Newsletter Signup

What is Email Marketing?

Email Marketing is a method of advertising, promoting, or simply distributing information to a large number of recipients via email. In general, Email Marketing services use an online interface to simplify the process of sending mass emails. These interfaces provide users with email templates, wizards, and editors that help users create and maintain email campaigns. They also provide a means to gather contact information and will send reports to users that can assist in improving the efficacy of future emails.

What to look for in an Email Marketing Service:

All of the vendors in our survey provide downloadable campaign reports and click through link tracking. These tools alone are reason enough to purchase an email marketing service. In addition, the top service providers will also provide follow-up campaign creation tools. After reviewing plans with all the service providers in our survey, Email Marketing Software Comparison came up with what we consider to be a "market standard" plan. Though pricing may vary, a good Email Marketing service should provide the following features.

Market Standard:

• Contact Based Pricing- 500 minimum
• $15 Monthly Fee
• Free trial- 15 day minimum
• No start up fee
• 100+ Templates
• Image Hosting
• Clickable Data Links
• Customer Service 9am-8pm EST M-F

Number of Contacts vs. Number of Emails:

The vendors in our survey do not sell email lists. You must provide your own list of contacts or email addresses. The distinction between email and contact based pricing will be most important for users who plan to send emails to the same list of contacts more than once a month. If you sign up for a plan that bases pricing on the total number of emails sent per month, you will be charged twice for sending two emails to the same contact. Services that base their pricing on Contacts will allow you to send multiple emails per month to the contacts you upload. Generally, most providers have a similarly priced minimum plan, whether those plans are based on contacts or emails. (Ex: Both iContact and Benchmark start at $9.95, though iContact bills per contact and Benchmark bills per email.)

Free Trials:

The Free Trials offered by most email marketing companies significantly limit the number of emails you can send and the features you can use. These free trials are really meant to give you the opportunity to explore the online interface and see how the product works, not to give you a free month of service. You will most likely need to become a full paying customer to get the full benefits of the service. However, most companies offer a discount (usually 10%) if you pay for a year in advance.

How do we select "Approved Vendors?"

We provide the title of "Approved Vendor" to companies that we recommend without reservation. Each company we review offers a different plan with features that may suit one type of customer better than another, but our statement that a particular vendor is "Approved" simply states that the company has proven to our staff the ability to deliver their product as described at a very high level of satisfaction.

To be labeled an "Approved Vendor" of email marketing software, a company must exhibit all of the following characteristics:

• Meet or exceed the Email Marketing Software Comparison "Market Standard."
• Been in business for at least five years.
• Demonstrated with our review team the ability to handle customer service issues quickly and thoroughly.
• Demonstrated a high degree of integrity and ethics in our interactions.

Why Use an Email Marketing Service?

Sophisticated Tracking and Reporting: A great advantage of using Email Marketing services is that they provide merchants with reports of tracked information (such as bounced messages, click-throughs, etc.). This information helps the sender to remove information that could get the email marked as spam, to see which links are visited and are generating money, etc. The information aids in the tailoring and targeting of future email campaigns. Also, most services allow you to track an exact Return on Investment, or ROI.
Helps Ensure Repeat Business: Most Email Marketing services provide multiple means to opt-in, through the creation of sign-up forms and email confirmation. Some services can automatically set up follow-up campaigns to be sent to email recipients to help establish and maintain customer relationships.

Why is Email Better Than Print?

Lower Cost: The traditional method of marketing to consumers - using printed pamphlets, catalogues, and other paper material - is much more costly than marketing electronically. It's not practical, and sometimes, not possible to take advantage of these savings without utilizing an email marketing service.
More Efficient: Emailing is instantaneous, as opposed to mailed advertisements. Not only can regular mail take days to be delivered, but it also might not be checked every day (which lengthens the amount of time it takes before a person sees the advertisement). An advantage of Email Marketing services is organized mailing lists, which provides the ability to send information to a wide range of specific potential customers. On the whole, marketing through email enables merchants to push information, instead of waiting for consumers to discover the information themselves.

Why Use Email Marketing Software Comparison?

Email Marketing Software Comparison was created as a result of the difficulties we encountered when researching different Email Marketing providers. We found a number of different options and features (which sometimes require additional fees) that were created to suit different email marketing needs. We help you to fully understand the differences in pricing systems and other relevant data so you can make an "apples to apples" comparison of the different services and select a provider so you can get back to business. We are committed to providing a quality unbiased resource to individuals and small business owners that will save time and alleviate the frustration that we ourselves have experienced.