Do y'all have any preferences?

Friends of mine have recommended Madmimi, Campaign Monitor, and MailChimp. I once used Constant Contact and am familiar with that program, but don't like that it says "Constant Contact" at the bottom of each email sent.

forgive my ignorance...email marketing = spam?

I like Mailchimp fairly well. My impression is that Aweber is more powerful/flexible, but that may or may not be true. I would suggest one of those two. Usually you'll have a badge like that at the bottom for free accounts.

BigOil - Email marketing services enable businesses to stay in touch with their customers or potential customers. SPAM is sending emails to people that don't want them. Typically there's an opt-out at the bottom of emails generated by businesses. My goal is to set up a newsletter for my business.

I should add that my list is just beginning. Most of the services I've seen have pricing levels for 0-500, 1,000, and so on. I'd fall under 0-500 right now, but am wondering if I'll be losing anything by potentially jumping services down the road.

I'd assume I can always export my contact list regardless of whom I use, but the emails/campaigns/statistics would likely be lost, right?

p.s. Thanks for the feedback thus far.

ttt 'cause I'm positive there are more nerds out there with email experience.

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Typically there's an opt-out at the bottom of emails generated by businesses.

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If it is not a confirmed opt-in, then it IS spam. If you use any service that does not enforce this, expect some proportion of your users to be unreachable because they are being blocked by at least some anti-spammers.

By confirmed opt-in, the person signs up for it with their e-mail address. The business/e-mail service sends them ONE e-mail with no advertising content whatsoever asking them to confirm that they were the one who provided that address and that they want the mailings.

If they don't respond, the e-mail address is not used again.

Furthermore, if you have a list of e-mail addresses for your customers and start sending them advertisements without prior permission, expect to lose some customers and for ISPs to block any and all e-mail coming from you.

[This message has been edited by eric76 (edited 3/15/2010 11:04a).]

eric76 - Thanks for your thoughts. Do you use email marketing for your business, and learned about this stuff the hard way?

everyone else - do y'all have any recommendations for email marketing services? I'm hoping to narrow down the field with some helpful real-world recommendations from other Ags. Thanks.

No. I've been anti-spam for years. Even made Spamford Wallace's list of the anti-spammers he hated most.

All it takes to get your e-mail blocked here is to spam me. You are likely to be blocked by your e-mail address as well as everything being sent from the IP address your e-mail came from.

To get it unblocked, you have to convince another user to ask me to unblock you.

Take a look at Swiftpage Email. Works with common CRM programs (I use it with ACT!). Great click through reporting, web surveys, landing pages, etc. It's pretty inexpensive also.

www.swiftpage.com

eric - I'd never heard of Spamford 'til just now. After a quick Google search it sounds like the guy has successfully annoyed the crap out of millions of people for a while now. Also sounds like the kinda guy I wouldn't mind being hated by.

I ran an email marketing campaign for a business for a couple years before and had a good amount of success with it. I don't think the service we used had an opt-in, but customers gave us the email addresses knowing they'd be receiving updates about our company, specials, etc. from us.

I plan to build my list in a legit manner, so it's important to me to choose a service that won't associate me with spammers.

I have a good thread going on Aggies Only, but since anti-spam seems to be a hobby of yours, if you know of any services I need to stay away from I'd appreciate your input.

mikematt80 - thanks for the input ... I hadn't heard of that one yet but am now checking it out.

[This message has been edited by Jethro95 (edited 3/16/2010 4:39p).]

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I don't think the service we used had an opt-in, but customers gave us the email addresses knowing they'd be receiving updates about our company, specials, etc. from us.

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One problem is that people can accidentally give out someone else's e-mail address. This has happened to me before. Someone didn't know their e-mail address to sign up for mailings from the Texas A&M chapter of Ducks Unlimited. Their name must have been eric, because they gave eric@tamu.edu as their e-mail address. The problem was that at that time, that was one of my e-mail addresses. And the nincompoops at Ducks Unlimited didn't want to take me off the list until I sent a complaint to CIS at A&M accusing them of spamming, which they were.

Far more common is for people to sign up for mailings using someone else's e-mail address to cause them a great deal of trouble. Imagine suddenly finding yourself receiving e-mail from hundreds or even thousands of different mailing lists.

About the only legitimate way to do it is to send them an e-mail to verify that they were actually the one to subscribe to the list. No response means either that they did not subscribe or that they no longer wish to be a subscriber.