Email Marketing Service Comparison
Entrepreneurs whether online or brick and mortar all look to email as a crucial piece of their marketing campaigns. There are several great providers out there with a proven track record of delivery success and customer satisfaction. When you’re looking to initiate your next email marketing blitz, you may struggle with the decision of which company to use. Here’s a breakdown of the top two programs that we recommend and the differences between them:
Pros: Super-simple contact management and email creation, customizable autoresponders. Great customer support team!
Pricing: Free 60 day trial, $15/mo for up to 500 contacts, pricing increases per number of contacts.
Offers: Over 300 fully customizable HTML email templates for newsletters, announcements, cards, promos, surveys.
List Mgmt: Sign up box which can be added to your website, ability to easily import/ upload your contacts into segmented lists, a useful unsubscribe comment box. Real-time open and click tracking, above-average inbox delivery rate.
Cons: Because you can easily upload your contact list into their system, your list may not be as clean as with other email programs that may require subscribers to re-opt-in to confirm interest.
Pros: Small, dedicated team of developers, mandatory verifying opt-in helps you build a stronger list, and they take spam seriously!
Pricing: Free trial, $19/mo for up to 500 contacts, pricing increases per number of contacts.
Offers: In addition to email marketing, analytics and autoresponders, AWeber also offers website sign-up forms with split-test forms that let you test which headlines get the best response, the ability to send subscribers to any page on your website, or create hover pop-up forms. Over 100 html templates to choose from, split test messages (to track which gets the best results), blog newsletters, and autoresponders with download delivery. Integrated shopping cart capability.
List Mgmt: Zero spam policy, automatically processes unsubscribes and undeliverable addresses, detailed web analytics, verified list opt-in.
Cons: A third of the amount of selection in templates and while the required opt-in will eventually give you a stronger list, initially it could be tough for some to see their mailing list numbers deplete!
Our Recommendation:
If you are just looking for a simple way to manage your mailing list, and deliver a clean newsletter or html email to your subscribers, Constant Contact will give you the results you need. If you are looking to get technical, possibly integrate lots of shopping cart/ ecommerce functions eventually, and work to build out a streamlined list, consider AWeber for its additional features and stricter opt-in rules. If you only have a small list and want to send a beautiful html (simple, no coding required!) emails, check out MailChimp which is free if you send to under 100 recipients a max of 6x per month.
