Working as part of a web marketing team, I've had the chance to work with two e-newsletter solutions and I have become strongly opinionated as to what makes an excellent e-newsletter service and why one service is clearly better than another.
Of course I'm talking about iContact vs. Constant Contact. For years Constant Contact has been the industry leader until iContact came onto the scene. And for a long time I didn't understand why anyone would want to compete with Constant Contact--it had such a big reputation. Then I tried using it. It goes to show you that if you have a business idea that already exists in the marketplace -who is to say that you can't do it better?
And iContact does e-newsletters better than Constant Contact.
We often get this question in our webinars and from clients:
Why can't I send e-newsletters from my regular email address?
If you're broadcasting your e-newsletters through a simple email address you're decreasing the effectiveness of your newsletter campaign. Here are 6 reasons an E-newsletter service is more effective than your email client:
- Regular email sent to a large group of people can and will be targeted as spam and may not reach your whole audience. E-newsletter services have mechanisms in place to make sure your newsletter gets to your audience.
- E-newsletter services have tracking tools to allow you to see who opens your newsletter and how they respond to it. Do they click the links? Do they forward it to their friends? This information is key if you want to learn how your audience behaves and what content excites them the most.
- E-newsletter services offer you opportunities to customize your email to match your current website and branding. A good E-newsletter service gives you a bunch of newsletter templates to choose from and the ability to edit them to match your branding. The best services allow you to edit your template and your newsletters in both HTML and with a WYSIWYG editor.
- E-newsletter services can provide archiving opportunities that make your newsletter more searchable on the web. Check out iContact's archiving capabilities.
- E-newsletter services integrate your e-newsletter seamlessly into your web site. The best e-newsletter services have e-newsletter signups that do not take them off your your website. All sign up details live on your website. (Constant Contact forces you to go to their site, which is confusing - iContact's integrated sign up form is better)
- E-newsletter services help you gather more data about your members. some services allow you to also set up surveys for your list members.
- E-newsletter services manage your contact list. Members can simply subscribe or unsubscribe without any additional work on your end.
You may have noticed that we have a special love for
iContact . They are our preferred e-newsletter solution. Stay tuned for our next post Why We Love iContact.
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