Review: MailKing 1.3.5

"Dear Friend, Thank you for your recent inquiry about our Acme Baloney Slicing Machine…." I've gotten so I don't read e-mail that begins with "Hello," because it's almost always spam. However, when an e-mail begins with "Ralph" or "Mr. Wilson" I perk up and retract my finger from the delete key.

You're probably been acquainted with the mail merge function of wordprocessors. MailKing does for e-mail what mail merge does for snail mail. While it's not the most powerful such program out there (Arial Campaign, for example, includes more advanced features such as managing and scheduling of several-part mailing campaigns), it's by far the least expensive, and it is more intuitive and simpler to use than its more muscular cousins.

Don't mistake MailKing for a spam tool that guzzles up millions of e-mail addresses and then regurgitates them onto the Net. Rather, it works from a database of customers' and prospects' names and e-mail addresses that an online business has carefully developed. It can use or import lists from an impressive variety of database types: Access (MailKing's native format), Excel, Act!, Eudora address book, Outlook address book, dBase, Paradox, FoxPro, Lotus, or delimited text files. For most of these, MailKing can directly add, delete, and alter information in the database. Alternatively, you can instantly create MailKing's own copy of the database or create and maintain a database entirely within MailKing itself. Persons to receive e-mail can be selected from the larger database by a simple but sophisticated filter.

Mailing can use your ISP's SMTP program or you can send messages into Outlook's outbox. I found the e-mailing process significantly faster than with Campaign since it involves fewer steps. My list of over 1,000 went out without a hitch.

I was impressed by MailKing's ease of use. It is deliberately compatible with Office 97's look and feel, and can work seamlessly with databases. It is intuitive enough that only once did I have to consult the 61-page handbook.

You can try out MailKing for 30 days, though your outgoing e-mail will indicate the product's trial status. Copies may be downloaded at http://www.mailking.com/html/download.html

For MailKing's price and features, I don't think marketers can beat this product.

Read additional articles from Web Marketing Today, Issue 48, September 1, 1998