Email marketing services come in a variety of forms.
Why would you even use them?
Well, more and more people are becoming exposed to the web than their conventional mail box. Traditional mail campaigns can become lost and ineffective among the several other pieces of mail, junk mail and advertising within the normal postal system. The experience of checking your email inbox is a lot more convenient, quick, and up front, and rewarding at times than the bunch of paper in your regular mailbox.
You can expose and display a lot more info with value, as printed material real estate is limited to physical pages, whereas digital websites and applications are a lot more robust. You can even point to other pages/sites with all of the details and info a customer may require. The direct link to access purchases is also a huge plus. There is interactivity which engages the user and as more people start digitizing their life, including calendering, events can be added to their personal agendas with simple clicks of a button.
Costs is a key factor here as well. No postage required!
Simple open source campaign system such as pOMMo can provide all the things you need behind a basic newsletter or email campaign. You still will require some web experience, hosting/server, and possibly some design, but your campaigns will be easier to manage and deliver.
There are even environmental benefits too, the obvious conservation of transportation and paper usage is key. The pollution from the waste products and the vehicles to deliver them decrease.
Why can’t you just send links in a regular email? Sending a basic link in an email has been proven as not the most beneficial or effective way to reach customers. The user would have to deviate away from the email routine to check the content or obtain details. Most users will not do this right away, as it takes them away from their mail client. Providing some other substantial info and details will at least retain the user’s attention longer and this will help them determine if it is worth exploring the links or the site advertised.
Some smaller companies will use a basic email to send out info, but there are some security issues with your recipients’ info when you do that. If you use a basic email client like Outlook or even Gmail Webmail, you cannot really separate and manage your email addressee’s effectively. It is bad practice to send out campaigns with comma deliminated email addresses where all recipients can see who is on the list. You’re practically giving emails away. You could BCC everyone, but it is still a bad practice and not the most ideal management system for an email campaign. I believe it may even have some legal concerns for some companies to expose your user’s info even in an email list.
Sending the newsletter/campaign content and info directly in the email is ideal. There are some issues one should be aware of though. Not all email clients read or behave the same, so testing or using email-safe techniques to create these emails are highly encouraged. Most marketing services assist with this by using templates or provide guidelines. There are some tips and tricks for the various main clients, and some general rules to ensure proper translation in all. Having the ability for the user to “click here if you are having troubles viewing this email” is a great feature to include, so that in the case that your email does not get translated properly, they have a site to visit. Always allow the user to unsubscribe from your campaign too, or else you risk pissing people off more than providing them with useful info.
I use poMMo which is a free PHP driven subscription and newsletter campaign system (request donations). I just installed it on our band’s website and have been running test for newsletters in it. So far, so good.
You can install it to your site easily and it only requires php and mySQL database which most host offer. It allows users to sign up with a form template, you can add contacts from your address book (csv file), and then manage contacts and groups. It even has a built in mail editor where you can paste in you html or create it within the editor. There’s testing to view it and you can create templates to use over and over. It will also create a page to be viewed online of the newsletter. If you want, you can even customize the sign up form with unique properties or data you would like to capture. I added a state field for location within our group’s form, so that we can send out newsletters based on geography. Skinning the system is possible too, it does take a little more in depth knowledge and web design experience to do that.
http://pommo.org/Main_Page
PHP List is another decent engine for small email campaigns and it is free too. This was one of my considered engines, but I ended up using poMMo. I cannot say which one is better, since I haven;t used PHP List except for the demo.
http://www.phplist.com/
Below are some professional services for larger email marketing and campaign management. These are not free, but they do work and provide a lot of services for which a larger business may use.
*I do not endorse any of these by any affiliation or sponsorship, just a reference to other companies to consider for this post.
Salesforce
https://www.salesforce.com/form/sem/crm_demo_1wpi.jsp?d=70130000000Dw7r&DCMP=KNC-Google&&gclid=CNuK892rvZMCFRQYsgodWROVBw
iContact
http://www.icontact.com/lp/email-marketing-tab1.php?afid=125800&gclid=CLXUhJOrvZMCFRcZsgodA2HCCQ
Here are some others
Benchmark
http://www.benchmarkemail.com/?affcode=1226&gclid=CNjx6KervZMCFRUasgodpi_JCw
Constant Contact
http://search.constantcontact.com/home.jsp?utm_id=910827&cc=goo910827
Most offer various packages or services like 1 time, monthly, etc. Most have built-in HTML editors where you can create the HTML page or paste HTML if you created somewhere else. They should have a WYSIWYG editor, where creating and even inserting images should be easy. If you are using images, you should have those uploaded to your host/server somewhere so they can be embedded. Some editors will upload it for you, but some will require you to insert the URL of he image manually.
This post is not to discredit print campaigns and their effectiveness. They have been proven time and time again to be very successful, and I personally do enjoy a physical printed piece of collateral for certain things. Catalogs are awesome to browse through and some the concept of allowing a recipient to have a physical and tangible object is very effective in some cases and it can act as an artifact or a reminder for some users. If you use a physical piece, you can pretty much assure that your piece will make it to the client in time, not be affected by junk mail/SPAM filters, and it will be delivered in the way you intended. Flyers are still heavily used in both mainstream marketing such as direct mail, and underground guerrilla marketing such as band flyers and club flyers, both with a high success and impact rate.
There are many types of campaigns that benefit from one or the other, or even both. It is the sender’s responsibility to review their options, clients and demographic, budget, and make the best decision based on their needs.
