Small Business Trends

30 Useful Small Business Email Marketing Apps

Marketing Trends, Product ReviewsDecember 2, 2009By TJ McCue

email marketingEmail marketing is one of the dominant ways that a small business reaches out to customers and prospects. Email marketing is about relationships — and successful relationship marketing involves a lot more thought than simply firing off a newsletter via email.

According to MarketingSherpa’s 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report (free PDF excerpt here),  email marketing is one of two marketing budget items that saw an increase in 2009.  The other is social media.

But where many have claimed that “email is dead,” MarketingSherpa has proven otherwise in its studies.  In fact, they show that email is quite social.  A recent survey asked users how they share information they find on the internet:  78% responded that email is how they do it.  22% use social media sites.

Here are 30 small business email marketing applications to grow customer relationships — and your business (in no particular order):

Emma
Emma is a Web-based service that combines do-it-yourself with free personal assistance when you need it (custom email design comes at an additional charge).  They have strong tracking and analytics components that allow you to learn what works, or doesn’t, with your audience.

Constant Contact
They offer a free 60-day trial. They have been around a long time and have a strong arsenal of email marketing tools from HTML newsletter templates to personal coaching on how to get your email campaigns done right.  They have added event management so you can handle online registration, as well as online survey tools to gather info from customers and prospects.

AWeber
AWeber grew very popular because it focused on auto-response emails.  They made it very simple and elegant to create a form a prospect would fill out.  The service then auto-responded to that information with whatever message you had set up. They offer a robust set of tools including email newsletters, emails to RSS, and, of course, autoresponders.  First month is $1, and then pay-as-you-go based on subscriber count.  You don’t pay per email with them.

MailChimp
MailChimp was one of the first email marketing providers to offer a “forever free” plan.  Small business users I know love this plan as it gives you up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails for free each month.  After that, it has pay-as-you-go pricing.  On top of the email newsletter and database list management, they offer an integration with online event registrations and ticket sales via Eventbrite.

iContact
iContact offers all of the same features as the others, but they focus attention on their deliverability rates – often talked about as whitelist agreements. While it may not seem like a big deal at first glance,  if your email provider isn’t doing things right, your email may not get through.  iContact partners with a third party, Pivotal Veracity, to score emails to help improve how many get through to recipients. They offer a free trial, no credit card to get started, and a good educational resource section.

Vertical Response
In addition to email, Vertical Response is probably one of the more integrated services out there, with integration to Intuit and Salesforce.  They offer postal mail options, too, so you can send a postcard to a prospect or customer to add another touch beyond email.  Great educational materials also.

EmailBrain
 I liked that they had a “no credit card” free trial signup.  More importantly, I really appreciated that they offer an industry-focus approach with 20+ industry examples and case studies.  You could dig in and see what someone else like you was doing — a good way to get a jumpstart on your email marketing.

eConnect
eConnect Email’s claim to fame is their the first provider to offer a tagging system for email.  Look at it as a meta-organizing system where you can see what your customers and prospects find interesting and are clicking on.  You can tag items in a specific email, in a campaign, and across multiple campaigns.  That information is then available on a subscriber level, so you can see the top five tags your customer is interested in.

FuseMail
FuseMail offers email hosting as well as campaign management.  They have a 14-day free trial.  The big area that stood out for me was they have an SMTP Direct service (which is an email gateway) where you can use your existing email newsletter program and gain the advantages of their email servers.  The advantage of this is that you don’t have to get everyone on your existing mail list to “opt-in” to your newsletter again, which is almost always a requirement when signing on with a new service.  FuseMail doesn’t have this requirement with their SMTP Direct service.  Pretty unique.

SimplyCast
SimplyCast, owned by Mailworkz (offers 300 emails a month “free forever” account, similar to MailChimp).  Some of the key features that SimplyCast offers are worth considering:   Image hosting (so you can easily have your image render properly), easy to include attachments, forward-to-a-friend options from within the email (great for viral stuff), and dozens of template categories.

JangoMail
Many providers tag your emails with “Powered by ABC Email…” and you probably don’t particularly want to see this sort of branding on your email messages to customers.  JangoMail promises “your emails are your emails, not ours.”  Even though they are a web-based email provider, they allow for you to manage your messaging through Outlook or Thunderbird, and other web-based apps like Gmail and Yahoo, too.  Free trial allows for 50 test emails.

GetResponse
GetResponse appears to be very social media savvy.  They offer video email and social media tools.  Your email subscribers, for example, can easily receive your Twitter updates via the GetResponse service.   They also have a split-testing feature so that you can test one email against another to see which one pulls better results.

Contact29
Contact29 is an email marketing provider focused primarily on the real estate and mortgage industries. If you are in those industries, they are worth a look.

SendLabs
SendLabs has created a tool to help you see what your email will look like in the recipients inbox.  With a single click, this feature within the SendLabs Summer ‘09 release will send a copy of your email to all of the major email programs (Outlook, Lotus Notes, Yahoo!, Gmail, etc.) and provide a screen shot report on how well your email will render for everybody.

Campaigner
Campaigner offers a nifty workflow tool that allows you to determine when and what actions trigger an email to be sent to your customer or prospect.  It is similar to an autoresponder (which sends an email when a customer fills in a form on a website usually), but a bit more advanced.  With their workflow tool, you can trigger a specific response based on what a customer does within the email.  If they click a certain link, for example, they might receive an email 1 hour later.  Free trial, of course.

EasyContact
I liked the very simple 3-step plan that EasyContact presents to first time visitors.  You get a clear sense that they have thought about how to make it as easy as possible.   They also offer a free forever plan and low-cost pay-as-you-go options.

Big Response
The other services may have similar offers, but Big Response has a couple of things worth mentioning:  First, they highlight that you can collect an unlimited number of subscribers – meaning you don’t pay to store contacts and only pay for emails sent.   Second, that you get unlimited phone and email support from their experts.  I didn’t see that one mentioned elsewhere,  so that made me think about doing a trial.

Benchmark Email
Their competitor comparison chart reveals a lot about what they offer that others don’t.  You can tie into your Google Analytics account.  You can view all of your subscriber opens within a map within the reporting feature.  You can segment out all of your email lists easily – which is handy as you get to know your customers better.

StreamSend
The big differentiator for StreamSend is they offer every customer a private IP address, which helps you keep your reputation intact.  You are not judged by the email provider you use, but by your email quality.

myNewsletterBuilder
myNewsletterBuilder stands out in the crowd of email marketers by providing pre-written content that you can use in your newsletters and emails, by industry segment.  They also partnered with eVoiceSpot, which is a multimedia rich presentation service that you can embed into your email or newsletter.

YesMail
YesMail has one major awards and recognition for its platform and service.  They have a specific small business offering called YesMail Direct.  This link goes direct to that page. They are connected to InfoUSA, so if you need to build a mailing list you can do it all under one roof.

Mad Mimi
Mad Mimi is a simple email marketing system.  One of the nice features is it comes with free design assistance.  It also has a limited edition that is completely free and includes good sharing functions like Forward to a Friend, among many other standard features.

PoMMo
PoMMo is a free open-source program that bills itself as “mass mailing” software.  It is a no-frills program.  It’s is 100% free.  However, like many open source apps, remember there’s always a cost — it costs you time.  You are pretty much on your own when it comes to installing it and troubleshooting issues.  There is no customer support to call.

CRM EMAIL

Many companies don’t like their email efforts separated from their customer data. Keeping it all together is a lot of work.  Customer relationship management software companies have listened, but these five web-based offerings are aimed at the small business owner.  If you want to enable customized emails to your customers, with full tracking and opportunities to create new campaigns from your customer data, then you should look closely at these companies:

Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft is a popular CRM solution with automated email marketing as a central concept.  As you make contact  with customers via email, or via interactions on your website or online shopping cart, Infusionsoft tracks those contact points.  You can then use those interactions to send targeted and relevant communications. Your salespeople can access this info and understand what communications the customer has seen, or where they’ve gone on your site, and have a more intelligent conversation.  (Note:  Infusionsoft is a sponsor of this site’s Internet radio show.)

ZohoCRM
Zoho is an online application suite like OpenOffice or Google Documents, but with a lot more applications and options for managing your business.  Their ZohoCRM tool recently introduced the email within CRM option. The email add-on is $5 a month additional.

Highrise HQ
Highrise HQ is a web-based CRM from 37 Signals (owner of Basecamp, a popular project management tool).  Like most CRM solutions,  they allow you to track who you talk to and so forth, but the ability to see all of your email efforts and  dialogue with a customer on one page is fairly useful.

Leopard CRM
Integrating your email into your CRM efforts always looks daunting, but Leopard CRM simply says — call our support team and we’ll walk you through it.

SalesBoom
SalesBoom is an online CRM application that offers an email campaign management tool.  With it, a user can capture leads via a simple web form and then send individual emails, or manage entire drip marketing campaigns where you email customers or prospects a series of emails over a period of time.

SalesJunction
SalesJunction offers one of the lowest monthly costs for a web-based CRM that I’ve found.  The basic edition has a 15 day trial.

Lyris HQ
Lyris HQ used to be known as Email Labs.  It integrates with Salesforce.com, which is the industry-leading online CRM solution, so that’s a plus for the many business owners using Salesforce.  I could not find pricing on their website, which is a downside in my opinion. Small business owners are too busy to talk to sales reps or sit through web demos just to discover pricing.

SOCIAL EMAIL

There’s loads of proof that social networks have changed how we communicate. They increase transparency, build trust, and give people (customers and prospects) the choice to opt-in to our messages.

With social media you can communicate directly to your customers without the traditional email hurdles and miss the inbox altogether.  For example,  your company can send messages to people in a Facebook or LinkedIn Group today.  Twitter does not offer a group feature where you can message a group of people privately,  but a third party app called Tweetworks does.  You could accomplish something similar by addressing a group with a hashtag — although it wouldn’t remain private.  The goal with a private message is to avoid bothering others that would not be interested in the offer or message.

Return on Subscriber offers a solid post on how to achieve more social email:  Making your email marketing social

Finally, remember that programs and offer details change.  But, to the best of my knowledge all information herein is accurate as of the time of publication.

We hope these 30 applications and ideas help you.  What email marketing software do you use now?  Leave a comment below with your favorite.

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206 Responses to “30 Useful Small Business Email Marketing Apps”

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  1. Tweets that mention Small Business Email Marketing Software | Small Business Trends -- Topsy.com says:
    December 2, 2009 at 1:53 pm

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Anita Campbell and TJMcCue, Merchant Services. Merchant Services said: 30 Useful Small Business Email Marketing Apps: Email marketing is one of the dominant ways that a small busines.. http://bit.ly/93guqY [...]

  2. Jeff Ski Kinsey says:
    December 2, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    Just a quick two cents…

    I recently tried Constant Contact again (as a former user with pretty good results) and the best I could get was something like 55% delivery rate. From a list of people that I was already sending conventional email! When I called CC to complain, there guy said, “Yea, that is about average.” Not in my book. FYI: One of the recipients NOT getting delivery was the CEO paying my fees! Ouch.

    I am now trying MailChimp and love the simple and FAST interaction and the A/B testing. I hope it makes the grade.

    Also, TJ missed SugarCRM. Next to Salesforce, I consider it the best. FYI: I use the “CE” Open Source version.

    -ski

    P.S. For SocMedia, I love hootSuite (iPhone app coming soon!) and if you have multiple twitter accounts, you will too!

  3. Besa Pinchotti says:
    December 2, 2009 at 2:14 pm

    These are all great options, but it can be difficult to decide which one would be the best fit. Capterra has a free tool that shows you all of your options and allows you to filter the list based on your specific needs.

    Here’s a link to the email marketing directory and the 123 options available:

    http://www.capterra.com/email-marketing-software

    Happy Hunting!

  4. uberVU - social comments says:
    December 2, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by TJMcCue: 30 Useful Email Marketing Apps. RT @TJMcCue @SmallBizTrends http://bit.ly/8IdNmX...

  5. TJ McCue says:
    December 2, 2009 at 2:37 pm

    Thanks Jeff. Sorry to hear of your experience, but glad to hear you landed at another good provider and are happy now. I appreciate your input. I’ve used several of them on different client projects.

    I use SugarCRM and SplendidCRM (adaptation of Sugar) and Salesforce on different projects. I didn’t mean to miss them, but the focus was more on email apps and I put some of the CRM players that were doing great stuff with marketing automation (Infusionsoft) and tying in social media — I should have included Batchbook again, too. Ah, there’s always so many!! I’ll look at how Sugar is incorporating email. Thanks!

  6. TJ McCue says:
    December 2, 2009 at 2:41 pm

    Hi Besa, thanks for telling readers about Capterra. I’ve used your service and found it useful.

    I think it is important to explain to readers that Capterra is a pay-per-click type of directory with a Request for Bid option that sends their request to several merchants at one time. Those merchants have bid to receive your request for information. Those merchants receive your request and then respond to you directly. There’s nothing wrong with that — it is how Google works (in part). If you’re pressed for time and want to have vendors/merchants send you information about email marketing services, Capterra is a worthwhile service.

  7. Melinda says:
    December 2, 2009 at 3:56 pm

    A great list, esp for those new to email marketing. I’m one of those small biz owners who loves Mail Chimp and the little chimp chatter messages. My tip for new users: set the fonts in your template up exactly as you want them rather than trying to change text style while creating an email. This will help your final sent email look how you expect it to.

  8. Robert Brady says:
    December 2, 2009 at 5:34 pm

    Great list TJ! Email marketing is one of the most cost effective marketing channels out there, you just have to get past the learning curve on your platform.

    The only thing I would add is that iContact won’t allow you to target segments of lists with autoresponders. Seems like such a simple option to offer, but no dice.

  9. Tom O'Leary says:
    December 2, 2009 at 6:02 pm

    Great list, but I was surprised not to see our GroupMail listed. GroupMail has been ranked at the top of the email marketing software apps for the past several years according to reviews – and we offer a free version that is great for small businesses without a budget. We also offer powerful (paid) editions.

    GroupMail is used in over 160 countries and available to install in English, Spanish, French and German.

    You can download our GroupMail Free Edition at

    http://www.group-mail.com/asp/common/downloads.asp

  10. Evan says:
    December 2, 2009 at 9:03 pm

    Good post specially for a new entrant. I am already using MailChimp. I found it a good one. But will try to hover other services as well. Thanks a lot to TjMcQ

  11. INFO4HER - MyCity4Her.com’s BLOG » Blog Archive » Another Awesome piece of advice from Small Biz Trends says:
    December 3, 2009 at 7:39 am

    [...] Read more by clicking here. [...]

  12. Michelle, Home Staging Pro says:
    December 3, 2009 at 7:42 am

    Thank you for compiling this information. I have been using Constant Contact for about 1 year. I don’t get that high of an open rate, but I have discovered that more people are opening my email than shows in their stats. I know this because they contact me and tell me that they’ve gotten my newsletter,even though their name isn’t on the list of opens.

    I’ve always gotten good customer support from CC. I’m still going to check some of these others out and see if they offer something that would work better for me.

  13. Grant Wickes (@gwickes) says:
    December 3, 2009 at 8:13 am

    Nice compilation TJ. Email marketing is the corner stone of any SMB marketing effort… but like all things these days, its just one of a few pillars required to be successful.

    Further, a growing challenge for email is relevancy. As more and more email is sent, recipients are responding less and less to general messages; however, they are responding better when they receive information they are interested in and relevant to their situation.

    We have used Constant Contact for the last few years and really liked it. However, we are moving away from it and using a marketing automation email service where unique emails can be sent to folks triggered by various time or activities. It’s a big change for us as we enter 2010.

    This “relevancy ability” is a big trend. So as you look at various email marketing services, its something I would be looking for.

    Cheers, Grant

  14. Craig Klein says:
    December 3, 2009 at 8:35 am

    You forgot to include http://www.salesnexus.com in your CRM Email section. Its got all the CRM features of Salesforce.com Professional and email marketing capabilities of Infusionsoft at much less cost that both of them.

  15. Amanda Collier Stillwagon says:
    December 3, 2009 at 9:28 am

    Wow, this is an awesome list TJ. There are so many great services to choose from. Now I just need to make time to go through them all. :)

  16. Anita Campbell says:
    December 3, 2009 at 9:31 am

    The thing with the Capterra list (and all Capterra lists) is, as TJ points out, that’s it’s a lead generation site.

    It’s designed to make Capterra money. It’s not designed to be a list of the best of class, for small businesses.

    I’ve never heard of many of the applications on that list.

    Further, some of them we just would not recommend for small businesses. For instance, I used to use Blue Hornet. Seven years ago it was one of the leading email marketing apps. But since then, Blue Hornet has definitely targeted larger companies, and is not as appropriate for small businesses.

    And that’s just one example from their list.

    - Anita

  17. Keri Morgret says:
    December 3, 2009 at 9:55 am

    If you’re a non-profit, check with the providers for special rates. Some offer a discount or free credits. Vertical Response offers non-profits 10,000 free emails a month, for example (my employer has used this service).

  18. CathyWebSavvyPR says:
    December 3, 2009 at 10:19 am

    I have found Aweber good for my clients. It is fairly easy to use, their customer support is very helpful and they have a good resource guides and tutorials for how to things up (and how to run effective email campaigns). Their deliverability rate has been very high for my clients. I also like their Twitter integration(you can set it up so a tweet goes out when a newsletter is sent) and other options like adding video etc.

    One really nice option they provided to one client of mine was to go into his old service and confirm that the prior list was opt-in – then allowed us to port our list over without requalifying each subscriber; most do NOT offer this service.

    This leads to another tip/idea: Consider starting with a service that can grow as your business grows – building a list, then porting it to a new service usually means you have to send an email out to the entire list – if they don’t open it, and click the opt-in button, or if they choose the opt-out option, you’ve lost them (not ALWAYS a bad thing – to clean a list of inactive people – but is not so great o lose half your list either)

    One note for non-profits, several of these services offer free or discounted accounts for non-profit organization.

    Another service I did not see is One Shopping Cart – they are primarily a shopping cart service – with auto responders and email list database management – they have just this fall launched templates for newsletters and the like – from what I hear. Good for selling ebooks and other e-commerce activities. But they don’t really work with other elist programs(Aweber offers some integration – but one shopping cart does not list it).

    Only other one not on you r list that I’ve heard of is Bronto; but have never used it.

  19. Chase Maggiano says:
    December 3, 2009 at 11:52 am

    Hey TJ and company,

    I’m Chase from Capterra. This is a great discussion, and email marketing deserves as much attention as possible. We’re even revamping our email marketing system right now. I just want to point out that software companies do not bid for leads that are generated in Capterra. Many of our software advertisers actually get leads for free in exchange for having an enhanced listing with Capterra. Other vendors pay a flat price for the leads so there’s no bidding going on. And all software companies can access your request and contact you if they want.

    We actually don’t generate that many leads anyway. Capterra provides a list of software options that is as comprehensive as possible, and buyers can click through to vendors’ software websites. That’s the main benefit we offer software companies – website traffic. We definitely try to be comprehensive, because the buyer is our number 1 priority. Without buyers, we would be irrelevant! If anyone has some tips or suggestions, feel free to email me. I don’t mean to distract from the main point of the discussion here…keep on researching email marketing software!

    Take care
    Chase
    chase@capterra.com

  20. Besa Pinchotti says:
    December 3, 2009 at 1:07 pm

    Just a quick point of clarification, Anita. You are correct in that Capterra is not designed to be a list of the best of the best software products for small businesses. While most of our users are from small businesses, we do get many from mid-large companies (and nonprofits) as well so we make sure that we cover the entire industry. But we do allow users to filter their results by selecting the size of their company. Since “best of the best” is so subjective we err on the side of remaining vendor neutral and comprehensive – and allow users to share their experience through ratings and reviews.

    And as Chase mentioned, most users contact our vendors directly by clicking through to their websites as opposed to blindly submitting their information and waiting to hear from vendors.

  21. Michelle Fitzgerald says:
    December 3, 2009 at 1:16 pm

    Great post…

    And don’t overlook Exact Target’s SMB offering. Hands down, one of the best email tools in the industry and tailoring more recently to the small biz segment. http://bit.ly/6zrUxT.

    Check out more on this topic and other marketing resources for SBOs @ http://bit.ly/GetScrappyFanPage

  22. John Myers says:
    December 3, 2009 at 1:21 pm

    Hi,

    What about Omnistar Mailer http://www.omnistarmailer.com this is my favorite.

  23. Anita Campbell says:
    December 3, 2009 at 1:41 pm

    Thank you Chase and Besa, for your clarification.

    I think my comment may have come across as being overly negative about Capterra — and I certainly didn’t mean to sound that way. My apologies for sounding so critical. :)

    I do feel that we just have two different kinds of lists. The one TJ has put together is specific to small businesses. The Capterra list is broader.

    And thank you for commenting.

    - Anita

  24. TJ McCue says:
    December 3, 2009 at 5:36 pm

    Thanks Chase and Besa for explaining things. Much appreciated.

    We clearly have a lot of folks interested and invested in their email marketing applications and the customer emails that come from those systems.

    Most important, we want small biz owners to have a resource at hand when they need to start an email campaign. Lisa’s post today gave some additional tips to keep it all relevant.

    We’re excited that so many people have been sharing this post on Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and commenting here, of course. Thank you. This happens best when we hit a real need and email marketing is definitely one of those needs that we as small biz owners have.

  25. TJ McCue says:
    December 3, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    I’d like to add that part of the criteria I use when deciding to list a company is — did they make it easy for me, as a small biz owner, to understand their application.

    *Could I quickly find pricing details?
    *Could I find the terms or conditions?
    *Was there a free trial?
    *Did I have to talk to a sales rep or watch a demo while someone was holding my hand?

    This last one almost, almost, always removes a company from consideration. Is it a fair bias? Probably not. Is it part of how I make my decision? Yes.

    The reason is simple: Most people, especially small biz owners who wear many hats every single day, do NOT have time to wander around to figure it out. If you don’t have a good landing page, with upfront details so that I can make a decision quickly, I move on. If you insist I call you or sit through a demo, I move on. I assume that if you make me do those things that your software costs more than what the average SMB is willing to pay.

    The point? Make it easier. Make your landing page, home page simpler. Be transparent. There are lots of things you can do with content and layout to help me immediately trust you. Read Anita’s posts. Read Lisa Barone’s. If you are an email marketing provider, definitely go buy the MarketingSherpa reports.

    The commentary in here is terrific. There are pros and cons, happy customers and some unhappy ones, for all of these applications. Find the one that’s right for you. Web-based may not answer your needs, so look around for desktop programs (which are not as well represented here in this list).

    Thanks again for reading and sharing this small business email marketing software application list.

  26. Grant Wickes (@gwickes) says:
    December 3, 2009 at 6:43 pm

    Another simple option for email & CRM for those small startups is using Outlook and a CRM add-on for Outlook.

    Certainly not as elegant and as capable as some of the products listed by TJ, but at least it’s a good start.

    I have looked at various Outlook add-ons in the past. I’ve used the Business Contact Manager (BCM) that Microsoft offers and really never warmed up to it. Another one that gets great reviews (although I have not use it) is Avinda Prophet (http://www.avidian.com/)

    Glad to see this discussion continuing! Nice job TJ (and Lisa with her follow up post).

    Cheers, Grant

  27. Joel Libava says:
    December 3, 2009 at 9:17 pm

    TJ,

    Quite a thorough list. Thank you!

    The Franchise King®
    Joel Libava

  28. Marketing Mavens says:
    December 4, 2009 at 1:29 am

    Thank you for this extensive list of email providers. There certainly are a lot of options when it comes to apps for small businesses.

  29. Martin Lindeskog says:
    December 4, 2009 at 7:24 am

    TJ: Wow, that is a long list of programs. I will listen to a webinar (Opening Doors and Closing Deals on Professional Networks) with Vertical Response today.

  30. Joseph Manna, Infusionsoft says:
    December 4, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    This is a fantastic, very comprehensive list of all the small business email marketing apps out there. Thanks for taking the time to put all these together, as it will help many small businesses and entrepreneurs out there.

    Thanks for the mention of Infusionsoft. We like to stand out from the crowd, our shtick is that we unite all the benefits of email marketing, CRM, collaboration and shopping cart in one application with very straightforward pricing.

    All the best,
    Joe

  31. Greg Elwell says:
    December 5, 2009 at 10:57 am

    Great summary of email marketing service providers and what they offer. I use both Constant Contact (3+ years) for myself and clients. Lots of features, great support, a rock solid service. Love their new event marketing app. I also just started to use AWeber for their auto-respond functionality that allows you to register a subscriber and then deliver a document (ebook, whitepaper, etc) via a download link.

    One big difference between Constant Contact and AWeber is with CC you can upload images to their server for use in your emails. But with AWeber you must have images hosted elsewhere and provide the URL link to them in your email.

    Thanks!
    Greg

  32. Andee Sellman, One Sherpa says:
    December 5, 2009 at 1:55 pm

    Thanks for the great list of options.
    We’ve just started to use Mad Mimi and it seems to have some great options and there is a free period and relatively cheap on going costs.
    One neat option is their iphone app. Means I can do things ‘on the road’ and update and send articles from outside our office.

  33. TJ McCue says:
    December 6, 2009 at 12:09 pm

    Thanks a ton for those tips, Greg. That’s really good to know about the images. We appreciate it.

    @Andee — i think you’re comment was aimed at Lisa, but my two cents is I don’t understand why it would be a problem for someone to read your blog. I think you are saying that they might read your blog instead of your newsletter? My input would be — they are reading things you write, ideas you’re sharing, in the format that they like the most. But the point is they are engaging with your content — the form or format doesn’t matter, really.

  34. Small Business Email Marketing Applications For the Do It Yourself Type Business Person | Dynamic Web Options | Online Marketing Solutions | Local Marketing says:
    December 28, 2009 at 10:59 pm

    [...] of 30 applications to help small business owners who are “do it yourself” type people.Check out the list here.Related PostsTips For Effective Email Marketing For Small BusinessesShare and Enjoy:Speak Your [...]

  35. CL says:
    December 30, 2009 at 10:33 am

    Why isn’t ExactTarget on this list?

  36. Jay Shel says:
    December 31, 2009 at 4:29 pm

    Great webpage and list! I have used a few of the apps on this page and would have to recommend two that are not on here. Relating to POMMO, MailMachinePro – http://www.mailmachinepro.com is a great email marketing software that you install on your own web server. The program is very robust and the support is amazing! For a hosted service, I would highly recommend avoyel.com They are brand new but the program has some awesome features like a root directory tree!

    Jay

  37. TJ McCue says:
    December 3, 2009 at 10:47 am

    Lisa rocks! Not just because she shared my post and twitter handle, but because she thinks about the small biz owner reader. Here at SmallBizTrends, that’s the driving question – what helps the small biz owner grow their business. My list post about the email marketing apps you should look at doesn’t give the why, the how that you need and Lisa stepped in to fill the gap. Thank you, Lisa.

    In my projects, I point to some of the same resources and completely agree with her six points. I work on email messaging daily and use MarketingSherpa’s terrific reports for guidance, too. They are not inexpensive, but they give a plethora of tips. We link to the exec summary of the 2010 Email report. Worth scanning, for sure.

    This comment was originally posted on Small Business Trends

  38. Robert Brady says:
    December 3, 2009 at 11:13 am

    Sending a test email before sending to the whole list is great advice. I’ve received plenty of unreadable emails in my day and have caught numerous errors in my own test emails. And I would also recommend sending test emails to a couple different email clients, say one to Gmail and one to Outlook so that you catch formatting issues that may only be showing in one.

    This comment was originally posted on Small Business Trends

  39. Joel Barker says:
    December 3, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    These are fine suggestions for how to write a newsletter. Also consider the goal: driving traffic and making a sale. Here are my suggestions: http://bit.ly/5RKgXE

    This comment was originally posted on Small Business Trends

  40. CathyWebSavvyPR says:
    December 3, 2009 at 4:02 pm

    Excellent post along with @TJMcCue’s list of email apps. I agree with your suggestions and ideas, and will be sending my clients to ready your post; you’ve put it all here in a nutshell.

    One other tip, for those who are also involved in social media, especially solopreneurs. Consider including links to your various social networking profiles, to allow your newsletter readers to contact you, or find out more about you, wherever They hang out. Or at least include links to those sites you use for business. This might not work for some businesses, but one of my clients uses Aweber.com for his newsletter. When I check the reports, it is interesting How many people click on those links, not just to the website, blog and cool article links in the newsletter.

    This comment was originally posted on Small Business Trends

  41. daddy design says:
    December 3, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    great suggestions!

    This comment was originally posted on Small Business Trends

  42. Joel Libava says:
    December 3, 2009 at 9:17 pm

    Hi Lisa,

    I love your articles. You shoot from the hip. I am intimate with that style.

    Anyway, I am going to disagree with something you said;

    “Make sure you stick to a consistent publishing date so that people know when they’re coming.”

    I think that eNewsletters should come out monthly, but not at the exact same time. I do mine “around” the same time, sometimes even a week or so earlier or later.

    I feel that as long as it’s delivered “monthly” as I have promised to my opt-in subscribers, it’s ok.

    The Franchise King®
    Joel Libava

    This comment was originally posted on Small Business Trends

  43. Martin Lindeskog says:
    December 4, 2009 at 7:16 am

    Robert: I agree with your tip on sending a test email to yourself first. How about mix it up and add some splash with e.g. a link to a video message?

    Anita: Are you planning to start sending out a small biz newsletter in the future?

    Lisa: Thanks for the tip regarding helping us with headlines and stuff that grab our attention.

    Have you an idea how much people are reading newsletter nowadays? What’s a good open / click rate percentage of your newsletter? How often should you send out a newsletter? (When you have news to provide…)

    This comment was originally posted on Small Business Trends

  44. Anna says:
    December 4, 2009 at 11:18 am

    I would also encourage people to do a little research into the best times to send an email. Quite often, after lunch gets a higher click through rate than first thing in the morning.

    This comment was originally posted on Small Business Trends

  45. Anita Campbell says:
    December 4, 2009 at 11:59 am

    Hi Martin, we send out a couple newsletters right now. One is for BizSugar.com. The other goes out to our radio show list from smbtrendwire.com. Amanda is the Newsletter Editor and does a great job with them.

    - Anita

    This comment was originally posted on Small Business Trends

  46. Andee Sellman, One Sherpa says:
    December 5, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    Thanks for the tips Lisa.
    They’re always incredibly useful.
    I do have a question about how a newsletter and a blog can work together.
    In reading your six points they could equally apply to a blog as well as a newsletter.
    One of the issues that we have at the moment is getting people back to our site to read our blog so we have found that if we take the best of the blogs posts and include them back in the newsletter it brings people back to oue site and then they often stay and read a few more of the blogs posts.
    I know that if someone is regularly reading the blog then it may become a problem but at this early stage of our development it seems to make sense to do it.
    This seems to violate the point about making sure the newsletter has fresh content that is not included on the site.
    Is it wrong then to do this?

    This comment was originally posted on Small Business Trends

  47. Gary S. Hart says:
    December 6, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    Thank you Lisa! At my age, reminders are very helpful and this page is bookmarked.

    Happy Holidays to All

    This comment was originally posted on Small Business Trends

  48. Clayton Shumway says:
    December 7, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    Great tips, we send tons of emails throughout the year and your article is spot on! Thanks!

    This comment was originally posted on Small Business Trends



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