Email Newsletters

Boy do times change when it comes to marketing online!

Our company, a specialist software developer, had a successful email newsletter creating software called 123Ezine. We no longer market that software product – why?

Because we could no longer compete with the Email Newsletter Services / Ezine Services – you know the sort of service, the ones that allow your customers/prospects to sign up for your newsletter or ezine then broadcast it on a predetermined date(s)using a super professional looking format.

On the basis that “if you can’t beat them join them” we did just that and decided to review these services and select the top two to promote. You see, if your email does not get through to the intended reader, then regardless of what your newsletter says, it isn’t being informative!

So, our top priority was about deliverability. Our second requirement was really taken from our software experience which meant that any service had to be really easy to use – in short, you don’t have to be a techno freekin geek to publish a newsletter online – the service had to be so simple to use that virtually anyone could use it – even your granny (sorry gran no insult intended).

Finally, the newsletter templates had to be professionally designed and not just thrown up by some kid using primary colors and oooh yea there had to be a large selection of them with different layouts and styles with changeable colors so we could blend them to our needs.

Our findings were that Aweber and Getresponse came out tops. You see we were not doing this as an exercise we were looking for precisely the same service to satisfy our own business needs. On the basis that you can only select one we choose Aweber as best fit but really there is very little difference between the two services.

If you are looking for a similar service make sure you do your homework and check to see they offer:

• Email Newsletters: Make sure they offer professionally designed email styles that can be broadcast to a schedule that suits you.
  
• Website Signup Forms: a simple solution that allows you to easily place the necessary code for a subscribe box onto your web page.
  
• Autoresponders: a facility to organize your subscribers onto different email lists so you can send out sequences of follow up emails automatically to a schedule.
  
• Unlimited Campaigns: a way to handle all your email campaigns and that you can set up lists for your customers, prospects, blog subscribers and other campaigns at each of your websites and run as many campaigns and send as many emails as you want without additional cost.
  
• HTML Email Templates: loads of great looking email templates that can be easily changed in both design and color to match your brand.
  
• Email Deliverability: For subscribers to open your emails, click on links and place orders, they have to first receive those emails in their inboxes so make sure you ask their delivery rate.
  
• Blog Newsletters: the option of producing a Blog with third party text automatically added (RSS feeds) and provide social network promotion.
  
• Email Web Analytics: Track and analyze your subscribers activity and measure your email campaign results and performance with built in tracking tools and reporting facilities.
  
• Subscriber Management: Find, delete, edit, import, export - in short the ability to manage your email addresses and categorize them as YOU require.
  
• Expert Customer Support: Real live people to answer your queries - enough said!
  
• A FREE Test Run: Make sure you can try before you buy - some services, even though they are a lot easier to use than they used to be, can still be just out of reach for some people (it's a perception thing not an intelligence measure) so take a test drive.

Best of Success,

Dave MacGregor