December 29, 2011

E-mail marketing is one of the best ways to nurture relationships with customers and potential customers. Although social media is hot, e-mail marketing has an important role to play in online marketing and content distribution.

Why e-mail marketing is important

• Speed: It’s instantaneous.

• Efficiency: Send one e-mail or 1,000 e-mails with one mouse click.

• Management tools: Track who receives your mail, who reads it and what they do next.

• Coverage: Most everyone reads their e-mail.

• History: E-mail is in your inbox, while social media is dynamic. If you miss a Tweet, it's gone.

These factors explain why e-mail marketing is a popular way to reach out to new and existing customers electronically. It’s a way to send word of deals, reward loyalty or simply get your brand message in front of new eyes.

The Direct Marketing Association reports that 23.8 percent of marketing e-mails were opened in the most recent quarter, up 7.1 percent from the previous quarter. E-mail is bringing in $40.56 for every dollar spent on it in 2011, compared to catalogs' ROI of $7.30, according to DMA.

“As we come to the end of 2011, e-mail is not just alive, it's thriving,” said Martin Lieberman, a managing editor with e-mail marketing vendor Constant Contact. “More messages are being sent, [and] people say they prefer e-mail over other communications methods.”

Tempted? Many services help small businesses start an e-mail marketing campaign. Here are five popular ones.

AWeber

AWeber has a track record of exceptional success with e-mail marketing deliverability. A key element determining the success of your e-mail marketing campaign is deliverability. E-mails simply have to get through. The service has established relationships with multiple ISPs to ensure that e-mail messages do not end up in the spam box.

AWeber also offers intuitive tools to assist with e-mail creation, as well as sophisticated analytics. In addition, the service delivers simplified split testing, the ability to send different e-mails within a campaign to see which is more successful. Basic pricing runs from $10 to $130 a month.

iContact

iContact has a sleek, professional user interface. Even those new to the game will be able to find their way around easily. Another nice feature that we didn’t see in every e-mail marketing tool is the ability to segment an e-mail list.

Segmentation allows the sender to customize a list that determines which types of subscribers receive certain e-mails. Its rich feature set includes not only social-networking capabilities, but the ability to access its tools using an iPod or Android device. Pricing runs $14 to $240 a month, with a 15 percent discount for an annual subscription.

Constant Contact

This service wins points for sheer longevity. Founded in 1998, Constant Contact is one of the oldest and most road-tested e-mail marketing services. Constant Contact has kept pace with the times. It now provides a wide range of social media tools. It allows users to build buttons into their messages for such popular portals as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Those who receive your e-mails can easily opt into your offerings directly from your social media fan pages. As with most such services, small businesses can create customized campaigns based on a variety of designer templates that offer diverse colors, patterns and layout schemes. Constant Contact also has great technical support. Prices range from $15 to $1,500 a month, depending on the number of e-mails targeted.

Mail Chimp

Mail Chimp has all the basics and more. It has an intuitive tool for e-mail creation, smooth integration with social media, easy-to-use contact-management tools that allow users to import directly from Excel and Salesforce. The program has a rich set of features that deliver metrics on your campaign.

You’ll see how many e-mails are opened, how many links are clicked, how many messages bounce and even how many e-mails are forwarded on. Mail Chimp has very advanced features that enable you to send an e-mail at 4 p.m. in each timezone. Mail Chimp is also part of The Small Business Web and works quite well with other services such as BatchBook. Priced at $10 to $240 month for unlimited messages, with a free option for up to 12,000 e-mails a month.

Vertical Response

Vertical Response is especially strong visually, making it easy to create appealing e-mails with a variety of styles. It offers an e-mail-creation wizard, along with editable templates that enable users to create up to three columns in a message, and to easily replace or edit images.

Users can choose from tens of thousands of stock images or take advantage of a hefty allowance for online image storage. A survey-creation tool makes it possible to generate customized customer surveys. Vertical Response offers pay-as-you-go pricing. One credit buys one e-mail and credits cost about a penny apiece. If you send e-mails to 1,500 people you'll pay $19.50.

Avoid spam and send quality messages

Even with the best tools in hand, a savvy business owner approaches e-mail marketing with a degree of caution. There’s a fine line between marketing e-mail and spam. No one wants your spam.

While all of these services have special tweaks to help keep your message out of the spam filter, that doesn’t mean it isn’t spam. The heart of the distinction is content. If your mail fulfills a need and desire, if it serves a purpose and adds value for the recipient, it’s legitimate marketing.

These few tips help ensure that all of your e-mails are quality messages.

• Know your audience.
• Write to your audience.
• Use great subject lines.
• Don't write too frequently and don't write too infrequently.
• Review your e-mail analytics to learn which topics are most clicked on, and what times of the day are most popular for sending e-mail.
• Keep your content interesting and relevant.

Related Topics

• Marketing

Related keywords

Ramon Ray, Article, e-mail marketing, Direct Marketing Association, Constant Contact, AWeber, iContact, Mail Chimp, Martin Lieberman

Join the conversation ( 8 )

• Shaik Fazal 2 months ago

  

  http://lunstonbryan.com/importance-of-forum-based-market-places/

• Shaik Fazal 2 months ago

  

  Beneficial info and excellent design you got here! I want to thank you for sharing your ideas and putting the time into the stuff you publish about forum marketing! Great work!

• Scott Hardigree 4 months ago

  

  This a great short list of email marketing service providers for small business. As a dedicated email marketing agency we've worked with all of the name companies but tend to lean toward MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com) due to their flexible API and tight template language. Plus they're great to work with.It's important to note that most the the companies listed only provide a small portion of the services required to create and maintain a successful email program. Our email marketing services (http://www.indiemark.com/email-marketing-services/) range from strategy and design to production and reporting and integrations; services that many business really need to you generate more sales, more leads, and more customer loyalty.Thanks for the article!Scott | Indiemark

• Mohammad Rizwan 4 months ago

  

  Wow this is Unique website looking nice & attractive.You have AN INCREDIBLE vocabulary.It is very informative for those users who want to know about E-Mail Marketing Services.

• Daniel Durney 4 months ago

  

  Are you kidding me? Mr. Martin Lieberman says it's "thriving". Gimme a break. Everyone I know is sick of email. 23.8% open rate? Compare that to 97% open rate for Text messages and over 80% within an hour. Response rates BLOW AWAY email marketing responses.

• Zach Rossiter 4 months ago

  

  Check out Signal, a company out of chicago that not only does email marketing, but also social and mobile marketing...all from one login. I'm just a happy customer/user of their services, they have always been quick with servicen and have a good amount of tiers in terms of what you pay vs what you get

• Rolv Heggenhougen 4 months ago

  

  Maybe one should look at another marketing opportunity and that is the emails we all send from our corporate email addresses every day. I represent a company that has developed a solution for just those emails and thus this post.The basic idea behind WRAPmail is to utilize the facts that all businesses have websites and employees that send emails every day. These emails can become complete marketing tools and help promote, brand, sell and cross-sell in addition to drive traffic to the website and conduct research. WRAPmail is available for free at http://www.wrapmail.com. WRAPmail also helps search for missing children with every email sent by incorporating an optional RSS feed from the Center for Missing and Exploited ChildrenLatest news from WRAPmail: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wrapmail-announces-advertising-revenue-share-program-for-its-users-135500513.html

• Drewry News Network 4 months ago

  

  To be honest, I have not been using "e-mail marketing" to its fullest positive potential. I just haven't been bothering sender and out e-mails to my site users at all, but have been wishing everyone on Facebook and elsewhere online a happy and blessed holiday season, as well is a prosperous 2012. Honestly, I don't have much knowledge in how to build a successful and targeted e-mail list, as I now feel inspired by reading this article to "deploy new online marketing e-mail tactics" in not only building meaningful relationships with others, but also putting [e-mail marketing] to good positive use in the new year. thank you so much OPENForum, for keeping me inspired :-)Always thankful,http://www.DrewryNewsNetwork.com :-)