Selecting An E-News Provider

October 20, 2008 by Bridget Ayers 

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E-newsletters are an important marketing component for any size or age business. E-newsletters give a business credibility, believability, and marketing consistency. A strong marketing campaign also allows for a business owner to stay in front of their past, present, and prospective clients. The more frequent and value added interaction a business has with its clients the more opportunity for referral based leads. And we all love those warm leads don’t we?

The best, most reliable, and cost effective e-news distribution methods are predominantly from web-based providers. I would advise against sending out e-newsletters yourself if you do not have a reliable marketing/technology assistant on staff. You also want to stay away from sending out your own e-newsletters if you are not well versed in current spam regulations as you can run the risk of being identified as a spammer and having your organization’s domain name flagged. It’s far better to outsource your e-newsletter distribution to a provider that is 100%-focused on delivery and has a strong track record.

Before you start searching for the right provider, you should consider the following:

  • Delivery – Ask prospective providers what they do to ensure the highest probability of e-news receipt. Ideally, they will maintain a strict anti-spam policy, build relationships and feedback loops with major ISPs and get on white lists (lists of approved email addresses) to ensure your e-news is delivered. Ask what kind of information you get on bounces and how bounces are handled.
  • Ease of Use – It should be straightforward and fairly quick to import and export your mailing database, manage your list online, create and send e-newsletters. The ease of use should extend into reviewing and understanding your marketing results.
  • Flexibility – You may want to switch between text and HTML for different marketing projects. A superior system will allow you to create and send in both formats as well as the ability to segment your email addresses into strategic distribution lists.
  • Pricing – Most providers have a monthly fee based on the size of your list and/or number of emails sent. Some providers also charge a one-time set-up fee. Cheaper is not always better, time has to be factored in to cost, because time is money.
  • Reliability – To establish a provider’s reliability there must be a history to look back at, working with a new company is a risk you may not want to take.  Ask for references or statistics to prove the company’s track record. Ask other business owners or bloggers who they use. Your organization has too much to lose if something happens so check into safety and or backup measures.
  • Tracking – One of the greatest benefits of e-newsletters is the instant gratification of quantifiable results. Make sure your e-newsletter provider tracks how many people (and who) receive it, open it and/or click through to your website.

    • Here are a few of the most popular e-news providers

      Aweber.com - With this service you can send unlimited automated email messages in HTML format to your target audience.

      Brontomail.com – More expensive than most but offers other tools such as e-survey distribution to e-news subscribers. Very service oriented.

      Campaignmonitor.com - An application which allows web designers to manage newsletters and deliver campaigns to their subscribers.

      Constantcontact.com - Create custom made emails or choose from already existing templates. You don’t need any technical knowledge, simply use the wizard and create professional looking e-mails in a few minutes.

      Cooleremail.com - Combination of tools to help you build, send, and track emails to your customers.  We have a robust templating system with built-in CRM, along with surveys, website tracking, subscription forms, an XML API, and much more.

      Icontact.com - A newsletter solution for email marketers that allows you to create, publish and track campaigns.

      Mailchimp.com - Users can send newsletters in HTML format which makes e-mail marketing easy.

      Madmimi.com - Stylish, simple and easy to use. They also have robust delivery, easy audience management, tracking and support.

      Verticalresponse.com - Allows you to build, target, send and track email marketing newsletters, online surveys and direct mail postcards.

    Mashable has a wonderful post with a much larger 30+ list of e-news providers if you need a few more choices.

    If you have recommendations or feedback on the providers I have listed I would love to hear about it…..

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    Comments

    • test commentluv

      <abbr>Andy Bailey´s last blog post..How much are you willing to pay for free software?</abbr>
    • Bridget Ayers
      Andy - Look how proactive and diligent you are...love it! Thank you! :-)
    • CoolerEmail.com is my favorite E-mail Marketing Company! It is incredibly easy to use and a great way to increase business opportunites!
    • All of the providers you mentioned above can do the job of sending emails to a lot of people at once. CoolerEmail does this with guaranteed best-in-the-world deliverability and much more. We provide the industry-leading combination of tools to help you build, send, and track emails to your customers. We have a robust templating system with built-in CRM, along with surveys, website tracking, subscription forms, an XML API, and much more. We support over 10,000 clients worldwide and have a full-featured private-labeled VAR program.

      Just to make sure your list was complete. :-)
    • Bridget Ayers
      Holly - Thank you for the site recommendation

      Lars - I love it when someone from a company comments on a blog post, so because you did and you gave some background info I added your site.
    • How do you always find such great information? I was thinking of starting and e newsletter for my blog so this came at just the right time. You are always so on top of everything!
    • Thanks for this great list, as well as the link to Mashable's own list. very helpful!
    • great point about the concern of your newsletter turning into spam when sent out by yourself. reason enough for me to go through the experts. thanks, bridget for doing the legwork for us once again.
    • Alas, this is the weak point of my little enterprise. i send very few e-newsletters, a question of time mostly. I try and compensate by pushing people to the blog.

      Michael

      <abbr>lyric news´s last blog post..Whatever happened to CB Milton?</abbr>
    • Just had to put a nod in for Mailchimp.com. I have found their program totally simple to use, they can do all the tracking and a/b splitting as well as have a dead simple html-auto-email-template-help...thing. It's awesome. Best in class as far as performance, features, specs, reputation for its price. And I checked out a LOT of companies!

      Rick
      Caribou Creek Log Homes
    • I would like to recommend another good news source for real estate around the world. Aim168RealEstate.com.
    • Thanks for publishing this list of eNews Providers. ;-) Great in combination with Mashables Link...
    • I've been running my own newsletters for years and am currently looking for a 3rd party solution to begin switching to as my lists have grown to the point where mailings are starting to drag on my servers, so just wanted to say thanks for a decent list of providers to look at.

      <abbr>Scott´s last blog post..My Google Reader Shares - March 20, 2009</abbr>
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