If you read the article "Choosing the Right E-mail Program or Service for Your Business" then you know that I advocate using an e-mail service to keep in contact with your prospects and customers. But which one should you choose? There are plenty out there so I thought it would be a good idea to share my personal experience with these companies so you can make an informed decision of which one is right for you.
iContact - This is the e-mail service I've used for well over 2 years and I love it. It is easy to use and inexpensive too. Their interface is easy to navigate and use, they have excellent reporting, and they integrate with Facebook and Twitter too. In addition to e-mailing, you can also set up unlimited auto-responders and send out surveys too which ads a lot to your business marketing plan. In fact the only drawback to iContact is that they limit the number of e-mails you can send to 6x your list per month. It's a little complicated to explain but basically it means that if you send a newsletter to your entire list then you could send 6 newsletters a month. If you want to send more you'd have to upgrade your service to a higher level. For the majority of people this is a non-issue because they rarely send out e-mails more than once a week (equaling about 4 a month). This limitation it doesn't apply to auto-responders or surveys which are unlimited.
Constant Contact - This is probably the most well known e-mail service thanks to their massive advertising campaign. It is more expensive than iContact but the interface is also very easy to use and they now support auto-responders which is a must if you're doing business online. They also have excellent reporting and they do not have a limit on the number of e-mails you can send out a month. I have a client who uses them for daily e-mails and he's been very happy with their service. The only issue he has is that sometimes the formatting gets messed up and he has to tweak it to get the e-mail to look right. So if you need to send out a large amount of e-mails this may be the way to go.
Get Response - This is another excellent e-mail service. Truthfully I haven't used it in quite a while but they are constantly upgrading their services and offer very comprehensive e-mail segmenting and grouping. For instance you can target a list to people in a certain zip code, city, or other area and send follow up e-mails to sub-lists of your master list. Their pricing is comparable to iContact (and cheaper than Constant Contact) and they offer unlimited e-mails. They also support video e-mail marketing. In fact if I wasn't using iContact this is the service I'd go for. They're definitely worth looking at.
AWeber - For a long time this was considered to be the best of the best in e-mail services. It has advanced segmenting, offers unlimited e-mails per month and great reporting. However it is more expensive than the other services and some of the bells and whistles are overkill for beginning online marketers so I don't recommend it to people who are just getting started.
MailChimp - This is a relatively new kid on the block and I honestly don't know enough about them to make a recommendation one way or the other. I do know they offer virtually everything the other services offer but I'm not sure about their deliverability, customer service, or how easy it is to use their interface. If you decide to try them out then let me know your experience so I can share it here.
