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Customer Engagement & Retention

Do You Need an Email Newsletter?

Email Marketing is, or should be, an important part of every business owners efforts to connect with their clients, remind them about products or services, and keep them in the loop of upcoming events.

There are quite a few different email autoreponders in the market. When I first started internet marketing Constant Contact was the email autoresponder I decided to use. It wasn’t a bad product at all, but I didn’t really understand the true value of email marketing and probably didn’t use it as well as I could have. I was also new to a lot of the “code” stuff like HTML and didn’t really understand how to make my email campaign look similar to my website.

Since that first trial, I’ve been testing other email newsletter options. One is Get Response and another is AWeber.

I’ve done quite a bit of research and here’s a bit of info on what I found out about these two email autoresponders:

The Pros and Cons of Aweber and Get Response:

AWeber

Pros:

  • Customer Support: Aweber is great at customer support: they’re thorough and helpful
  • Feedback: Aweber allows unsubscribers of your email list to fill out feedback form
  • Testing: Aweber encourages you to create an A/B test campaign
  • Analytics: Aweber offers Google Analytics integration to keep track of stats

Cons:

  • No picture hosting! This means that if you want to have pictures in your email campaign, you’ll have to host them at a place like Flickr.com – which can be a pain if you’re new to HTML.

Get Response

Pros:

  • User Friendliness: Get Response has flexible and easy-to-use templates and an email editor for simple email creation
  • Customer Support: Get Response has thorough and helpful customer support
  • Reports: Get Response provides comprehensive reports analyzing subscriber actions
  • Picture Hosting: Get Response allows 1 GB of picture hosting – that’s a ton!
  • Testing: Get Response lets you to create A/B test campaigns
  • Analytics: Get Response integrates with Google Analytics
  • Flexibility: Get Response email templates are incredibly flexible

Cons:

  • I really couldn’t find any cons yet, although I’ll continue looking and keep you posted.

Here’s a cool video about creating a newsletter with Get Response:

Try Get Response!

I’ll continue to test but up to this point, I recommend Get Response.

Which email autoresponder do you prefer?

5 replies on “Do You Need an Email Newsletter?”

We have traditionally not been very good at putting out an email newsletter (for any of our sites) BUT We have found out over the last little while is how effective it truly is. We have gained new customers, brought old ones back and have even had customers thank us for providing such valuable information (we really didn’t even think of the info as that big of a deal either) So – I am all for the PROS on this one and am trying to get better.

I agree 110% on that Mat. I haven’t been the best at being consistent with email newsletters either but know that when I do, I always get a positive response from clients.

It seems a well written newsletter does a few things:

1. Reminds your clients you’re alive and well.
2. Personalizes your business (as long as the content is personalized and not a bunch of PR)
3. Increases your likelihood of ongoing success.

Thanks for the comment!

We use Ratepoint. They are good with support and are constantly adding new features. Doesn’t work well with IE or Google Chrome, only Firefox for creating Emails. They have a great auto responder, they encourage feedback for customers to rate the business,and they offer full image hosting. Ratepoint has excellent tracking reports and they recently rooted out a bunch of people on my list who never open emails, sent them an opt-in, opt out message and reduced my contact list to get a better Open rate. Now, I am paying less because we got rid of so many useless contacts. Ratepoint was very helpful. I recommend them.

Having said all that, I am less than impressed with Email marketing in general. It really doesn’t work that well, but it’s something we have to do at least once a week, and we keep the autoresponders going weekly, too. The Auto Responders help the most, but I wish there were a better way to communicate with customers and prospects on a regular basis.

Hey Cliff!

Great to hear from you!

I’ll have to check out Ratepoint too.

A big part of my email marketing has been using Facebook to connect: Fan Pages, chat, etc. Using Twitter, depending on your industry, has also been effective.

Finally consistent blogging (which can be a form of email marketing) has worked effectively too. Guest posts on industry related or target audience sharing sites has really helped too.

I’m happy you’re doing well and hope to chat with you soon!

Nate

Many marketers don’t have time to write a newsletter in addition to blog content which is why PLR autoresponders have become popular. Of course they need to be personalized, but it’s a way to keep in contact with people who are interested in what you’re writing about.

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