The ratings for the 5 main comparison categories are each based on several factors. Each individual factor was assessed and given a quantitative score. Individual scores were weighted and averaged to obtain a final main category rating for our email marketing reviews. The factors used to rate each category are as follows:

Email Creation

• Email templates (Quantity)
  • Total number of templates and number of specific industry categories (The number of templates for each provider we've reviewed range from 4 to 750)
• Email templates (Quality)
  • Template organization/layout
  • How varied templates were from one another
  • Relevancy to different types of users
• Email Editor (Ease of Use)
  • Whether the email marketing software provides a WYSIWYG editor
  • Ease of creating HTML and plain-text emails
• Email Editor (Flexibility)
  • Ability to easily insert/manipulate HTML code, images and general email content
• Automation
  • Whether you can create auto-responder emails and how easy it is to do so
• Unique Features
  • Stand-out and/or extra features (e.g. Constant Contact's "Email Archive" add-on that hosts your email campaigns online for public viewing, upgrades for more image hosting space, etc.)
• Image Hosting
  • How much space you are allotted for images you can use in your email newsletters (ranged from 500kb to unlimited)
• Brand Removal
  • Ability to remove email marketing provider's logo from emails, and whether this is free or costs extra

Contact Management

• Adding Contacts
  • Ability to import contacts from and export contacts to different file types (XLS, CSV, TXT, email clients)
  • Ability to cut and paste multiple contacts directly into the system
• List cleanup
  • Method (automatic v. manual) of handling bounces, unsubscribes, duplicates, do-not-sends, etc.
• List segmentation
  • Ease of creating different contact lists (automatic v. manual)
  • Whether the system automatically segments based on email triggers
• Website sign-up form
  • Ability to customize sign-up form by adding multiple fields and ease of doing so
• Handling Unsubscribes
  • Automatic insertion of unsubscribe button on emails
  • Automatic removal from mailing list

Email Deliverability

• Automated message scheduling
  • Wait time for scheduled message to be delivered (Because of server bandwith, it is standard for email marketing software to automate the delivery of your scheduled message with a time delay of approximately 10-20 minutes)
• Compatibility with all email servers
  • The rate at which sent messages were successfully delivered in our test to inboxes, as opposed to spam/junk boxes
• Spam check/CAN-SPAM compliance
  • Availability of a spam checker that scans for triggers that could get your email marked as spam
  • Whether there is information provided about spam filters and the CAN-SPAM laws
• Guarantees
  • Whether the company offered guarantees (Among our reviewed email marketing companies, MyNewsetterBuilder was the only one to provide a 99% deliverability guarantee.)

Analyzing Reports

• Depth of statistics
  • Standard stats: opens, unopens, bounces, click rate, forwards, open dates, unsubcribes, spam reports
  • Extra stats: forwarded opens, click dates, opens by location, click performance by URL, email domain performance, link performance, top performing lists, campaign performance average, comparison of your current campaign with any of your other campaigns, comparison of your campaign with other top performing campaigns in your industry
• Appearance of reports
  • Numerical stats and graphical stats, campaign history, and ease of comparing reports
• Exporting reports
  • Easily export to different formats (XLS, CSV, TXT) or email reports
• Live update
  • Measure of time lag between tagged actions and reports updates (We tested this by opening sent test emails and clicking on hypertext links, unsubscribe links, etc. and waiting to see how long the reporting systems took to update)
• A/B testing campaigns and reports
  • Ability to test two different subject lines within one email marketing campaign and view reports on which one works better
  • Whether A/B testing selection of best email is manual or automatic
  • (Note: This is an uncommon feature. The rating was awarded as bonus points rather than as a penalty.)
• Integration with Google Analytics
  • Ability to integrate email marketing tools with Google Analytics tool and view detailed, integrated reports
  • (Note: This is an uncommon feature. The rating was awarded as bonus points rather than as a penalty.)

Customer Support

• Phone support
  • Wait/hold time
  • Helpfulness of support and English fluency
• Email support
  • Response wait time
  • Helpfulness of support
• Online Knowledgebase
  • Availability and thoroughness of FAQ, tutorials and help articles
• Live chat support
  • Response wait time
  • Helpfulness of support
• Availability
  • Support during business hours, nights and/or weekends (Time zone factors into availability; i.e. 5 p.m. EST is approximately 2 p.m. PST and may not be practical.)