ExpertMarketing Advice

So…you’ve recently learned that email marketing is one of the most effective and profitable ways to promote just about any business and you want to start using it to promote yours. What are your next steps?

To start – you need to be aware of the rules that may exist regarding the use of email marketing within your country. In the U.S., that would be the CAN-SPAM ACT of 2003, and you can read up on the important details in the Federal Trade Commissions compliance guide for business.

There aren’t many rules and they aren’t difficult to comply with, but you need to be aware of them because almost all of the services I’m about to discuss for sending your email will require that you comply with them in addition to their own terms and conditions. Now, once you’re aware of rules, we can look at just how to get started with email marketing.

The first choice to make is whether you wish to manage your email marketing program yourself, or pay a professional to take care of all of the details for you. If you have more money than you have time or internet experience, you may want to pay someone to manage everything for you. They’ll typically use one the services I’ll get to in just a moment, but they’ll setup and manage your email campaigns for you and usually charge you a monthly fee to do so. Many web design companies offer this as an additional service so you may want to check with the company who designed your website first, and if they don’t offer email marketing services themselves, chances are they can refer you to a competent company who does.

Now, if you have a little bit of time and know your way around your computer and the internet reasonably well, you can do your email marketing yourself using one of the following Email Service Providers (ESPs)

All services here, except where noted, offer the ability to send out one-time “broadcast” messages to your email list in addition to allowing you to setup “autoresponders” which allow you to send out a pre-written sequence of emails to a subscriber on a regular basis. They also offer various means to track the number of emails that are opened and to track links clicked within the emails as well, and they offer the ability to track and manage the subscribers to your email list.

Please note that this list is loosely in order of preference based on my personal experience with these companies, but almost everyone here offers a free trial of their service and I’d recommend choosing 2 or 3 services to test and see which you like best.

1. Constant Contact– One of the first ESPs on the scene over ten years ago, Constant Contact is an easy to use service with a great selection of email templates that currently offers a 60 day free trial and monthly pricing as low as $15 a month.They  make it easy to create messages by using an e-mail wizard, will host up to 5 newsletter images for free and they also provide a handful of detailed training tutorials and webinars.
2. iContact – Another good company with a solid reputation, their features are similar to those offered by Constant Contact and they also offer a free trial and monthly pricing starts at under $10/month.
3. MailChimp – While MailChimp hasn’t been around quite as long as the first two companies mentioned, they’ve grown quickly to become one of the better ESPs going. They offer a long list of features similar to the above services, but two that stand out for me are a built in image editor to modify the photos you might want to use in your emails, and they offer a fantastic free trial offer that gives you full access to all of their features, as long as your mailing list has 1000 or less subscribers. You can email each of those 1000 or less subscribers up to six times a month, so you get to send up to 6,000 email messages a month for free with them! Once you exceed 1000 subscribers the pricing is comparable to the other services mentioned.
4. Benchmark Email – With features similar to the above services, Benchmark Email allows you to create signup forms for your website, send email broadcasts and manage a virtually unlimited number of contacts. Their pricing similar to the other services here, but can be expensive if you contact your list very frequently.
5. Emma – MyEmma is another service that’s been in business for a number of years now and while they offer similar features and pricing to the above mentioned companies, they differ from the others by not relying on template designs, but provide help (at different pricing levels of course) to design a look for your email newsletter for you.
6. Vertical Response – Vertical Response is another established company with an extensive email feature set, but they offer something I don’t think I’ve seen any other email service provider offer – the ability to send printed postcards to your subscriber list! With their tools, you can create full color, oversized postcards so in addition helping with your email marketing efforts, they can also help with your direct mail efforts too!
7. Jango Mail – With Jango Mail you can send plain text and html email messages just like you can with the other services here, but a key difference is your ability to send attachments, like word or pdf documents in the emails sent to your list. Their pricing starts at $30 and allows you to send 1000 emails.
8. Get Response– Get Response sets themselves apart from the other companies in this list by offering two unique features I’ve yet to see offered anywhere else. 1) They offer something called “email-to-speech” which promises to convert your text emails into a human voice so subscribers can listen to your emails and 2) they offer the ability to record and store video files to be included in your emails.I have not had the opportunity to try their services myself, but their unique offerings are certainly interesting and worth taking a look at for free.
9.  Campaigner -  In addition to the standard features most of the companies here offer, Campaigner offer a nice set of email templates tailored for specific industries, and they offer really attractive pricing starting at only $10 a month for unlimited emails sent to 1 – 1000 subscribers.
10. Bronto – Bronto offers an extensive list of features, but their service are better suited for the more experienced marketer who is willing to pay for assistance when it comes to crafting a serious email marketing campaign. As such, they don’t display prices on their website and require prospects to consult with them in order to determine the best solution for their business.Please Note – The information presented here is subject to change without notice and you should refer to the websites listed to get up to date information concerning their services.