ad tracker, shopping cart, and a system for downloading digital products such as e-books. Costs range from $19 to $69 per month, depending upon the features you need. They offer a 30-day trial for $3.95.