Autoresponder Services Review
Email, A Powerful Tool for the Legitimate Marketer
Although email is a long existing service predating the world wide web, it’s still a powerful source of income for marketers. The 2003 *CAN SPAM act as well as improved ISP postmaster spam filters have greatly reshaped the email marketing industry, changed it from a major source of aggravation to a channel for relationship building.
Some of the benefits emails provide marketers:
- A proven buying audience: Someone who has previously got out their credit card and made a buy, is much more likely to buy again in the future, as in the case of lists made up of people who opted in on a buy page..
- Building trust: If one sends useful news and articles and not just spam advertisements you may be seen as a trustworthy, helpful friend.
- Multiple contact opportunities: it’s said that consumers must have a certain familiarity with a product through multiple exposures, before they become willing to buy. In contract to one shot paid web site visits, you email subscribers can be repeatedly shown a product in multiple mailings over a period of time.
- Joint venture leverage: If you have an original product you want to market through JV arrangements, you will have a much better chance of getting other marketer’s attention if you have a mail list you can offer to use in ad. swaps. (Promoting others products to your mail list before you need JV partners, will help you establish a recognizable name within the marketing community.)
Self Hosted Email Marketing Software
While there are powerful email list management and automatic mail sequence delivery systems that may be installed on your own server, they all suffer from the limitations of running on a single server IP address. Typically the first messages transmitted by the server based software get a decent delivery rate, but as ISP postmasters continue to see a lot of emails coming from your IP address, they may identify your emails as spam, putting your IP address on a ‘do not deliver’ blacklist. The email certification service ReturnPath estimated in a 2008 study that roughly 56% of emails sent with self hosted email software. Those results might be acceptable for spam marketers sending out millions of emails, but are not good enough for those of us who have built up their own opt-in prospect list.
Professional Email Delivery Services Provide High Delivery Rates
The services described below manage to achieve a 96% to 99% deliverability rates by carefully conforming to email delivery regulations, maintaining active relationships with the major ISP postmasters. In addition to monitoring the quality of email content and the legitimacy of the email addresses used, these services employ numerous different IP addresses to reduce the chances of getting blacklisted for excess volume.
|
By far the most popular autoresponder service, accounting for about 50% of the market, Aweber’s unsurpassed deliverability performance and clean comprehensible user interface are cited as some of their advantages over their competition.
Some more “creative” marketers have had trouble with Awebers rigorous anti-spam measured needed to maintain their low complaint levels. |
 |
The second most often recommended by marketing gurus in their educational material. |
 |
Another one worth examining. |
 |
Perhaps more suited for broadcasting messages. |
 |
Geared more for blasting out mass marketing messages, VerticalResponse doesn’t currently offer automated sequential mail deliveries. |
 |
Is Price a Significant Selection Factor?There is no great difference in prices amongst these companies, for those just getting their feet wet, the differences in evaluation / trial offers may be important. All of these services deliver higher volumes of email at a considerable discount. |
The cost per address goes down considerably with larger sized packages, this graph shows the per address cost prices for icontact, who has the most price options of the companies reviewed.
Bear in mind the typical owner generated marketing email list earns $1 per address per month, even the highest per address cost of 4 cents a month is not that painful.
|
Company
|
Trial Specials
|
Subscribers
|
Monthly $ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
||||
|
aweber.com
|
1st month $1
|
500
|
$19
|
|
|
deliverability > 99%
|
2,500
|
$29
|
||
|
5,000
|
$49
|
|||
|
10,000
|
$69
|
|||
|
25,000
|
$149
|
|||
|
|
||||
|
getResponse.com
|
test list of 10 Free
|
500
|
$18
|
|
|
won’t claim a deliverability figure
|
2,500
|
$28
|
||
|
5,000
|
$45
|
|||
|
10,000
|
$65
|
|||
|
25,000
|
$145
|
|||
|
|
||||
|
icontact.com
|
15 day free trial
|
250
|
$9.95
|
|
|
deliverability 98%-99%
|
500 msgs, 250 addresses
|
500
|
$14
|
|
|
1000
|
$19
|
|||
|
2,500
|
$29
|
|||
|
5,000
|
$47
|
|||
|
10,000
|
$74
|
|||
|
25,000
|
$149
|
|||
|
|
||||
|
mailChimp.com
|
Forever Free Plan
|
500
|
$0
|
|
|
deliverability 96%-99%
|
3,000 msgs, 500 list
|
1000
|
$15
|
|
|
(Has social site integration)
|
2,500
|
$30
|
||
|
pay as you go option
|
5,000
|
$50
|
||
|
for infrequent mailers
|
10,000
|
$75
|
||
|
0.5 to 3 cents a message
|
25,000
|
$150
|
||
|
|
||||
|
constantContact.com
|
Free 60 day trial
|
500
|
$15
|
|
|
deliverability 97%
|
100 contacts max
|
2,500
|
$30
|
|
|
5,000
|
$50
|
|||
|
surveys/event marketing too
|
10,000
|
$75
|
||
|
25,000
|
$150
|
|||
|
|
||||
|
verticalresponse.com
|
30 day free trial
|
500
|
$10
|
|
|
deliverability > 98%
|
2,000
|
$28
|
||
|
pay as you go option:
|
4,000
|
$46
|
||
|
(no sequential autoresponders)
|
0.75 to 1.5 cent mailing
|
8,000
|
$72
|
|
|
(only auto opt-in reply)
|
surveys & postcards too
|
16,000
|
$120
|
|
|
25,000
|
$150
|
|||
* CAN SPAM acronym:
“Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003.”