Email Marketing - ConstantContact.com

I have heard a lot of good things about constantcontact. I forgot from whom, but it was several ppl and they were all real estate webmasters.

 

I dont have a ConstantContact account myself, but have been 'behind the scenes' with several clients who did. Problems that they ran into were mostly delivery rate - as CC (at that time) got blacklisted quite often by one ISP or another. At one point, almost no subscribers on the west coast were receiving any emails sent through CC. Obviously things may have changed since then... but something to keep an eye on.

The only other thing that bothers me is their pricing structure. A thousand subscribers is going to cost you $30/month - while you can get unlimited mailing lists and autoresponders through Aweber for only 20 bucks a month. So you can have a list for each of a dozen sites, several e-courses & autoresponders, all growing into the thousands each... for that price. Plus, they are the industry leader in mailing list management, and top for delivery rates. I use them myself, and am impressed with how they stay on top of it.

It makes sense to put some thought into it upfront... because moving a list isnt always easy. Most major (reputable) mailing list managers will force you to re-confirm their subscriptions (go through another opt-in process) instead of just directly importing your list. This is for good reason of course... but the retention rate (in my experience) is only about 10-15% (and that's with a good incentive to resub!).

With that in mind, you want to make sure you like the service they offer - and have plenty of room for future growth. If you arent 100% satisified, go ahead and move before you invest too much into growing your list!

Just my 2 cents

 

I use EmailLabs.

Their system is awesome!

Everything gets delivered, their reporting features are great and it's an easy system to use.

 

I think constant contact offers a great value/service for small lists (as I think they are free for under 500 names) but like Lynn mentioned they can be pricey as your list grows.

For the do-it-yourselfer, you can always install phplist and do it all for free. You want get as much tracking information as constant contact offers, but the remaining functionality is there.

 

If you host on a shared server, I wouldnt recommend installing a mailing list script and using your hosts mailserver to deliver. The reason is because hosts mail servers tend to get blacklisted widely... and (again, in my experience) they dont mark that has a priority to deal with. It doesnt take much for one bad webmaster to stop the majority of outgoing mail for everyone else on that server. They lose their account within 24 hours... but you are still stuck trying to deal with the hassle.

Some other features about Aweber I thought were worth mentioning:

With the click of checkbox, you can have your emails archived in HTML and RSS. (great feature!!)

They offer click-through tracking, delivery rate & open rate.

You can back up your list anytime to your hard drive (variety of formats avail).

 

I used the free service then I went over and they started billing

The thing is that if you believe you are going to be great then you are going to build your list in no time at all.

EG: For a small business site I have collected over 18,000 names in just under a year

I have a very small site where I added on a php forum to see if I could do it - added a couple of posts and that was that - I went back to the site yesterday after 3 months and have 22 registered users - it incredible !!

 

The only real problem that I've run into is importing those lists to another account. Some places wont even let you import at all, others require you to verify them all before they become active in your new account (opt-in all over again).

Just FYI. Good luck with your list-building!!

 

Personaly, I'd recommend something like mojo mail (http://mojo.skazat.com/)

I've used this. Easy to import names into it, easy to set up a way for people to add their names to the list too. Automated removal as well if the person clicks a link within each mail. I think williamshatner.com uses it, too LOL

I think it can send html and text based emails for both types of users, but not sure if it can differentiate between which can and cannot. I dont do email lists because I know I'll forget to send out emails, and keep on top of it.

Before you go paying for a service that you may not want to continue, I'd try something free first and see if its something you'll be able to keep up with.

In my experience, mail lists are more a pain than anything else. People forget they are signed up, accuse you of spam (even if they double-opt in'd), and just don't read the mails.

 

Is this a software?? The only thing I hate mailer soft. is that most of my email sent goes to Junk.. especially for Hotmail & AOL.

 

I use Constant Contact for my own list but I've had it for so long, I thinK I must have been grandfathered in with their new pricing because I've never paid and I'm way over the usual cut off for being free. I like it but it IS blacklisted a lot. Mostly I use it to send out a summary of my blog nowadays but I used it for 2 years just to send a regular ezine.

Anyway - what Lynn said about exporting being easy, importing being hard is so very true. At one point I did try to move from CC and it was easy to take my list with me - but when I wanted to put it into the other system, it required a double opt in or to have all my hundreds of subscribers respond to an email and click it or resubscribe. Yeah, right! I knew I'd lose most of them. Ultimately, the new system bugged me because I was so used to CC's functionality so I figured i'd stay where I was... after all. My subscribers probably thought I was schizo that month.

Anyway - I've set up clients on Email Brain (and hated it - though I think its just that it did things different than I expected), another recent set up on Aweber (many features, not as user friendly but extremely rich) and yet another on a newer service I discovered called Your Mailing List Provider. She's a musician so not wanting to spend a lot and I was seriously impressed with the features and the price. Set up was a piece of cake and so far, no problems. My only concern was that it wasn't US based - but hey, I'm not in the same country as some of my clients so who cares

Might be worth taking a look at that one as another option...

 

Hello all,

I've read your post on Email mailing lists and was curious as to what kind of websites you were running. I run a home and garden website selling products and was wondering if any of these websites:

- constant contact
- aweber
- email labs

would work for my website. what about spam? can't they come back and accuse your site of spamming and have you black listed? Your input would be greatly appreciated, for i'm new at this internet thingy. thanks!

Sari
www.coconutzhomeandgarden.com

 

I use aweber for my sites (some product, some info) - and I know Constant Contact would work for you too. Not familiar with the 3rd one you listed.

Subscribers have to opt-in to your list twice (called double opt-in). That means they subscribe, then they have to confirm their subscription via email. That ensures that nobody gets added that doesnt specifically request & confirm it - cuts out a lot of spam issues.

Almost any reputable list manager is going to work this way, in addition to offering subscription info & and an unsubscribe link in every email as Summer mentioned.

Email marketing is a great way to encourage repeat visits, keep in touch with your visitors, and continue to be in front of your target market.

 

I use and am a reseller for Constant Contact. I think it is the best system out there for non technical people. It's very user friendly and I usually have clients creating their own campaigns and managing their lists in under an hour.

 

I believe if you sign up as an affiliate you will get a commission on sign ups through that link.

 

I currently have over 80,000 subscribers and growing. I've been looking at hosted mail list solutions, and I've found that pricing in the 75,000-100,000 range is anywhere from $1400/mo. (SubscriberMail) to $89.60/mo. (Aweber). Does anyone have experience with any of the following hosted solutions?


-Aweber
-Ezine Director
-MailerMailer
-Streamsend
-Bighip
-Mymailgenie

Mid-tier:
-mUrgent
-eROI
-ExactTarget
-Email Labs
-SubscriberMail
-Biglist
-Constant Contact
-Inbox Interactive
-iPost

I'd really like to use someone with a high deliverablity rate, web tracking and dynamic list filters. Other than reviewing quotes and slick websites I can't find any help on finding solutions that are well worth the price!

Which is the best bang for the buck?

 

I would avoid Constant Contact like the plague !

I used to use them, but found their failure rate worryingly high - when I started talking to postmasters etc at some of my corporate clients, they said they would not even consider unblocking CC from their blacklists due to spam problems.

At the time I thought this odd.

...until a website started spamming me via several addresses. I literally had to threaten CC with reporting to the various spam blacklists before they would take any action to stop this person - and that customer is still using their platform as another email address we recently created is now being spamed by them.

They have a very nice front end - but for all their statements about being against spam, I find them very loathe to stop spammers abusing their platform - and that has a knock-on effect to all their customers as CC are blacklisted by ISPs and IT departments.

I manage the whole thing in-house now.

 

looks like they are a serious company, it's perfect to send spam .. errrmm i mean newsletter etc..