Anyone know of any existing database software tools mailer related for list management? Or a database template in Access? Thought I would ask before I start designing one.
I wonder, is it not possible to manage all this with Microsoft Access? I never dealt with this program, I just see that no one use it for mail databases, don't know why, always wanted to try.
I wouldn't use microsoft access unless you only plan on managing under 100k records or so. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/access-2010-specifications-HA010341462.aspx I haven't seen any database backed data management that wasn't tied to a mailing system. What is it that you're wanting to accomplish?
Thanks nickphx, I didn't realize there was a 2GB limit per database with Access. I Would like one central access point for all of my data. From here I can run query reports based on domain, geo-location, M or F, phone number etc...then extract those queries to csv or txt files. This will result in better targeting my data thus more revenue.
That sounds like something you would want to tie into a mailing platform. To update geo location you wouldn't want to trust the data provider to provide accurate information. You could use open/click IP source to update geo location of the records. If you develop this outside of your mailing platform you will waste much time shuffling data between the two..
Who would you recommend for the geo location database nick. What you said was initially my thought when i built mine but I stumbled upon the frequent update of the new IP's location.
adlinkr.com and makiska are great solutions that are tied into many esp's and if they are not tied into them they will work with you to streamline and automate your mailing needs. Also liquid-data.com
There's maxmind and a free version that uses data from the RIRs to build their databases. http://software77.net/geo-ip/ is the free version. I've found it to work just as well if not better than maxmind when you only need to determine Country. If you want more granular such as state or city, maxmind does better because of their other fraud prevention related products and large client base of merchants that provide information.
If you have the data in some kind of raw text format, you might be able to do some stuff with R. My knowledge about it doesn't exceed what my statistics buddy tells me about it, but it seems it might be a fit if you're just trying to run reports against your data. http://www.r-project.org/ Personally, I like to ninja stuff out with MySQL. My tables are already designed and data is being saved in my structures. Depending on the format your data is in, it shouldn't be far fetched to use MySQL to do the grunt work you require. Aside from converting the format of your data and assuming you have some database knowledge, shouldn't be too rough. Overall, I'd imagine that your data is in some kind of database already. Unless you like to get down and dirty with text files.
