Think of the old saying “out of sight out of mind.” This remains true today whether it is with current customers or if you are in the process of building a relationship with prospective customers.
This is where email marketing comes in and if it is done correctly it can help boost your business. Before you start using email marketing you should consider :
When to Use
- Your current customers like to receive updates, tips, special offers and other communication from you via email
- Your prospective customers are open to to receiving email as part of building the relationship
- If you are going to use it throughout the year and not as a one off
- As part of an overall marketing plan to strengthen customer relationships
- If you are prepared to spend time testing, tracking and fine-tuning your efforts
- If you have allocated a budget to spend over the year
So now you have ticked that email marketing is right for your business and customers, the next decision is how to do it. Well unless you only have a few customers, then email marketing software is the way to go.
There are many options available and to help you I did a Google search. I then wrote down features a small business could be looking for and looked at a number of websites to see how they compared. All information came from their websites and here are the results for three popular products:
| Constant Contact | Aweber | iContact | |
| Demos | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Trial period | 60 days (up to 100 email addresses) | No (30 day money back guarantee) | 15 day (250 message up to 250 subscribers) |
| Support | Phone, email, online chat, FAQs, webinars | Phone, email, online chat, knowledge base, webinars, videos | Phone, email, online chat, knowledge base, FAQs, webinars, videos |
| Pricing | From $15/month | From $19/month | From $9.95 |
| Confirmed Opt-in | Yes | Yes | Unsure. Could not find reference to it on website |
| Delivery claim | Consistently above 97% | Not stated | 98%-99% |
| Web sign up form | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Autoresponders | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Scheduling flexibility | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Wizards | Yes | Yes | |
| Templates | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Tracking & reporting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Unlimited emails | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Email security | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| List management | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Forum | Yes | No | Yes |
| Subscriber communication options | Yes | No | No |
| Monthly agreement available | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agreement cancellation | Contact customer support | Written request | Phone or in writing |
Email marketing can boost your business and customer relationships and if you look at the features you get from the popular products it can be a very cost effective marketing tactic.
Are there any other features I should have included when choosing email marketing software?
Great Post! Some visitors have different comments and different opinions about what ever is being posted. However, I think everyone can agree that this is something every marketer should try.