Mike DelGaudio

My daughter just dropped a big plop of Metholatum on our new rug. Drat! Searching on the web reveals that Dry Cleaning Solution is your best bet for removing it.
Riiiight. I’ll just head over to the pantry and get my bottle. I’ve never even SEEN dry cleaning fluid, let alone have any on hand.

I was able to get the stain out as follows:
You’ll need:

• Rubbing Alcohol
• Cotton Balls
• A clean, dry towel

As always, whenever you are going to put something wet onto your rug, test it on an inconspicuous spot to make sure you aren’t going to mess it up, or fade the color. I ain’t responsible for your stain, or any damage you do to your stuff!

Here is how I got the stain out:

1. GENTLY lift any large blobs of the goo out of the rug. Try not to mash any of the stuff into the rug fibers
2. Saturate a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol and GENTLY dab the alcohol onto the Mentholatum that remains
3. The alcohol seems to loosen / dissolve the Mentholatum, so try to wipe the goo as best you can. Gentle is the key word. Don’t mash the stuff into the rug any more than it already is
4. Once a cotton ball gets all covered with Mentholatum, discard and saturate a new one. Repeat until as much of the Mentholatum is up from the rug.
5. After the goo us up, dab the carpet with the towel to absorb any left over alcohol. Try and get the rug dry, if you can.

It worked for me, hopefully it will work for you!

There are many reasons why someone might want to mass email to groups of people. Most often this might be for product announcements, updates, or general information. Often this tough to do without putting your name or your company’s name at risk for appearing on Spam blacklists.

Here are five options I’ve found for sending bulk email.
Lyris

What they say: “Improve inbox delivery, create landing pages and see what subscribers are up to after they click through with integrated email-deliverability analytics, Web analytics and Web content management.”

MailChimp

What they say: With MailChimp you decide whether to pay on a monthly basis or pay-as-you-go. The monthly fee is based on the number of email addresses in your contact list and starts at $15 per month. The pay-as-you-go works plan works like stamps. If you want to send to 500 people, you’ll need 500 “email credits.” Email credits start at three cents and go down to ½ a cent for orders over $1,000. Email credits “roll over” and never expire.

CampaignMonitor
What they say:
Campaign Monitor is built for designers who can create great looking emails for themselves and their clients, but need software to send each campaign, track the results and manage their subscribers.

ConstantContact

What they say: Email Marketing by Constant Contact makes it easy to create professional-looking emails—fast and with no technical expertise. With more than 300 easily customized email templates, a step-by step Email Wizard, and point-and-click interface, you can create high-impact email newsletters and promotions in just minutes

Vtrenz

What they say: Vtrenz, a Silverpop Solution, is the leading on-demand marketing automation solution, enabling direct marketing professionals to develop a dynamic, repeatable, and measurable lead generation process which increases response rates, accelerates sales opportunities, and provides clear visibility into marketing initiatives.

So there you have it, 5 options of varying capabilities and pricing that will help you and your company ethically mail bulk messages to your customers.