We’re sorry for the inconvenience. You can either create a new account or e-mail us with your user name or e-mail address and we’ll investigate and fix the problem.

Yes. Please contact us and we will get back to you with a custom quote within 24 hours.

We think we offer the most efficient, effective solution at a highly competitive cost. However, if you feel otherwise, please contact us regarding your situation.

We will consider your request to customize our interface options, including the required modifications and the business you will bring. Please contact us with your specific needs and we will get back to you within 24 hours.

We think our interface enables you to create, manage and send e-mail campaigns faster and easier than our competitors. You can be the judge, but give us a try and see for yourself.

For all accounts of less than 100,000 e-mails per month, we recommend using our secure credit card system built into the site. Payment can also be made via check if you’d like to pay for six months or a full year. Please send a check to:

The Benchmark Group
1777 Bellflower Blvd.
Suite 100
Long Beach, CA 90815

Please include a note on what the check will be used for (which plan, which service, etc).

We do provide a reseller option. To find out more, please contact us and we will give you more info about our reseller program.

Yes we do. We offer special discounts to large volume advertising agency accounts. Please contact us to get more info on our program. The size of the discount depends on your expected e-mail volume.

Open our MS Outlook address book. In the menu option, go to File -> Export -> (Other export book) Text File (comma separated values). Please select the fields with data that you’d like to use. A minimum of 13 fields are allowed in a contact list, so make sure you have not selected more than 13 when you export. Once this list has been exported, open it and insert the field headers, separated by commas.

Go to the address book option in Yahoo. Click on Import/Export. In the export section, choose the Microsoft Outlook option to export your list. Your Yahoo contacts will be saved in a CSV (comma separated values) file. Open this file using a spreadsheet program and delete the columns you don’t want. A maximum of 13 fields are allowed in our contact list, so please make sure you have not selected more than 13 when you export. Once you have done all the editing, save this file in the CSV (MSDOS) (*.CSV) format.

When uploading or sending your e-mail list to Benchmark Rich Media, make sure your list is saved in *.CSV (comma separated values) format, .TXT (tab delimited) or .XLS (MS Excel) format. These are the only formats supported by our system. The first row of the file should have column names while the actual values start in the second row. For example, a two person contact list with three fields (first name, last name and e-mail address) in .CSV format will look like this:

FirstName, LastName, Email
Peter, Pan, peterpan@neverneverland.com
Lana, Lane, lanalane@smallsville.com

Please note that there are no spaces between data entries.

If you are uploading an .XLS file, please make sure that there is only one worksheet in the file and it is named "Sheet1".

Sample Excel file .csv
Sample Word file .txt

Upload the Excel file as you would upload any other file. Please make Sure the name of the Excel Sheet is “Sheet 1”.

It can be in any order. Once the data is uploaded, you’ll be able to define the type of data for each field. You can indicate which field has the first name, which has the last name, and so forth.

It will be ready to go within 24 hours. You will receive an e-mail notification from us as soon as it is ready. If you need to access your contact list more quickly, we suggest using our online upload feature.

You can have a maximum number of 13 fields in your contact list. However, the larger number of fields you have in your list, the more difficult it becomes to manage them. We suggest only keeping the fields you’ll need for your e-mail campaign.

Absolutely. Benchmark holds the privacy of our customers in the highest regard. We ensure that all contact lists, e-mail content and reports remain private and confidential. We will not sell, rent or loan your e-mail lists or individual customer data to any outside firm. Please see our privacy policy if you have more questions.

Yes. When you click on the Contact Database List’s headers, the contacts will sort alphabetically based on the selected header. You can sort alphabetically in either descending or ascending order. Clicking on the header will toggle between ascending and descending order.

ListBuilder is a feature provided by Benchmarkrichmedia.com for generating an Opt-In E-mail list using your Web site. An Opt-In list builder is a clickable image or link that you place on your Web site. When site visitors click on the image, they are prompted to provide contact info (usually an e-mail address). Our ListBuilder tool provides a quick, efficient way to expand your contact database with e-mail addresses of your visitors. It’s also an easy way to get permission from your customers to send them information, whether that be a newsletter, an interesting article, a special offer or promotion.

You can select one of our free clickable images, create your own image, or use a link. Attach the image to your Web site with the free HTML code we send you and watch your contact list grow.

A typical ListBuilder looks like this:



E-mail addresses submitted from ListBuilder are fed directly and automatically to your Benchmark account. No extra steps are needed.

The HTML code you’ll need to add to your site will be e-mailed to you when you click the finish button. Either you or your Webmaster can add this code to the pages where you want to display the sign up option. Usually, this is your home page.

If one of our images doesn’t suit you, you can use one of your own images. All you need to do is upload the image to your Web site while creating the ListBuilder. During the second step, you can provide the path where the image can be found.

Yes. You can place the ListBuilder on as many pages that you’d like.

Currently, each Benchmark ListBuilder is tied to a single contact list. You can still use that list for any number of campaigns, but all users who enter their e-mail addresses will be directed to the same contact list. If you want to use more than one list, you must build a separate ListBuilder for each list.

When someone submits their info to the ListBuilder, in the case of single opt-in, the information is added instantly. If you’re using a double opt-in procedure, the information is added when the user clicks on the confirmation link in the e-mail, which is sent to them for sign up confirmation.

Limited data validation is performed on the e-mail address field to ensure that the accepted format for an e-mail address is used. We cannot, however, verify if a false or nonsensical e-mail address is used. If a field is marked as a required field, input into this field must be completed before the ListBuilder accepts the data.

Double Opt-In allows you to send customers e-mail messages to any visitors who have used the ListBuilder to sign up. The visitor’s information will not be added to your contact database until they respond to your customized e-mail message. This ensures that visitors are signed up for your campaigns correctly.

You can create a form on your Web site where a user can enter data. As part of this form, you would need to perform your own data validation to check for bad e-mail address formats and make sure required fields are filled. You would also need a database to capture the information from the form and store it. Then the data must be extracted from the database, saved into a contact list, and the list must be selected as the contact list for your campaign or newsletter. Duplicate addresses, unsubscribe requests, merging of contact lists and data updates must all be managed and coordinated. Thankfully, Benchmark does this all for you.

Your e-mail content can be sent in HTML, in text format, or both. An existing document can be uploaded from your system’s hard drive, or the e-mail content can be entered directly online in the appropriate text or HTML boxes.

If you have created a document in Microsoft Word, WordPerfect or similar word processing software, you need to save it as a TEXT document. When you are saving your document, select "Save As" from the "File" drop down menu. In the "Save As" window, change the "Save as Type" from a Word Document to Text Only (*txt). If this does not work, create your document in Notepad or cut and paste the text from Word to Notepad.

We would advise against it, as MS Word, when converting from its native format to HTML, introduces a lot of unnecessary html tags that are extremely difficult to remove. This might cause formatting problems with your e-mail layout.

Unfortunately, you cannot. As with most e-mail clients, as well as Web mail service providers like Hotmail, for example, may not support these applications because of security reasons.

Yes. This allows you to direct your e-mail recipients to a particular Web address, or to your company home page. Simply type the Web address into the body of the e-mail as you would write a domain name when searching on the Internet (for example: http://www.Benchmark e-mail.com)

Yes. You can designate the links in your e-mail layout for tracking. This will help you know who clicked on the links, as well as which links were clicked the most.

No. Benchmark e-mail does not permit attachments to be sent. This ensures that viruses are not inadvertently sent by our system.

Yes. Any attribute contained in your contact list (e.g. first, last name, country, favorite wine) may be used to generate personalized e-mails. Just follow the simple instructions for adding the list attributes to your e-mail layouts.

To change the background color in your template, don’t use the bgcolor in the BODY tag. Instead, create a table and give the bgcolor to the Table. Include all your content into this table itself (if you click the table key, all of your content should be automatically highlighted). Use the following technique:

<TABLE bgcolor=#C0C0C0>
<TR>
<TD>
Your html content
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>

 

You can use the Insert Image option in the online editor. The images need to be available online, on your website, for example. If you do not have a website to upload the images, you can use the Image Gallery feature provided by Benchmark e-mail.

To insert images from a Web site, the format should look like this:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/images/icons/6_1.gif

No. Benchmark allows you to send e-mails to as many contacts you’d like.

Of course. You can see a preview of your campaigns as you create them online. Before you schedule your campaign, Benchmark recommends sending a test message to ensure it arrives looking exactly as you want it to. You can send this test message to yourself or to any other address (just make sure you can access it to see the test e-mail). You can also send a test message to a small contact database that you’ve set up specifically for testing. All you need to do is make sure the database has fewer than 15 contacts.

Yes. Once a campaign is set up, you can schedule it to run at any specified time or date, as long as that time or date is at least one hour from when your campaign was created. Benchmark reserves the right to refuse delivery of certain e-mails and will advise users accordingly. To find out more about this, please see our Terms of Use.

You can have replies to your campaigns sent to whichever e-mail address you choose. For example, you may want the responses to go to your sales manager or your marketing department if you are conducting a customer survey.

Campaigns with 15 or fewer contacts are free of charge. For specific pricing plans, click here.

After you’ve set up your campaign and tested it, you’re ready to set it up for a run. At Benchmark, we calculate your cost based on the number of e-mails you send in a campaign. If you accept this cost, we direct you to a secure server for a credit card payment. You will only pay for the e-mails you send. There are no set-up costs, no monthly fees, no license fees and no maintenance costs.

Absolutely – and we don’t make exceptions. Benchmark E-mail believes in responsible Internet usage as outlined in our Terms of Use and our Anti-SPAM policies.

There are different types of replies to your campaigns. Along with legitimate replies, you may get incorrectly formatted unsubscribe requests and undeliverable messages. These are forwarded to you as legitimate responses because they can’t be classified as bounces or unsubscribe messages. Although you will receive all responses to your campaign, only normal replies will appear in your Benchmark statistical report.

Bounced e-mails are automatically processed by Benchmark and the number of bounced e-mails are tracked in the reports available to you. You should not receive any bounced e-mails. Benchmark takes care of those for you and gives you the results through our reporting tools.

If you receive bounced e-mails it is most likely because the recipients have forwarded their mail to another address and that forwarded address has bounced. Therefore, Benchmark is unable to match the forwarded address with the address in the database. When this happens, Benchmark can’t automatically process the bounced e-mails, so they get sent to the e-mail address that you specified for replies.

Unsubscribe requests are automatically processed by Benchmark and the number of unsubscribes per campaign are tracked in reports available to you. You should not receive any of the unsubscribe e-mails. Benchmark takes care of unsubscribe requests for you, and you can view the results with our reporting tools.

When a person unsubscribes to your e-mails, they usually either click on the unsubscribe link in your e-mails or hit the reply button and type the word “unsubscribe” in the subject line of their reply. If they followed the proper procedure (clicking on the unsubscribe link in your e-mail), Benchmark would handle this for you. Benchmark flags unsubscribe users in our contact database and puts their e-mail address in our unsubscribe report.

Sometimes, if you do not receive unsubscribe requests, it is because the recipients failed to follow the unsubscribe procedure. They may have typed “unsubscribe” in the body of the e-mail and not the subject line. As a result, Benchmark processed their e-mail as a reply and not an unsubscribe. In this case, their faulty unsubscribe request is processed as a reply and is sent to the e-mail address you specified for replies. The recipient will not be flagged as unsubscribed in the contact database, nor does their e-mail address appear in the unsubscribe report. For these unusual situations, you can manually flag these contacts as unsubscribes by editing the contact list yourself

Yes. As soon as your campaign starts running, Benchmark starts tallying the results in real time. Benchmark will then record the success