E-Mail Marketing

Programs I Use on My Website. Part 3. E-mail Programs Dr. Ralph F. Wilson , Web Marketing Today - Nov 30, 2010

Share

Part 1 - Basics | Part 2 - CMS | Part 3 - E-mail

I'm often asked what e-mail programs I use on my website and in my business. For me, e-mail is my business's lifeblood, so I'm quite particular about the programs I use and what they can do for me. Here are the categories of  my e-mail programs:

• E-mail Marketing Service (EMS)
• Sequential Autoresponder
• Desktop E-mailer
• Incoming E-mail Handler
• Newsletter Co-Registrations

We'll look at them one-by-one.

E-Mail Marketing Service (EMS)

The core of my business is publishing a weekly, advertising-supported, free e-mail newsletter on Internet marketing focused on small to medium businesses that don't have a dedicated Internet marketing expert on staff. The e-mail publishing process involves getting subscribers signed up, delivering e-mail to them, deleting bounced e-mails when it is clear that the e-mail address is no longer good, and keeping a good reputation with the various e-mail providers around the world, such as Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, MSN, and all the rest.

Because maintaining a good reputation is such an important issue -- and one that no single person can monitor and keep up with -- I've chosen to use a third-party E-mail Marketing Service (EMS) to handle my list of nearly 100,000 subscribers.

My needs with a large list will be somewhat different than most of my readers, who may have a list in the hundreds or thousands, but many of the principles are the same. An EMS needs to be:

1. Trustworthy and secure (since they host your e-mail list)
2. Easy-to-use in setting up and formatting the e-mail messages
3. Quick in sending e-mails out on schedule
4. Careful to follow good anti-spam practices and keep good relationships with the various e-mail providers
5. Reasonably priced
6. Constantly updated with improvements
7. Vigilant to fix inbox delivery problems when they occur
8. Good analytics and click-through tracking information for each e-mail campaign sent
9. Ability to segment your list based on your subscribers' interests and demographics

Two features which more sophisticated e-mail users may need are:

1. A/B split-testing to test different subject lines or offers.
2. Click-through and conversion tracking built into your main e-mail database. Most programs provide tracking of click-throughs, but don't record this to the main database so you can segment your list based on interest and performance.

These are helpful, but only really necessary if you have the expertise and staff to use them. If you hope to use these features in the future, select an EMS that has these available in an enhanced version of the program.

EMS Recommendations for Small Businesses

In my experience, there are many good services available these days (so don't quit what you have if it isn't listed below, so long as it works well for your needs). For small-to-medium business needs, I recommend several programs, all of which I've used at one time or another:

• iContact is the service I've used for several years to send out Web Marketing Today. I am quite pleased with their services and their can-do attitude. When problems occasionally occur (which happens with any provider, in my experience), they are quick to resolve them. The program is being actively developed with new features occurring regularly.
• AWeber is well-liked by marketers, especially for its robust autoresponder features. Check this one out!
• Constant Contact is the most popular small business EMS. I've used it for a church mailing list and found it quite good and easy to use.
• VerticalResponse is an excellent EMS that also includes the ability to remotely send postcards to customers. I'm currently using this for a church mailing list and really like the interface.

Any of these services will meet average needs very well -- they're all very good at what they do. But make sure to look for the special features each offers that might make the difference in your selection.

EMS Price Comparisons

To do some price comparisons between companies, I'll suggest three list sizes, that is, the number of subscribers. Price, however, should not be your main criterion for selecting a service, but only one criterion among several. Cheaper is not usually better where business is concerned. Most services provide an initial free period so you can try it out.

	Monthly Fee per number of Subscribers
	250	2,000	10,000
iContact	$9.95	$19.00	$74.00
AWeber	$19.00	$29.00	$69.00
Constant Contact	$15.00	$30.00	$75.00
Vertical Response	$10.00	$28.00	$120.00

Sequential Autoresponder

A sequential autoresponder is a type of e-mail program that can send out a particular sequence of e-mails to subscribers, based on how long they've been a subscriber. They're often used for training programs, getting acquainted with customers, and making a series of offers to new customers that get better with each e-mail in the series. While the EMS services listed above are excellent for e-mail delivery, most (with the exception of AWeber) don't have particularly strong autoresponder features.

However, by far the best autoresponder I've found is Neil Morgan's AutoResponse Plus 3. It is written in Perl (though a PHP version will be released soon), is hosted on an Internet hosting service that you select (perhaps your current one, but I encourage you to follow their recommendations if you have a large list), and has a robust and very flexible set of features to handle an automatic series of e-mail messages. I have used it for nearly a decade with great success to deliver a series of Bible study lessons on a regular schedule to opt-in subscribers. I have over 50 different autoresponder series, some with as many as 60 separate e-mails in sequence.

I've found it excellent and strongly recommend AutoResponse Plus, which costs $147 one-time fee. However, since you have to manage your own deliverability issues, for normal purposes, such as sending out an e-mail newsletter, I recommend using one of the EMS services recommended above, even though you may end up paying more. AutoResponse Plus is capable of sending out e-mails to a list of 150,000+ -- I've done it -- but it can't manage deliverability for you -- and deliverability is the name of the game in these spam-plagued days.

Desktop E-mailer

There's another type of e-mail program I use occasionally, typically for small lists where the subscriber names are contained in an Excel spreadsheet or text list on my desktop computer. I call it a desktop mailer, since it is installed on your computer and uses your Internet connection to send e-mails. The problem is that your Internet Service Provider (mine is AT&T) usually doesn't like bulk e-mails being sent through it and will cap the number of outgoing e-mails at an arbitrary number like 10 or 50 or 100. Thus I find a desktop mailer exceedingly useful to send to a small, special list, but not worth the trouble to run a larger list. And e-mail deliverability is a problem (as discussed for AutoResponse Plus) and list maintenance may not be as good as an EMS.

Having said that, I've used Gammadyne Mailer for many years. The program is extremely flexible -- and if you have the skills, it is very programmable (though this makes it more difficult for the "newbie" to learn). The developer keeps regularly improving the program, so it isn't falling behind the times. If you need to access e-mails that are in databases on your computer, Gammadyne is excellent. I wish, however, that it could get to addresses in my Office Outlook e-mail database.

Incoming E-mail Handling

Everyone has a favorite e-mail client program. For my business, I've found Microsoft Office Outlook to be excellent, since it keeps track of my e-mail, as well as a to-do list, calendar, and business contacts, all in one program. For incoming e-mail, I've set up about 50+ rules that put e-mail from my regular sources into the correct folder to aid in processing.

I also use Office Outlook's "signature" feature to store about 30 boiler-plate e-mail responses to common situations and questions, which I can modify on the fly to meet the particular needs of the customer.

Office Outlook has a junk mail filter, but it is pretty useless if you get much e-mail, as I do. So for spam filtering, I use Cloudmark DesktopOne Pro which costs $19.95 annually. (One subscription is good for both my desktop and laptop at the same price.) Versions are available for Microsoft Office Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Microsoft Windows Mail. If you don't have a spam filtering system that works for you, try Cloudmark.

Newsletter Co-Registrations

The final class of e-mail programs I use in my business is a co-registration system. RegReady enables me to build my e-mail list responsibly, by getting my newsletter offer in front of the new subscribers to similar newsletters or companies. It enables a company to get new subscribers at a relatively low cost.
 

Those are the e-mail programs I use and recommend. I hope you'll find one or more among them that can improve your company with its e-mail marketing.

Dr. Ralph Wilson is a pioneer in Internet marketing, beginning Web Marketing Today in 1995. At present it reaches nearly 100,000 subscribers each week. The New York Times named him "among the best-known publishers and consultants who preach the responsible use of e-mail for marketing."