Email Marketing - Use the Tools!
I have been an avid user of phpList for a few years. phpList is an open source (read: FREE) newsletter service provider you install on your own servers and run through your mail server of choice (similar to Dada Mail). In my case, the same local, mailserver.
As business’ grow it’s always tough to give up on free services to begin paying for something that at first glance you think provides the same exact thing. Maybe this is my own weakness, but I always love the sound of free when it comes to business utilities. Atleast I can admit my addiction. And not that I plan on replacing Google Analytics anytime soon, but I made the leap for a paid newsletter management service, just to make life a little more easier and so far - it has.
Over the past month, I have been using Constant Contact to manage email newsletter services at WineMarketer.com and slowly incorporating it at ClassicWines.com and most likely in other places. I can utilize a single account for multiple newsletters and better yet, from multiple sites (see: they allow you to confirm multiple FROM email address across domains). Constant Contact bills you on the number of contacts as oppossed to the number of newsletters or sites.
I do know that phpList provides some of the same features, but go read their documentation and feel free to tell me how frustrating it can be to fully harness the power of the services. I’ve lived it.
For the beginner Constant Contact can hand hold you from start to finish with premade templates and an easy to user interface. However, I am simply porting over pre customized HTML templates, and their advanced editor features were just as easy to use. I had to manipulate the HTML files slightly over the phpList version, but 10 minutes caught me up to speed.
When performing a hundred tasks at once, worrying about SPAM and harnessing email reports are the value add for working with Constant Contact. My bounce rates based on SPAM are lower and the reporting tools deliver most questions a marketer would have in regards to an email campaign - not only who read it, but who bounced, spam reported bounces, clicks, forward, opt-outs and some other useful stats.
I found all of this out with a free trial, not bad. I recently paid for my first month and look forward to utilizing their services even more.
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