Email Advertising - Linknet Marketing Forum
Some Email Marketing Systems
In this section I'll briefly discuss some alternative Email marketing systems. There are literally hundreds of these out there, including the following that I am not going to discuss:
- Free or nearly free scripts you can pick up at a site like freescripts.com or hotscripts.com
- Autoresponders built into your own website(s)
- Mass mail capabilities built into programs like Microsoft Outlook
I am not going to discuss these because they are not the kind of system you can build even a moderately sized Email campaign around. They require you to use your own Email server, they generally do not have built-in spam controls, and they do not normally have very sophisticated tracking or "unsubscribe" functionality.
If you want to develop a serious Email marketing program with potentially thousands of prospects on your list you will need all of the features I've just mentioned.
Look for an Email Marketing system with these features...
- Spam controls to increase your chances of getting your Email messages past spam filters and to avoid being blacklisted by other ISPs
- The use of a dedicated Email server so you don't have to work through your own ISP or web host
- The ability to handle multiple lists
- Built-in tracking to record bounces, rejections, opens and click-thrus
- Automated subscribe functionality so the system automatically adds new subscribers and verifies their email addresses
- Automated "unsubscribe" functionality so you don't have to field complaints or manually take unhappy subscribers off your list
- Robust autoresponder capabilities
Three systems which have these capabilities, are reasonably priced, and we have actually tested are as follows:
AWeber.com
This is one of the most widely used and most reliable autoresponder services. An "autoresponder" service looks at Email marketing from a very specific point of view which, if you are not familiar with online marketing, may seem a bit strange to you.
See a video of the AWeber.com interface and features.
An autoresponder assumes you will be gathering inquiries and subscriptions from your website (or some other online source) and the job of the autoresponder is to "respond" to these inquiries with a message. In fact you can create a series of messages which will be sent out in intervals of days or weeks after the initial inquiry.
For instance many online marketers use a newsletter sign up form on their websites. When someone fills in the form (gives their name and Email address) the autoresponder automatically sends out a "thanks for registering" message. You can also program your autoresponder to send out a series of different messages to your sign ups.
This means that when someone signs up they will receive Message #1 on day 1, Message #2 on day 2, Message #3 on day 3, etc. Of course you have lots of flexibility when setting the timing between messages. You can send them out one day at a time, or once a week, or whatever.
This works beautifully when you are sending out a pre-programmed series of messages - such as an Email "course" or series of "hot tips" where the sequence of the messages is not dependent on specific dates. A person who signs up on May 1 will receive the same messages as someone who signs up on June 1. They will be sent out at the appropriate intervals from the time of signing up.
But this does not work when you want to send out time-sensitive material such as product specials which have a limited time frame, or newsletters which often contain date-specific material (such as news of an event.)
In that case you must create what AWeber calls a "Broadcast" which is a one time message sent out to your entire list. While this works just fine, you get the impression when working with the program that "broadcasts" are of secondary importance. And this is a bit disconcerting if your primary objective is to send newsletters or "broadcasts" to your already established list.
Speaking of already established lists, AWeber also makes it relatively difficult to import names and addresses into the program from previously compiled lists. Like all legitimate Email marketing service providers, AWeber is concerned about customers misusing their system to send unsolicited messages - spam. If there were no safeguards like this it would be too easy to import other lists into the system and just start sending messages to them.
So the program insists that each imported name be verified immediately after importing. This is done by sending a message - a message which the AWeber staff must approve - to each imported subscriber asking for their permission to send messages. If your subscribers don't verify by giving their permission to receive messages they are taken off the list of subscribers.
Unfortunately this can be a significant obstacle to getting your customer newsletter going. This reflects AWeber's background in dealing with specific types of internet marketers - the type who are constantly introducing new "products" and promoting them to their lists. But this approach seems a bit cumbersome when dealing with corporate accounts who want to work with customer and contact lists assembled over long periods of time along with the inevitable database and computer system realignments that take place in corporate environments.
What is required is a less direct method of verifying imported names that does not go right out and ask people to be included in the list. This less direct method is what we refer to as "scrubbing" a list - a task which can be performed by other techniques which adequately guard against spam complaints.