The Quick & Easy Guide to Choosing the Best Email Marketing System for Your Business by George Drevr

Provided FREE by www.small-business-database-marketing.com

The Quick & Easy Guide to Choosing the Best

Email Marketing System for YOUR Business a Unbiased side-by-side comparisons of leading systems

a Features explained a Find the system that meets your requirements

a Compare pricing structures at a glance

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

Welcome Choosing an email marketing system should be easy, right? But even just a quick search on Google will reveal countless different systems, each one promising the ultimate in performance and features. Wading through all these options can become a difficult, stressful and time-consuming chore. This guide has been written to help make the task quick and easy. Our extensive experience and expertise of using email marketing systems means we can advise you how to narrow down the options, explain the features you might want and why, and help lead you to the system thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s precisely right for YOUR requirements, YOUR budget, YOUR business. Happy hunting!

George Drever Founder www.small-business-database-marketing.com

LEGAL DISCLAIMER - The information and opinions within this document are for information purposes only. They are not intended to constitute legal or other professional advice, and should not be relied on or treated as a substitute for specific advice relevant to particular circumstances. The author shall accept no responsibility for any errors, omissions or misleading statements in this document, or for any loss which may arise from reliance on materials contained in this document. Certain parts of this document link to external internet sites, and other external internet sites may link to this document. The author is not responsible for the content of any external internet sites. While every effort is made to keep this guide up to date, we cannot guarantee that the information is the most currently available. No mention of any organisation, company or individual, whether on these pages or on other sites to which these pages are linked, shall imply any approval or warranty as to the standing and capability of any such organisations, companies or individuals on the part of the author.

COPYRIGHT - The author retains copyright in all of his material on this document; permission must be sought from the author before such material may be used for any other purpose. V1 1 July 2011

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

Narrowing it down Why the right choice is so important Choosing the right email delivery system can be crucial to the success of your email marketing, and can help: Save you money Avoid spam filters and deliver more emails to customer in-boxes Provide features you actually need and use Give good, fast support when you need it · Provide a system that’s easy and intuitive to use · · · ·

Not all systems are equal With so many choices out there, just how do you find the right one? There are subtle – and not so subtle – differences between most systems. For example, not every Email Service Provider (ESP) will charge you in the same way, some charge for certain extras, others offer specific features, and some are just plain not as easy to use or less efficient than others. Some systems, however, are more equal that first meets the eye! There are ESPs who actually use another system to create and deliver your emails. This is perfectly legitimate, and known as white labelling. It simply means that a company has developed a system that it then offers as an off-theshelf package to others to brand up and sell as their own. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, and it’s worth keeping in mind in case you come across an email system that you haven’t heard of before. If it’s based on a well-established email ‘engine’ (just ask), chances are it could be more reliable.

Choose a well-established & reputable system This will probably have the greatest influence on whether your email campaigns reach your customers’ in-boxes or are caught by spam filters. There’s an estimated 50 billion or more spam emails sent every day, which costs ISPs (Internet Service Providers) a huge amount to handle. Not surprisingly, those ISPs try to make life as tough as possible for spammers. Unfortunately, this makes things difficult for legitimate email marketers too.

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

ISPs use two main factors when deciding whether to deliver an email or treat it as spam. They are: ·

Authentication – is the email definitely from whoever claims to be sending it?

Reputation – does the sender have an established track record of good standards of email practice?

You don’t need to know the technicalities of these factors. Ultimately, all you want to know is how good your choice of ESP is at dealing with them. Good, reputable and well-established systems will meet the ISPs authentication requirements. Plus, they will have built close relationships with the main ISPs to establish themselves as reliable and consistent sources of legitimate email. All of which benefits you and your email campaigns.

Look for a good client base and testimonials Ideally with large, well-known customers. It’s a good general indicator of reputation and quality.

Personal recommendation Ask colleagues or associates which systems they use. It’s hard to beat firsthand experience of how effective and easy (or not) a system is to use.

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

Email System Features At the heart of this guide is the side-by-side comparison of some of the biggest and best-known ESPs in the USA and UK. We’ve examined each system to find out which features they have so you can see at a glance which one best meets your requirements. What follows is a brief explanation of each of the main features. We strongly recommend you read through every feature, and avoid dismissing anything simply because it seems complicated or you don’t immediately understand it. You might not realise you need a particular feature until you become aware it actually exists! We’ve split features into four general groups: · · · ·

General (including cost and pricing structure) Email campaign design Email campaign delivery Response and tracking Other features

General features COST First, establish if the system charges an initial licence fee. Check too for any annual renewal fees.

PRICING STRUCTURE This will have the most impact on the ongoing cost of using the system. Almost all systems will charge in one of two ways: · ·

the number of emails sent per month, or the number of contacts stored

Think very carefully about what your likely useage will be. For example, you should compare costs if you store tens of thousands of contacts but only plan to send an email once quarterly.

FREE VERSION Depending on your useage, it is possible to get all the benefits of using a full commercial system for free. Now, not every system offers a permanently

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

free version, and the ones that do obviously impose limits, but even those can vary widely between systems.

FREE TRIAL All systems will offer a free trial (if they don’t, walk away). At the very least this will give you a feel for the layout and ease of use. Check to see what restrictions are placed on the trial version. Pay particular attention to the section you use to create your emails. Is it easy to use and intuitive? It needs to be, because this part is where you’ll encounter most challenges when creating your campaigns.

SUPPORT Creating an email campaign has a steep learning curve, so you WILL need support, especially at the start. First, do they offer phone support? If you have a tight deadline, one phone conversation can often fix an issue that would take numerous emails. If there’s no phone support, how long do they take to respond to an email? (This is where personal testimonials are particularly valuable). Is the Support Team based in your time zone? This may limit when you can reach them, and is especially relevant if you’re in the EU and your system in the USA (or vice-versa).

COUNTRY OF LOCATION Not only will this influence the times you can access support, but it may also have legal implications for you. There are specific anti spam laws for businesses within the European Union. These govern how you can legitimately capture and use customer data for electronic marketing, ie by email and text message. Of particular importance is the ‘soft opt-in’. Visit our website for more detail. If you’re likely to buy marketing lists from data brokers, then you will need to choose a system that specifically allows this. See ‘Purchased Lists’ below. You should also be aware of something called ‘Safe Harbour’, which is an agreement between EU and USA authorities regarding offshore transfer of personal data. It could have implications for storing customer records in another part of the world. There’s more information for UK businesses on Safe Harbour at The Information Commissioner’s website

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

Data management PRIMARY CONTACT ID This is the unique identifier that the system assigns to every single customer record it stores. It’s how it recognises one customer from another. Almost every email delivery system uses the email address as the primary ID. So what? Well, it’s not an issue if all your customer records have an email address. But you have a problem if you want to use the system to manage all your customer records, including those without an email address. One quick fix is to give such customers a dummy email address, which is hardly ideal. A more permanent solution is to either use a high end email system that has a full CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system built in, or to have a separate CRM system and combine it with the email system using API (see below). Look out too for off-the-shelf systems that are specifically geared up to combine automatically with external CRM systems such as Salesforce.

AUTO LIST DE-DUPE This automatically removes duplicate email addresses for you. It’s a feature that’s common to almost every system, and is hugely useful and laboursaving.

CRM SEGMENTATION Segmentation is where you split your customers into groups such as male, female, age, location, spending behaviour etc. It allows you to target specific customers and send them highly relevant emails. It’s one of the great advantages of database marketing. If you use your email delivery system to also manage your customer data, then make sure your system offers segmentation. In reality, most do.

WEBSITE SIGN-UP FORM It’s crucial to try to capture customer information wherever people come into contact with your business. We call these Customer Contact Points, and your website is likely to be one of the most important. Having a sign up form on your website makes it easy to automate the process. The good news is that most systems will provide you with the tools to create a customised sign up form that automatically feeds the data directly into your email system address book. The bad news is that those tools usually just create some code that you then have to copy and paste into your website. If you use a website developer, this would not be a big job for them.

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

USE OF PURCHASED LISTS The ultimate standard to aim for in database marketing is your own optedin database. However, there may be times when you want to quickly kickstart a marketing campaign, or want to extend your marketing to a regional or national level. One option is to buy a marketing list from a data broker. But will your ESP allow this? In most cases the answer is no, especially if you use a US-based system. These systems protect their Sender Reputation by only allowing users to send emails to customers who have voluntarily opted-in to your emailing list. In fact, you may have to provide documentary evidence of this. It’s also the reason why non-EU based systems don’t allow the use of the soft opt-in. There is only one system on our comparison list that allows the use of purchased lists, and the use of the soft opt-in. Not surprisingly, this system is based within the EU, in the UK. IMPORTANT - even if you don’t use purchased lists, check the terms and conditions of your chosen email system to ensure your customer data meets their conditions. You may need to provide documentary evidence of customers opting in.

Email design PDF UPLOADS This feature enables you to place a PDF document online and create a link to it in your email newsletter so that people can download it. It means the PDF is not attached to the actual email, which helps reduce the risk of it being treated as spam. Why might you want to use this feature? First of all, PDFs are a great way to handle lots of content. Plus, they can be used when you want your customers to print your email, maybe to keep for future reference (eg a brochure, factsheet , or recipe) or as a promotional voucher to redeem instore. There’s more about creating and using PDF newsletters on our website. Click here to see a case study of an email campaign that uses PDFs, and click here to see how to create a PDF for use in an email campaign. If you want to use this feature but your email system doesn’t offer it, you can still use PDFs. You will need access to your own webspace, plus some basic knowledge of using a piece of software called an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client.

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

FREE TEMPLATES Almost every system will offer free templates for your campaigns. These should have been created by designers who specialise in emails, using techniques and layouts that specifically suit email marketing. This means they will display properly in most email accounts and browsers, which is one of the biggest challenges facing any email marketer. Free templates offer the quickest and easiest way to get your campaign out the door. You simply insert your own text and images, tweak the basic colour scheme if you wish, and send. To visit our website and find out more about using and customising free templates click here

IMAGE LIBRARY Some systems may offer access to an online library of images you can use in your email. There is usually a cost involved. Nice to have, but certainly not essential, especially when there are plenty of other low-cost sources of excellent images such as Bigstock Photo Library

IMAGE STORAGE Unless you create your email campaigns as text only (which may be a valid option for you), you will probably use some images such as your logo or product pictures. That means uploading and storing them in the email delivery system. Some systems charge, while others don’t. Check for hidden costs or restrictions on the volume of images you can store.

DYNAMIC CONTENT This feature allows you to automatically change certain parts of your email campaign according to who’s receiving it. For example, you could have male customers seeing one particular image or article, and female customers seeing something different. It means you can have more than one version of a campaign without having to create separate campaigns, with each version tailored to suit the characteristics of the recipient. You can also use it to split or AB test your campaign (see below) to see which version performs best. Your email address book needs to be segmented (split into groups) in order to use dynamic content. Not every system offers dynamic content, while others may only offer it for certain parts of your email, such as images. Is it worth having? Only you can decide. It’s a potentially powerful feature that could hugely increase the effectiveness of your campaigns. However, there are plenty of email marketers who happily never use it.

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

PERSONALISATION This is a standard feature of almost every system. It will automatically insert personal information about each recipient, such as a name, address, a product purchased, in fact anything you think would make your email more personal and relevant to each individual. You simply insert what’s called a merge field at appropriate places in your email, choose the information you have on record that you wish to display (eg first name), and the system will do the rest.

Email delivery SPLIT OR AB TESTING This is a powerful feature that allows you to create different versions of a campaign and find out which version performs best. Depending on the system you choose, you’ll be able to split test different parts of your campaign, such as the subject line, the ‘sent from’ name or email address, the content etc. To visit our website and learn about the Golden Rule of AB testing click here

SPAM CHECKER Almost every system offers a basic tool that checks if your email campaign might be treated as spam by ISPs. It will usually look for potential problems such as spammy words in your subject line and body text, too many images compared to text and so on. Some systems offer an advanced spam check along with an inbox preview (see below). These spam checkers can be useful in pointing out obvious errors or omissions in your campaign. However, we have found that they’re still not as effective as sending test emails to real live email addresses, and often pass the spam check but still get caught by the spam filter.

PRE-DELIVERY TESTING This again is a standard feature of almost every system, and is a very important one too. It allows you to see in advance how your email performs when it reaches an email address. Does it get caught by the spam filter? Do the images display correctly? Does the text format correctly? As we’ve seen, there are tools that can help make this process quicker and easier, but still the very best way to see how your email performs is to send it to real email addresses. Examine your email list to see which type of email addresses are most common (or use an Email Client Identifier – see below) and set up dummy email accounts to use for testing.

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

IN-BOX PREVIEW This is a quick and convenient way to tackle the constant challenge of making sure your email looks consistent in every in-box. It’s essentially an automated version of the above Pre-delivery Test Option. It will send test versions of your campaign to a range of email addresses and give you a screenshot of how the email looks in each in-box and in different browsers. It’s often combined with an advanced spam checker too. Of course, you still have to rectify any problems, and different systems can vary in how much help and guidance they give to do that. There’s usually a cost charged for this feature. If your chosen system doesn’t offer it, you can always use an external version such as Litmus. Note too that one of the systems in our comparison table offers this feature even to non-subscribers.

MOBILE EMAIL Internet browsing using smartphones is becoming increasingly common. This feature enables you to create a version of your campaign – usually text only - that’s easy to read from a smartphone. Look out too for systems that automatically create and send a mobile version of your campaign when a subscriber has indicated that to be their preference.

AUTO RESPONDER This is a sexy and powerful feature of email marketing. It can automate parts of your marketing, leaving you free to forget about them once set up. It enables you to send a pre-designed email to customers that’s triggered automatically by an action or event such as signing up for your newsletter, buying a certain product, clicking a specific link in your last email campaign, and even when it’s approaching their birthday. You could send just one email, or a series of emails at intervals chosen by you. Although almost all systems offer auto responders, they do vary. Check to make sure your chosen system can do what YOU need. To visit our website and find out more about the fantastic marketing opportunity that capturing customer birthdays offers click here

Response and tracking We’ve assumed you know that all email delivery systems provide reams of statistics on things such as number of emails delivered, number opened, which links were clicked, how many people unsubscribed etc etc. In this

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

guide, we focus instead on more specific tools and features that you may find useful. To visit our website and find out more about interpreting and using email marketing metrics click here

SURVEYS Some systems enable you to gather and collate customer feedback from within your email campaigns. It’s a great way to find out what customers think of your service, or even your emails. And what better way to find out what people really think of your emails than to ask them? Are they too frequent? Too seldom? Do they like the content? What would they like to see more of, or less of? What influences their decision to open your email or ignore it? You could also consider sending a survey email to subscribers who haven’t opened your recent emails. Give them a great incentive in the subject line, ask them to help out by telling you why they haven’t read your emails, and see how many subscribers you can re-engage. If your chosen system doesn’t offer surveys, you can always use an external service such as Survey Gizmo and create a link from within your email.

SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION Most systems now offer integration with social media that enables you to connect your email marketing with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Find out who’s Tweeting and re-Tweeting your last email campaign, enable people on your Facebook page to sign-up for your newsletter and have their details added automatically to your address book, and so on.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS INTEGRATION Google Analytics (GA) is an incredibly powerful tool that enables you to track the activity and behaviour of people visiting your website. Some email systems can add it to your email campaigns too, meaning you can continually track the behaviour of your email subscribers from the moment they open your email to when they (hopefully) buy something from your website. There’s quite a variation across different systems - some don’t support GA at all, while others have limited integration.

CAMPAIGN ARCHIVE Every graphic email campaign you create is in reality a one-page website. That means it has a weblink, and as long as the webpage is active you can direct people towards it at any time. In other words, you don’t always have

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

to send them an email to see your newsletters. This is great for creating an archive of newsletters that new or potential subscribers can refer back to.

Other features EMAIL CLIENT IDENTIFIER This quickly and easily tells you how your subscribers are viewing your email campaigns: Hotmail, Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Lotus Notes, iPhone etc. Because emails can and do look different from one email client to another, this helps you optimise the design and layout of your emails to specifically suit your customers.

TEXT MESSAGE SYSTEM A few systems offer a built in text message marketing system, enabling you to send and manage bulk text (sms) campaigns. You can of course always use a separate text marketing system such as Txtlocal , but doing it from within your email system may offer some integration. To visit our website and find out why youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be crazy to ignore the power of text message marketing click here

MICROSITE BUILDER This is available on just one of our reviewed systems. It enables you to quickly grab and re-create a replica of a webpage, and turn it into a landing page. These are particularly effective when you want to direct someone from your email campaign to a webpage thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s geared up with a very clear message or Call to Action, eg to buy a specific product or sign up for a service.

RSS FEED If you communicate to customers via a blog, some of those customers will receive your blog updates by RSS (Really Simple Syndication). It simply feeds out any new blog posts to those customers automatically. Some email systems will also convert and feed the content of your email campaigns by RSS.

www.small-business-database-marketing.com

Side-by-side System Comparison So, not only do you now know more about many of the features that are available, you hopefully have a better idea of which ones are useful to YOU. That, combined with finding the right pricing structure, will largely determine which system you choose. The next part of this guide is a side-by-side comparison of some of the bestknown systems on the market. They all offer at least a free trial, so narrow down your choice based on features and cost, and sign-up for a trial period. That way you’ll find the system that’s most intuitive and user-friendly, another important factor in making the right choice. We’ll be adding to the systems reviewed over time. Even if your preferred system isn’t reviewed, you can still use this features list as a benchmark.

Provided FREE by the

Small Business Database Marketing

Notes

Have you downloaded our free

Email Marketing Plan Checklist?

While every effort is made to keep this guide up to date, we cannot guarantee that the information is the most currently available.

ü Efficient ü Profitable ü Legal

No mention of any organisation, company or individual, whether on these pages or on other sites to which these pages are linked, shall imply any approval or warranty as to the standing and capability of any such organisations, companies or individuals on the part of the author.

website www.small-business-database-marketing.com

Make sure your campaigns are

COPYRIGHT - The author retains copyright in all of his material on this document; permission must be sought from the author before such material may be used for any other purpose. Version 2. Last update 6 Aug 2011

Email Delivery System Quick Comparison Guide

We say...

Dotmailer

Constant Contact

Mailchimp

Campaign Monitor

iContact

Visit website

üBest choice for UK

üGood all-rounder ÐCharge for extras

üFantastic features üVery generous free

ÐMissing some key

features

businesses üGreat support ÐCan cost more

version

GENERAL FEATURES

PAYG or monthly sub. £15pm to £99pm

Entry level $15pm up to 500 contacts. 5000 contacts $50pm

Entry level $15pm up to 1000 contacts. 5000 contacts $50pm

PAYG - $5 per campaign plus 1c per recipient. Entry level $15pm up to 500 contacts. 5000 contacts $55pm

Entry level $10pm up to 500 contacts. 5000 contacts $47pm

Intitial licence fee

£295 to £995 (ex free version)

Pricing structure

Number of emails sent

Number of contacts stored

Free version

Yes, permanently. 500 emails sent per 30 days

Yes, permanently. Up to 2000 contacts and 12000 emails sent monthly

Yes, permanently. Up to 500 contacts and 2000 emails sent monthly.

Free trial

Yes, as above

Yes. 60 days (100 contacts max)

Yes, as above

Yes, but very limited

Yes. 30 days

Support

Email and phone (UK timezone)

Online chat, email and phone (US timezone)

Online chat and email (US timezone)

24 hour email (worldwide)

Online chat, email and phone (US timezone)

Location

USA

Australia

USA

Dotmailer

Constant Contact

Mailchimp

Campaign Monitor

iContact

Email address

Unknown

Email address

Auto list de-dupe

Yes

CRM segmentation

Yes

Yes. Automatic with Salesforce. API available

Yes, via API

Yes. Automatic with Batchbook. API available

Yes, via API

Yes. Automatic with Salesforce. API available

Web sign up form

Yes

Purchased lists

Yes

EMAIL DESIGN

Dotmailer

Constant Contact

Mailchimp

Campaign Monitor

iContact

PDF uploads

Yes

Free templates

100

400

‘Hundreds’

Around 100

Around 650

Image library

Yes, at a cost (see below)

Unknown

Unlimited

Basic storage - 5 pics and 5 docs. $5pm for up to 50MB and image library

Unlimited

Yes. 5MB max

Yes. Images and text (top 2 packages only)

Images yes. Text unknown

Yes - extensive options available

Yes

Dotmailer Visit website

Constant Contact Visit website

Mailchimp Visit website

Campaign Monitor Visit website

iContact Visit website

Yes. Subject line, content and from address (top package)

Unknown at time of writing

Yes, by subject line, from name, delivery date and time

Yes, by subject line, from name and content

Yes. Any part of the email (Enterprise package only)

Spam checker

Yes

Pre delivery test

Yes

Inbox preview

Yes, with advanced spam checker. £5 per campaign

Yes. Free for monthly contract customers.

Yes. $5 per campaign. Available to non customers.

Mobile email

No specific provision

Yes. Auto delivery of optimised email

Yes, but requires manual coding

Yes, single and multiple. Triggered by event, action or date

Yes, single and multiple. Sent only to new subscribers

Yes, single and multiple. Triggered by actions and dates

Yes, single and multiple.Triggered only by date or new subscription. Cost 1c per auto response sent

Yes, single and multiple. Info on triggers unavailable at time of writing

Dotmailer

Constant Contact

Mailchimp

Campaign Monitor

iContact

Yes. Additional charge applies

Yes. $15pm up to 5000 responses

Has simple ‘poll’ function. Also full integration with external systems

Yes

Google Analytics Integration

Yes. Accepts Google tracking links

Limited. Does not accept Google tracking links

Yes

Campaign archive

Yes, as ‘Campaign Feeds’

Yes, up to 250 campaigns. $5pm extra

Yes

RSS feed creates automated emails; Collect sign-ups offline; Integrate with Amazon transaction system;

Email client identifier;

RSS feed creates automated emails;

Cost

DATA MANAGEMENT Primary contact ID

CRM integration

Image storage

Dynamic content Personalisation EMAIL DELIVERY

Split testing

Auto responders

RESPONSE & TRACKING

Surveys

Social media integration

Other features

Email client identifier; Text message system; Microsite builder;