Mailigen directs your email marketing campaigns with precision so that your clients receive the content they're interested in. Mailigen enables you to create newsletters, sign-up forms, surveys and more. Through this service, you can provide social networking buttons to your subscribers so they're more likely to share your campaigns with others. Mailigen has real-time performance reports and integrates with Google Analytics.

This email marketing service provides about 130 templates. The majority of them have been custom designed. Mailigen also allows you to create your own template if you wish. Whether you use a Mailigen template or one you make yourself, you can adjust all the formatting in the HTML or design editor. You can change fonts and text sizes. You can also add symbols, links, merge tags and pictures. Mailigen hosts up to 10MB of images for you. Once you make all the adjustments you want, you can save your version to use again later. Before you send out your email, you can spell check and preview it.

To help you target each subscriber better, Mailigen offers a dynamic code feature. This allows you to create messages targeted for different interest groups. Mailigen sends the separate email marketing messages to the groups who are interested in the message you're sending.

Another important feature is autoresponders. These emails go out automatically to subscribers when certain events occur. For instance, when someone joins your list, an autoresponder can go to the person to welcome him or her.

Mailigen offers application programming interface (API) integration to help you manage your lists, create and send campaigns, and gather statistics. Mailigen has plug-ins for WordPress and Joomla, as well as others that the company will release soon. API is an interface for developers; however, it is not for the average internet user.

Mailigen offers an email set-up wizard that walks you through the steps of campaign creation. It also makes it easy to create contact lists. You can add names individually, cut and paste them or import a file. If you upload your list, you can set Mailigen to auto-update your existing list so that your lists can remain synced. You can send SMS (text) messages to contacts through this service as well.

One feature Mailigen doesn't offer is the ability to preview your email in a variety of email clients. This can help you see what your subscribers will see when they open your email marketing campaign. It can help you catch formatting problems as well.

When you send out your campaigns, you'll probably notice that Mailigen's branding is on the email. This is a common practice among email marketing services. While some services won't remove their branding – or they'll charge you money to do so – Mailigen will take the branding off if you ask, and the best part – it's free.

Email Sharing Features
Mailigen offers social networking buttons for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg, Posterous, Flickr, Delicious, Stumbleupon and more. You can also send a post to your Twitter and Facebook accounts at the same time you send out your email marketing campaign. Additionally, you can connect your RSS feed to your email campaign.

This email marketing service also automatically removes contacts who want to unsubscribe, and detects and deletes duplicate email addresses. You can also check your email for spam and schedule when you want your email campaign to go out. Mailigen gives you the ability to segment, or filter, your list to meet specific terms and qualifications. You can target gender, age, income level, purchase choices and more. You can also create email aliases with Mailigen's email marketing service.

Another great feature Mailigen boasts is the opportunity to have your own IP address, if you request it, once you prove you'll send out high-quality email content. Most email marketing services group many people together into one IP address. If one person sends out spam, it can affect everyone else's deliverability scores as well. If you have a dedicated IP address, you can better control how internet service providers view your emails.

One feature we wish Mailigen offered is automated split testing. This type of test helps you determine which version of an email marketing campaign is most effective by sending different versions to small test groups. It then sends out the email that has the best response rate. Although Mailigen can't perform this function automatically, you can still manually conduct split testing.

Email Reporting Features
Mailigen's real-time performance reports show the number of opened emails, forwarded emails, unsubscribe requests, bounces and new subscribers. You can see these statistics in graph and percentage form. You can download these reports as Excel spreadsheets or in PDF format. Mailigen integrates with Google Analytics, which can track click rates and your return on investment. These numbers can help you determine how much money you're making from your marketing efforts.

Ease of Use
Mailigen's email marketing service is very easy to use. The service fits every level of user, from those who are new to email marketing to experienced web designers. The tools and controls can help you create professional email marketing campaigns. The Mailigen interface is simple to navigate, making it easy for you to save campaigns to work on later, access lists, check reports and prepare auto responders.

Help & Support
Two of the most practical help and support options that Mailigen offers are deliverability specialists and strategic account representatives. A deliverability specialist works with internet service providers to make sure that your emails make it into your clients' inboxes instead of their junk mail folders. Strategic account representatives help you know what marketing decisions will serve you best over time. Mailigen has a user guide and FAQs. If you need tech support, you can Skype, email or chat with representatives.