10 Email Marketing Services You Could Use for Boosting Business

Email marketing is a phenomenal way to drive enormous waves of traffic to your blog or web site and keep your customers updated on any new sales or promotions you may be having.  In business, building relationships is key to selling more stuff, and email marketing makes personal communication with your customers easier than a day at the beach and way more effective.  Growing your email database of your customers that want to buy from you is not only necessary but easy if you think of creative ways to get their contact information.  But, once you have decided to start using email marketing, and you have a few hundred email addresses, then what?  You need to pick the right email marketing service provider that has the right combination of features, customer service and price.

Foreword

In the world of email marketing, I’ve used two different systems personally, had some level of experience with a few others and know of about 10 total that are definitely worth looking at.  Let me go ahead and say that there is no exact science to picking an email marketing service provider.  Each one will have their similarities (similar price, features, how they connect with social media sites, tracking and analytics, the ability to schedule emails, auto-responders and welcome emails), and some will be unique in their own right.  I have personally used Constant Contact and Mail Chimp.  This post is meant to be a basic overview of the different providers, what they offer and some of the features they offer.  I could spend weeks evaluating each service provider and writing a review, but most of them have very exhaustive feature lists and I wanted to get this post published before summer time.  There is no specific rhyme or reason as to the order in which they are discussed.  Let’s get started!

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MailChimp

MailChimp is the email marketing service provider that I use right now.  I love them.  They are cutting edge, provide the features that I find important, they are easy to use and competitively priced. Plus, they are innovative and spunky in how they communicate. I really gravitated towards MailChimp because of their very frequent and clever use of Social Media to communicate with their customers.  Plus I had a few friends that used them and I really liked some of the tracking features they had.  Plus, they are great if you’re just getting started out because you can have almost all their features for free if you have an email database less than 500 and only send 3,000 total emails a month using their service.

Some Features of MailChimp

• Email lists 500 or less are free for up to 3,000 total emails per month to that list
• If you need to go over the 3,000 emails, you don’t have to sign up for a monthly plan, they have “pay-as-you-go” pricing too
• List sizes of 5,001 to 10,000 priced at $75 a month
• The ability to schedule emails at any point in the future
• The ability to easily connect the analytics and tracking to your google analytics (this enables you to track how much traffic actually arrives at your site from your newsletter)
• Comprehensive tracking including opens, click-throughs, time-scale for opens (shows what time of day you get the most opens), and geographic open tracking
• Plus you can track your stats compared to industry averages
• Integration with tons of web apps through plugins.  To name a few:  Shopify, Picnic, WUFOO, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, Joomla, and Wordpress
• The ability to share your email campaigns with your social networks (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
• The ability to create multiple custom sign up forms and corresponding auto-responders, thank-you pages, welcome emails, etc.
• Tons of great email templates and an easy to use template builder
• Large tutorial and learning section
• Free campaign archives, and segmentation of list and vary who gets what email by specifying parameters based on data in your list
• A/B split testing on the same email campaign
• RSS to Email automatic email newsletter generator

Link to MailChimp

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Blue Sky Factory

I first heard of these guys from a marketing podcast I regularly listen to called Marketing Over Coffee with John Wall and Christopher S. Penn.  Blue Sky Factory was a sponsor of the show for quite some time and actually, Christopher Penn ended up accepting a job with them.  I have not used their service, but many of the larger players in the social media realm use their services and seem to like them quite a bit.  They’ve also been recently named one of America’s fastest growing companies by Inc. Magazine.  They also are very well known for their blog, which features content from industry leaders on the topic of email marketing.

Some Features of Blue Sky Factory

• Several really great white papers and an e-book, like:
  • The Ultimate Guide to Email
  • Mobile Email Marketing
  • 2010 Email Design Guidelines
• Uses a proprietary system called Publicaster, which handles all list management, list segmentation, full campaign manager, real time monitoring of stats, and more.
• iPhone app for Publicaster to monitor stats, account activity, subscriber activity, stats, adding emails to lists
• SMS Text Messaging marketing solutions – you can manage SMS campaigns right along side your email marketing campaigns
• Share your email content with your social networks – seamless integration with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
• Full service email marketing and design services

Link to Blue Sky Factory

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Constant Contact

Constant Contact was really the first email marketing service provider that I knew about.  I used them for years on about a half dozen different projects, and they changed the way I looked at email marketing forever.  Years ago, I was using a program on a dedicated PC to run all my email marketing operations, throttling everything out using the outgoing mail server of my local ISP.   This method was very time consuming, dangerous (risk of getting blocked), and exhaustive on my local resources.

Constant Contact was a dream come true.  Now, all of a sudden my email campaigns wouldn’t have to go out over several days, I had a way to track opens and click-through rates, and process opt-outs and opt-ins automatically.

Some Features of Constant Contact

• Free 60 day trial
• Pricing starts at $15 per month for 0 to 500 email addresses with lists sized at 10,000 to 25,000 being priced at $150
• 400+ templates to choose from or you can use your own html
• Custom sign up form with the ability to make custom auto responders
• The ability to schedule emails to be sent at a future time
• A dedicated section on their web site on how to manage an email marketing campaign, grow your email list, and other learning materials
• Telephone customer support
• Real customer examples on how they are using Constant Contact
• The ability to monitor all tracking – open rate, click-through rate, bounced emails
• The ability to integrate it with other business applications through their API
• You can create custom surveys to find out more about your audience and archive your email newsletters (both extra money though)

Link to Constant Contact

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Aweber

I have absolutely no experience with Aweber.  However, with that said, this is a very well known system that is also used by tons of heavy weights in the social media world.  If I had to name one thing that I thought they were well known for, it is their relationship building abilities through dynamic auto-responders and the ability to schedule them at regular intervals.

Some Features of Aweber

• Pricing starts at $19 that gets you unlimited emails to a list of up to 500
• First month only $1
• Plans with 5,001 to 10,000 emails are priced at $50 per month and 10,001 to 25,000 emails priced at $130
• The ability to schedule emails
• You can choose from over 100 templates
• Full tracking of opens, and click-throughs
• Really neat videos that spell out how to use each of their features (these are very well put together and easy to understand)
• Very detailed autoresponder scheduling system that “builds subscriber trust and loyalty”
• Unlimited campaigns
• Turn RSS feeds into an email newsletter

Link to Aweber

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Exact Target

I actually don’t remember where I heard of Exact Target, but they are definitely a strong contender in this list.  One of the things I really love is their attention to the power of social media.  They have several innovative features that truly let them stand out from the crowd.  Exact Target really looks like its more of an enterprise solutions provider, which means in plain English, that they work with big businesses a lot.  Their feature set is highly sophisticated and may be way more than what you may or may not be looking for.  I didn’t find any pricing on the web site, which is usually a good sign that they aren’t selling value by low price, but rather they are selling value by what they offer.  This is neither right or wrong, it just may mean that they are more expensive than other services.

Some Features of Exact Target

• You can request a demo and an Exact Target representative will consult with you for free to help determine the goals of your business and help show you how ET will work for you.
• Offers packages specific by industry: B2B, Financial Services, Healthcare, Hospitality, Publishing, Retail and Travel
  • There are specific features for each industry category, some examples are:
    • Online Retail – personalized landing pages, web analytics integration, Exact Target Live Offers coupon delivery, ability to turn order confirmation into up-sell opportunity
    • B2B – ability to automate emails, one management console for email, SMS and Voice messaging campaigns, scalable architecture for thousands or even millions of emails per day
    • Publishing – triggered email responses, and many of the same features as the other.
• The ability to run email, SMS and Voice messaging campaigns from a single console.
• You can fully integrate whatever analytics system you use into your campaigns.
• Full CRM integration with SalesForce and/or Microsoft Dynamics
• Access to a wealth of knowledge including several case studies, tons of great instruction videos, educational email newsletter, email marketing webinars and whitepapers.

Link to Exact Target

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StreamSend

After spending tons of time on the Exact Target site trying to extrapolate all their features, the StreamSend site seemed so much more light weight.  I’m sure Exact Target is a phenomenal service, just seemed way too robust for what I would ever need.  With tons of great features, StreamSend seemed like a perfect service for small business.  I especially loved their scalable pricing plans – this really only made you pay for what you need.  Plus, their overall pricing is lower than the others.  I also LOVE the fact that you can test your emails in the various email clients.  This is huge – just hope it works as expected!

Some Features of StreamSend

• 30 day free trial
• Pricing that starts at $19.90 per month for 2,000 email addresses and $5 more per month for each additional 1,000 email addresses (very cool, pay for what you need)
  • If you have 10,000 email addresses, it is only $39.90
• Email Analyzer – preview how your emails will look up to 30 different email clients – to name a few: Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft Outlook, Blackberry, and AOL Mail (again, this is super useful).
• Multiple list sign up forms and “EZ List Import”, automatic subscribe/unsubscribe management, ability to segment lists.
• Choose from a selection of email templates or import your own html custom built template.
• Target e-mails based on interests, demographics, or custom questions with StreamSend filters
• The ability to schedule emails, send yourself previews and target emails based on interests, demographics or specific data that you have in your lists.
• You get your own private IP address
• Live tracking information and integration with Google Analytics
• The ability to have multiple users on an account with varying levels of permissions access
• A/B split testing capabilities

Link to StreamSend

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iContact

iContact is one of those service providers that many of my “friends” have used, but I’ve never gotten around to trying them.  Their web site boasts comparisons that depict them leading the pack in terms of minimum monthly price, number of email templates to choose from, amount of images that can be hosted, and the ability to create surveys (a big plus that it is included in the package price).

Some Features of iContact

• Pricing starts at $9.95 per month for 250 contacts with a list of 10,000 to 14,999 emails costing $74 per month
• Over 300 templates to choose from
• Mail merge, message scheduling, open and clickthrough tracking, bounceback management and subscription management
• List segmentation, unlimited number of lists, send to multiple lists at a time, multiple autoresponders
• The ability to create surveys, create newsletters out of surveys, and history of subscriber actions
• Built in HTML WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor, 500kb of image storage space

Link to iContact

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Vertical Response

Some of the features that stood out with Vertical Response included a comprehensive pay-as-you-go plan, the ability for non-profit organizations to send up to 10,000 emails per month for free, and their diverse Partner program.  In many respects, they had most of the same features that come standard in the email marketing service provider world, but I also liked how they had the pricing segmented.

Some Features of Vertical Response

• 30 day risk-free trial
• Pricing starts at $10 per month for lists up to 500 emails, with 4,001 to 8,000 emails priced at $72 per month
• They have pay-as-you go plans as well ranging from $.015 per email for less than 1,000 to $.01 for lists sized 25,001 to 50,000
• Non-profits (501(c)(3)) can email up to 10,000 emails per month for free
• Full email creation wizard from beginner to advanced, used html import or  you can design from their editor, 75,000 stock images to choose from
• You can actually design, schedule, and send printed direct mail post cards
• Create and implement surveys and analyze the results
• Store up to 25 MB of images
• “Marketing Calendar” that helps analyze past email delivery dates and plan for future dates.  Can also be used for your own scheduling
• Full campaign tracking including campaign and list comparison tracking, detailed clickthrough tracking, conversion tracking capabilities and google analytics integration
• Custom sign up forms and list segmentation
• Integration with Google apps Marketplace, Salesforce.com, and Intuit Workplace
• Tons of educational resources including training videos, podcasts, blog, case studies and other articles and reports.

Link to Vertical Response

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Benchmark Email

One of the first things I noticed on their home page was this: “Real-time Survey and Email Tracking“.  I love this.  Nothing is more frustrating than waiting 24 hours for Google analytics to return valid and accurate (as close as you can expect) analytic data.  With Benchmark Email, you can see the results of your email marketing and survey campaigns immediately, as they are happening.  Now, I’m not saying some of the other providers don’t show this (MailChimp does, Constant Contact does not), it’s just that Benchmark has recognized the importance of telling you about it.  I agree, this is important.  Another thing that truly makes Benchmark Email stand out is their offering of dedicated server email marketing plans.  I’ve not seen this with ANYONE else.  Very cool option for you heavy-weight email marketers.

Some Features of Benchmark Email

• 30 day free trial – you can send 250 emails with this trial (not the strongest offer, but better than nothing)
• Pricing starts at $9.95 for emails lists of 600 with the next plan up only $12.95 per month, then $19.95 per month lets you have an email list size of up to 2,500 email addresses (this is strong)
• The 10,000 email package plan is only $60 per month (second cheapest in this lot, only to StreamSend)
• Choose from over 200 email newsletter templates or import your own html
• Custom sign up form, the ability to have unlimited lists, create list segmentation by demographics, customer likes/dislikes, etc.
• Manage several email campaigns and run multiple schedules
• Up to 2MB of image hosting, the ability to drag and drop images in email template editor
• Ability to track stats on emails and surveys in real time, provides a geographic “heat-map” of where clicks and opens are happening, compare results of multiple campaigns easily
• The ability to create and deploy surveys, several “canned” surveys ready for use or to customize
• If you are a heavy-weight email marketer, you can get your own dedicated server, plans start at 150,000 emails per month for $399 and go up to 2 million emails per  month for $1,999
• Support via live telephone or chat services (both a dying breed)
• Education resources such as Email Marketing Articles, a Tips newsletter, blog, and an Email Marketing “Terms” worksheet
• WordPress plugin that allows full integration, including emailing your list your blog posts on the fly, easy integration of sign up form and some list management tools right from the backend of your WordPress admin panel

Link to Benchmark Email

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Get Response

I remember seeing a small wave of “new-tech” swooping through the MLM industry a couple years ago where people were contacting me to get on board with sending video emails.  While I was really turned off by this tech because of the method by which it was being promoted, I always thought the underlying idea seemed useful.  One fo the things that stands Get Response apart from the pack is their ability to handle video emails.  Of course, this is just one feature in a suite of many.  They can still send regular ‘ol text emails too.

Some Features of Get Response

• Free trial for lists in size of up to 10 (wow, amazing (note: sarcasm))
• $18 per month lets you have up to 500, with 501 to 2,500 priced at $28 and 5,001 to 10,000 priced at $65 per month
• Video email marketing is $10 extra per month and surveys are free
• There’s also a discount if you prepay
• Over 300 email templates to choose from, you can upload your own html, or they’ll design a newsletter for you for a fee
• Video marketing allows you to upload videos or record right from your control panel.  Good for product demos, testimonials, presentations, etc.
• Social integration: add custom form to Facebook page, send blog RSS via Twitter, tweet newsletters
• iPhone app lets you add new contacts on the fly, import iPhone contacts into your list, add/remove email campaigns and change their priority, have access to campaign stats (very cool, no sarcasm )
• Online surveys that let you ask your list whatever you want, provides stats
• A/B split testing allows you to have to versions of the same newsletter that sends to segmented portions of your list to test open and clickthrough rates
• Unlimited “Followup Messages” – in essence, auto-responders.  You can customize these to be whatever you want
• Comprehensive analytics that tracks opens, clickthroughs, signup form performance, etc.

Link to Get Response

Conclusions

While many of these email marketing service providers offer many of the same features, the overall workflow, layout of their graphical user interface (GUI) and how they handle varying aspects of email marketing can differ greatly.  This list is in no way comprehensive, and there are many features to each service that I left out so as to keep this post as short as possible.  When I was doing research trying to figure out which company I was going to go with, I would have paid for a compilation like this; hopefully this helps narrow some of the choices down for you.

This is part three in a series of posts that discusses the secret ninja ways of the email marketer.  In this series, we’ve discussed how to grow your email list to enormous proportions and how you can literally double the traffic on your web site by using a simple email marketing campaign.

Tagged as: Email Marketing, grow your email list, list of email marketing services