Email Marketing Tools

[AllanJames]

Originally Posted by JackieUlmer

Free is great, just make sure it fits into your overall long term marketing and growth plan. I started with "free" 13 years ago, and then had to make a huge shift when my business outgrew free. With email marketing, that can be dangerous, trying to "move" a list, as many have to "re opt-in" and get lost!

I take my email list very seriously as it has made me millions of dollars over the last decade plus. I learned a few valuable lessons about that!

Listen to this lady on this, she knows what she's talking about. Trust me on it, I have 18 email lists (databases) over two paid provider accounts - free is not the way to go.

You can get paid accounts from top class autoresponder providers for less than $40 a month - so why go free and risk it all?

[rosstaylor2440]

Thanks for sharing information with us,
these tools may make my work easy.

Have nice day...!

[Ehitz]

Even companies like Aweber offer free versions.... you're not risking anything by using a free version. The free versions just have limitations, like under 100 people on your list. If you grow past your limit, you can either choose to purchase a full version with that company, or any other. I like SendBlaster because it's a one time purchase instead of paying monthly.

[carla2013]

When you create your database for the first time, you might be interested in using Put Email Addresses Into One Comma-Delimited Line Software
This tool helped me a lot when I started my business

[AllanJames]

Originally Posted by carla2013

When you create your database for the first time, you might be interested in using Put Email Addresses Into One Comma-Delimited Line Software
This tool helped me a lot when I started my business

Hmm.... sounds like you are talking about email blasts from your own server instead of using a legitimate and spam compliant autoresponder service.

That's not what this thread is about - and it's a hugely dangerous and self defeating method.

[Mikayla]

Thanks for sharing this info! I personally use Aweber, but I like to present free options to new team members whenever possible. Aweber has a free trial, which works pretty well until you get established and build a larger list.

A word of caution on a couple of other options I saw mentioned...

Get Response is great, but if you use their free option they put ads above your email text (or at least they did when I started using them a few years back). I didn't like that because I felt like it diverted from my message.

MailChimp is very easy to use, but they do not like the network marketing industry and MLM at all and will shut you down if you email on those topics. I had a couple of colleagues run into issues with them.

Wishing you all success,
Mikayla

[Repel Well]

For being in the internet marketing arena for almost 7 years I've seen my share of email providers all talk about their deliverability and the argument is always raised (mostly on the sales pages) of free self serve type mailers and I thank Allen and Mikayla for pointing out the importance of a quality paid service.

And, I'm gonna throw my favorite in the mix (BTW i've used them all) and say for the money the best tracking, segregating and re-mailing capabilities with the best deliverability is IMO, IContact.

However, for the newbie just trying to accomplish the basics with the least learning curve, that's probably still Aweber.

But everyone, please stay away from self hosted, bulk mailers, or desktop type programs unless you REALLY know what you're doing! It'll be a disaster and will discourage you and confuse you in the end.

Anyway, thanks for sharing...

[dmtnotify]

Thanks! I'll check these out.

[Ehitz]

Repel Well, I will second that the self hosted and desktop programs are A LOT harder to use than ones like icontact or aweber! But I know that personally, I would rather put in the extra effort to learn the program and save money.

It's all where you want to spend your energy though, if tech stuff just isn't your thing then you are totally right that someone would be better off going with a more user friendly option! But if you have a little time to spare and are pretty good at more technical things, than I think programs like sendblaster or even a self written program are the way to go since it saves you crazy amounts of money in the long run.

[AllanJames]

Originally Posted by Ehitz

[snip] But if you have a little time to spare and are pretty good at more technical things, than I think programs like sendblaster or even a self written program are the way to go since it saves you crazy amounts of money in the long run.

I think you're missing the most important point (my mistake, I should have made myself clearer in my post above).

The danger in having your own self hosted site is that it's tied to your IP (your internet address) and all mails sent from it are tracked and judged for legitimacy by your ISP (internet service provider) and they will flag any they consider not to comply with the CamSpam Act as being Spam.

Further, each time a recipient of your email hits their Spam button (even just because they are too lazy to hit the Unsubscribe link you should have at the bottom of the email) that's marked against you (through your IP) as well.

The end result being that less and less of your emails are getting through - in some cases you may well get completely banned.

Aweber and Getresponse (and several others) do get expensive as your list gets over about 5000 subscribers (and you need to have more than 5000 to make any real money) but if you're looking for the most cost effective alternative you should check out 12SecondCommute which I don't think has been mentioned above.

They provide a great autoresponder service AND several other tools (tracking, page builders etc) that all online marketers have to have to succeed, all under one roof and and at a cost that can't be bettered anywhere. It's suite of tools is my favorite place to be <grin> and I've detailed why on my free training site.

I strongly recommend taking up their 1 month free trial (no payment details required).