Using Email Newsletters to Your Advantage, Part Three: Choose an Email Newsletter Program
- Posted: May 25, 2010 by Stacey Abler/ Last modified: May 27, 2010
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There are multiple commercial email programs that can be used to communicate with customers and clients. What absolutely should not be done is simply trying to manage the list on your own and send out regular emails to your clients. A professional service has multiple advantages.
Advantages
1. List Management With an email program, it will manage the subscriber list for you. The services provide a sign-up box that can be added to your website and blog. Some will practice a double opt-in which simply means that once the subscriber has entered their email address, they must also confirm their email address by clicking on a link sent to their email. All emails will also include an option for the person to unsubscribe to your mailing list. This makes list management much easier and will be more likely to prevent someone from accidentally receiving future communications who has opted out.
2. Conversion Tracking While the tracking software is not foolproof, it will still provide an in-depth analysis about the email campaign. Most software programs will track who opened the email, how many times it was opened, which links within the email were clicked, how many forwarded the email to a friend, etc. The information can be very useful. For instance, by analyzing the statistics of your campaign, you can determine which subjects are most interesting to your customers. This information can also be broken down by subscriber.
3. Automated Campaigns With an email software program, you can set up automated emails to be sent to your subscribers on a schedule. When a subscriber first asks for information about your company or site, it creates an opportunity to further engage them as they have obviously shown an interest in your product or service. Most businesses make the mistake of not contacting them again until their next scheduled communication for all subscribers. In several weeks, your new subscriber could have forgotten about your website (and therefore think it is spam) or already found the product or service of a competitor. By setting up automatic emails for new subscribers, they will begin receiving communication immediately.
For example, a sample schedule may include an introductory email the day after they sign up, followed by another email in 3 days, 7 days, 15 days and 30 days. These emails only have to be set up once and all new subscribers will receive them on schedule.
4. Less Expensive An email campaign is obviously less expensive than a direct mail campaign as you can avoid the printing and mailing expenses. Using an email campaign software program can also save man hours in analyzing and compiling data. The programs are generally inexpensive and run less than $30 per month for up to 2,500 subscribers.
Email Campaign Management Companies
Two of the most popular companies for managing email campaigns are Constant Contact and Aweber. The services and features offered through both companies are fairly similar. It is just a matter of the interface and customer service that you prefer. One advantage for me in using Aweber is that it allows me to manage multiple subscriber lists under one account without mixing subscribers or stats. In order to keep things separate for all of my websites on Constant Contact, I have to have an account for each site. However, other than that, I have also been very happy with Constant Contact.
Have you found additional advantages in using email campaign management companies? Which company do you prefer and why?
Don’t miss the first two parts in the series – Developing a Business Email List and Determine Your Goals.
Related posts:
- Using Email Newsletters to Your Advantage, Part Four: Choose Your Email Newsletter Content
- Using Email Newsletters to Your Advantage, Part One: Develop a Business Email List
- Using Email Newsletters to Your Advantage, Part Two: Determine Your Goals
- Using Email Newsletters to Your Advantage, Part Five: Tips and Tricks
- The Importance of Maintaining a Blogging Schedule
I’ve yet to give any email campaign management companies a spin. For a business like that of a freelance writer, what do you think the deciding factors would be for choosing an email management campaign company? Look forward to discussing it with you!
For the two major companies I discussed (Aweber and Constant Contact), I don’t think there is a great deal of difference between the two. The only benefit that I see in my own business is the ease of managing multiple lists in Aweber under the same account. Aweber currently has a special where you can try it out for the first month for $1 whereas Constant Contact allows you to use the service for free for the first 60 days. If you have never used a service before, you may try out Constant Contact first. If you decide to switch, you can easily export your list from one and into the other without your subscribers knowing the difference.