Email marketing services are taking the place of direct mailers. Instead of spending your time and money on creating print marketing campaigns that end up in dusty mailboxes, you can now combine your social networking marketing efforts with effective email campaigns. With email marketing, you can instantly see who is opening your emails, which links they're clicking on and how many of your subscribers are forwarding your emails to their friends.
Email marketing services even offer social networking buttons such as Like and Tweet so your messages are even easier to share with others. In addition to this, you can also see how many email addresses bounced your emails and how many people unsubscribed from your emails. Through these reports, you can quickly identify which marketing tools are working for you and what you can do to improve your reach. An additional way you can do this is by sending surveys through these services to your customers that can help you hone in on the products and approach that best meets their needs and interests.
Once you switch to email marketing, you'll wonder how you ever made do with direct mailers through the post. Email marketing makes connecting with your customers easier and more effective. On this site, you can read comprehensive reviews for products such as iContact, Benchmark Email and Constant Contact. You can also learn more about how to improve your email campaigns by reading articles on email marketing services.
Email Marketing Services: What to Look For
Creating an email campaign can be as simple as adding names to a database, customizing an easy-to-use template and looking at how effective your emails are via simple pie charts and bar graphs. We looked for services that offer intuitive tools that will help you quickly upload your list of contacts. We also looked for products that give you the flexibility to adjust the designs on your email marketing messages so that they reflect your company's image.
In addition to up-to-date designs, we also searched for products that are easy to learn and use so you can spend your time with your customers instead of online chat with tech support. Below are the criteria we used to rank email marketing services.
Feature Set
Paper, ink, labels and postage. The hassle of direct mailers will quickly fade into the recesses of your memory as soon as you begin to use an email marketing service. In mere minutes, you can upload images, type your text, manipulate how your text displays, add links and a social media share bar, and more. An effective email marketing service offers professional features you will need to create customer surveys, newsletters and other event emails. In addition to this, many email marketing services offer the flexibility to work either in a design format or directly with HTML. With most products, you can even choose whether you want to create an email message from scratch or choose from a large list of creative templates.
With a direct mailer, you can physically hold the copy in your hand before you send it out to your customers. However, if there is a mistake, it's back to the printers. Email marketing services enable you to preview your email on your computer screen or as a printed copy from your office printer. Now, some email marketing services even have a preview of many of the most common displays so you can anticipate how your customers will see your marketing pieces. These handy features allow you to quickly adjust text, images or links in your email to make them accurate and attractive.
Email Campaign Creation
Creating an email marketing campaign should be easy, regardless of your skill level or experience. Many email marketing services include a wizard to walk you through the creation of your email, newsletter or survey. You can test the effectiveness of the message's wording and images to ensure that email providers won't mark it as spam and that your subscribers won't find it in their junk mailboxes. Some email marketing services also link to popular social networking sites to maximize the reach of your email campaign.
Campaign Reporting
Email marketing services provide reports, graphs and statistics that show you how your email campaign is doing. You can see how many customers open your emails and even which links they click on. You can see how many people unsubscribe and how many forward your emails on to others. These reports also let you know how many emails bounced, or didn't reach their intended destination, and how many are still unopened. Some email services work with Google Analytics to give you even more data to contribute to a successful campaign. Most email marketing services help you maintain your list of contacts by automatically deleting email addresses that bounce.
Ease of Use
It's important that you choose an email marketing service that is easy to use. Whether or not you know the ins and outs of email campaigns, HTML coding or how to use monitoring reports and statistics, the service you choose should provide the tools and explanations necessary to help you easily create an effective campaign.
Help & Support
A top-notch email marketing service should provide help options to get you started, including a user manual, a wizard to walk you through the creation and monitoring of your email campaign, FAQs, a blog, tutorials and articles that explain how to create effective campaigns. Support should include the ability to contact the company by email, phone or live chat.
Email marketing services are an excellent way for your business to professionally communicate with your email subscribers and customers. Regular newsletters and advertising email campaigns allow you to grow your business effectively, and surveys give you valuable feedback.
At TopTenREVIEWS We Do the Research So You Don't Have To.™
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iContact | Benchmark Email | Constant Contact | Pinpointe | GetResponse | Mailigen | Vertical Response | Mad Mimi | GraphicMail | Campaigner |
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See Pricing Below |
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| Overall Rating | ||||||||||
| Ratings | ||||||||||
| Feature Set | ||||||||||
| Email Campaign Creation | ||||||||||
| Campaign Reporting | ||||||||||
| Ease of Use | ||||||||||
| Help & Support | ||||||||||
| Monthly Pricing Options | ||||||||||
| Up to 500 Contacts | $14.00 | $9.95 | $15.00 | N/A | N/A | $10.00 | $7.50 | $8.00 | $9.95 | $10.00 |
| Up to 1,000 Contacts | $19.00 | $12.95 | $30.00 | N/A | $15 | $25.00 | $15.00 | $10.00 | $9.95 | $10.00 |
| Up to 2,500 Contacts | $29.00 | $19.95 | $30.00 | N/A | $25 | $25.00 | $32.50 | $14.00 | $19.95 | $25.00 |
| Up to 5,000 Contacts | $47.00 | $35.00 | $50.00 | $49.00 | $45 | $40.00 | $90.00 | $24.00 | $19.95 | $40.00 |
| Up to 10,000 Contacts | $74.00 | $60.00 | $75.00 | $79.00 | $65 | $60.00 | $120.00 | $36.00 | $29.95 | $55.00 |
| Up to 25,000 Contacts | $149.00 | $112.00 | $150.00 | $150.00 | $145 | $120.00 | $300.00 | $75.00 | $129.95 | $120.00 |
| Contact Management Features | ||||||||||
| Import Mailing List | ||||||||||
| Remove Unsubscribed Contacts | ||||||||||
| Group Email Contacts | ||||||||||
| Custom Demographic Fields | ||||||||||
| Automatically Detect Duplicate Emails | ||||||||||
| Require Opt-in | ||||||||||
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| Add Images | ||||||||||
| Add Hyperlinks | ||||||||||
| Basic Formatting | ||||||||||
| Create Plain-Text Messages | ||||||||||
| Create HTML Messages | ||||||||||
| Create Messages from Template | ||||||||||
| View Overall Product Preview | ||||||||||
| View HTML Source Code | ||||||||||
| Add Email Footer | ||||||||||
| Create Web Forms | ||||||||||
| Create Auto Response | ||||||||||
| Email Setup Wizard | ||||||||||
| Create Surveys | ||||||||||
| Image Hosting | 5 MB | 10 MB | 5 MB | Unlimited | 1 GB | 10 MB | 25 MB | Unlimited | 20 MB | 10 MB |
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| Email Job Scheduling | ||||||||||
| SPAM Test | ||||||||||
| Test Email | ||||||||||
| Email Aliases Creation | ||||||||||
| Email Reporting Features | ||||||||||
| Opened Emails | ||||||||||
| Forwarded Emails | ||||||||||
| Bounced Emails | ||||||||||
| View Unsubscribed Contacts | ||||||||||
| Export/Download Reports | ||||||||||
| Social Media Integration | ||||||||||
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