Email marketing is well known to be one of the most powerful elements required for a business to be successful online today. Not only can you stay in touch with your visitors and foster a community atmosphere, but email marketing allows you to make follow-up sales long after a customer has left your site.
Before the days of email marketing, a visitor could visit your site, explore the products and information, and then make a purchase decision right then and there. If they bought something, you made money once from them. If they left, you may never have had the opportunity to make money with them again. Email lists allow you to keep customers and visitors interested in your business and site in the hope that they will become repeat customers.
However, once email marketing started, it became a huge market very quickly, and suddenly there were dozens of vendors and hundreds of options to choose from. This number is increasing every year, making it increasingly difficult for new site owners to know where to start. To help you decide which email marketing service is right for you, here’s a comparison list of the top 5 providers today.
Aweber
Aweber is a huge player in the field of email marketing due to its easy-to-use interface and reasonable monthly fee. For a $1 trial and $19 a month after that, you get unlimited lists, lots of options for managing and tracking messages, 150+ pre-made templates for forms and emails, and much more. Creating autoresponders and sending outreach emails is very simple with the program, and for most small businesses, everything they need is included for one low price. There’s even the option to attach files to your messages, a great idea to help you deliver those free eBooks and files.
On the downside, some believe the provided newsletter templates are too limited, and to create a custom one, you’ll need to know code or hire someone to create one for you. Aweber also only handles emails; it does not have any option to handle e-commerce or affiliates.
MailChimp
MailChimp is the most popular email marketing service among site owners and businesses on a shoestring budget because it’s free to get started. In fact, many site owners can stick with the free plan for months after starting their site because it allows them to send up to 2,000 emails per month without upgrading. The user interface is also very easy to use and creating your own custom newsletter templates couldn’t be easier. MailChimp really makes email marketing fun!
But as fantastic as their newsletter template building process is, creating custom forms with MailChimp is next to impossible within the dashboard. Again, to create the form you want, you may need to know how to code and have an external program like Dreamweaver, or hire someone else to do it. MailChimp, like Aweber, only sends email, and the prices once you need to upgrade can be a bit steep.
1shopping cart
1ShoppingCart describes itself as an “all-in-one eCommerce and marketing solution”, and that is a very accurate description. For one low monthly fee, you can start building an unlimited number of email lists and autoresponders. Creating newsletter templates is very easy, and switching between them within the same message is also very simple. Once you’re established as an online retailer, you can upgrade to one account that will handle all of your physical and digital products and even allow you to start an affiliate program. It really is a one stop shop for everything you need on an ecommerce site.
Unfortunately, 1ShoppingCart has a very unattractive form builder. You will absolutely need to create your form outside of 1ShoppingCart in order to have one that looks good. Their support is also very poor unless you go for an account that has direct phone service as an option, which of course costs more. This service is more for the serious online business person who already has some experience under their belt.
Mild Infusion
InfusionSoft is an entity unto itself in the world of eCommerce and email marketing. In one place, you can control everything you need: affiliates, emails, autoresponders, products, and more. You also have endless reporting options to keep track of every metric and fine-tune your processes. Creating templates and forms is very easy, and creating emails is really fun. Their support and training videos are excellent, so even if you’re completely new to the internet, you can start creating professional-level emails and marketing materials.
The biggest disadvantage of InfusionSoft is the price. Don’t look at InfusionSoft unless you are a larger business and/or looking for serious results, because the cost is much higher than almost any other email marketing service out there today. As of this writing, the visual editor for your emails also only works in Firefox, very frustrating for someone who would rather use anything else!
constant contact
Constant Contact is a marketing provider with options that go far beyond email. Although, of course, they do email marketing and create templates. lists and forms is very easy, they also have options to create surveys, marketing events and increase your social media efforts. They deliver results, and the training and support is very comprehensive. The cost is also very comparable to other services, allowing you to choose which options you need.
However, the terminology Constant Contact uses is different than other email marketing services, and many options that are bundled together (such as creating a welcome message and autoresponder messages) feel scattered throughout the program. If you’ve worked in other email marketing programs, it will take you some time to adjust to Constant Contact.
This is not a complete list of email service providers out there. Today there are hundreds, if not thousands, of providers, but these names will definitely come up more than once as you search for the right one. Be sure to read reviews and ask questions before choosing a provider, and know what you want to do with your site within the next year. Transporting your list from one provider to another can be a hassle at best and impossible at worst, so choose carefully.