Came across a question posted on LinkedIn about email marketing.
Omar is asking:
I see opt-in email landing pages everywhere and opt-in email boxes on blogs…I would like to put together an opt in landing page and add a opt-in email box to my word press blog, can anyone recommend a turnkey solution?
Here are some packages I use or have used for myself or my clients and comments re pros and cons:
http://www.infusionsoft.com – The have come down in price somewhat but it’s still the most expensive package on this list. And so it should be. It goes far beyond just giving you and opt-in box. It manages your entire business: contacts, sequential campaigns, direct mail, etc. I’m not using it but some of my clients do. And some who don’t wish they started using it earlier because switching is always a pain. If your business can afford to foot that bill, go with this solution.
http://invite.aweber.com – This one is the “gold standard” of deliverability (is that a word?). Arguably the best autoresponder package on the market as long as you only do online marketing and generate all your contacts via an opt-in. If you need to import a list from another system or need to punch in a bunch of business cards that you’ve collected at a trade show, each contact will receive an email from Aweber saying, “Hey, so-and-so is trying to add you to the list, please confirm you want to be on it!” Obviously, this is not very good for a “normal” brick & mortar business.
http://www.icontactsoft.com – good delivery, broadcasts, surveys, list segmentation, and very user-friendly. One huge advantage over Aweber: They actually allow you to punch in / import contacts. The company has just made the Inc 500 list so they must know what they are doing. I have switched most of my websites to iContact.
http://www.contactcontact.com – popular with many folks mostly due to great branding. A solid newsletter distribution service. Several months ago they (finally!) added autoreponders (otherwise I would not have recommended them at all) and revamped their pricing to bring it inline with Aweber and iContact.
http://www.1shoppingcart.com – an all-in-one autoresponder, shopping cart, affiliate manager and ad tracker. I heard from a number of people 1SC delivery is not as good as some others. Well, dunno. Maybe they have had issues in the past. They seem to be pretty good now. The major benefit is that you get an integrated solution capable of running your entire online business. There are some major online empires running entirely on 1SC so you can’t really go wrong there.
http://www.quickpaypro.com – similar to 1SC but offers a few extra features. Integrates well with WishListMember, a membership site plugin for WordPress. Offers one-click upsell, which 1SC doesn’t, at least not yet. QPP is being re-branded into or merged with Cydec and looks like there is still some dust in the air. I used their 30 day trial and decided to pull out and wait a while. The software looks a bit “undercooked”. Nothing major, just a few small yet annoying issues here and there. Unless 1SC come out with one-click upsell soon, I’ll be looking at QPP again.
http://www.getreponse.com – A solid autoresponder product, worth consideration. They have improved a lot recently, both in terms of their user interface and deliverability.
http://www.responsemagic.com – This one gives you the ability to create “replicated” autoresponder accounts. That makes it a favorite among the business opportunity folks who need have their salespeople / team / downline send out newsletters and autoresponder sequences to their leads that were pre-written and then automatically personalized and transferred into their accounts. I don’t think that’s your situation but I thought I’d throw this one in because this is a pretty unique solution.
There is also always an option to host the script on your own server (which some people do and which I tried for one site and eventually had to do away with because if was beginning to turn into a full-time job). I don’t recommend this. However, if that’s the route you decide to take, start your research here:
http://www.arpros.com
http://www.sellwide.com
http://www.phplist.com (this one is actually free but no autoresponders)
Hope this helps.
Alex, I came across two other email autoresponder systems I’m fairly impressed with..
1. Mailchimp: it’s got that web 2.0 feel to it and fairy easy to use.
2. freeautoresponder [dot] biz for WordPress. It’s hosted from within WordPress and good solution for light autoresponder use.
BTW, Getresponse has made dramatic improvements to it’s interface and has even introduced Video email and tight integration with Twitter… pretty neat!
Twitter: alexmakarski
September 1, 2009 at 8:36 am #
Andy, thanks for the comment.
I came across mailchimp a few times and it is an impressive package.
Now the WordPress AR is something new to me and it looks promising. The only concern I have there is using your own server for email broadcasts. I know some people (even some big players) who use ARP successfully and never get in trouble. And I know many (including yours truly) who got blacklisted and had to undo the whole thing. I guess that depends on the niche you’re working in. If most of your subscribers use free email accounts from Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, or Yahoo, sometimes people click the “Report Spam” button by mistake even if they only want to delete your message. Or it could be your competitor subscribing to your newsletter using multiple identities and reporting every message you send out as spam. That’s all speculative, however, these are very possible scenarios. And it just takes too much time to dig your server out of those blacklists.
That’s why professional autoresponder companies employ a full-time person (I imagine it’s a $55K-80K/yr position) to deal with this stuff on behalf of the clients like your and I. Which tells me whichever company I decide to use it has to be a major player with a proven track record. My autoresponders of choice are Aweber (for a 100% online business) and iContact (for a blend of online and offline).
Alex, Thank-you,Thank-you! – I have been spending hours trying to figure out what to use for one of my most treasured clients. – This clear concise article spells it all out and gets to the core of each solution. – now I am going to search your other articles to see what more time you can save me. – lol -tks
Twitter: alexmakarski
September 1, 2009 at 11:19 am #
Hey Kimberly,
Good to see you on here. Thanks for the note.
Alex
Thanks a lot, Alex! I am in the very beginning of my internet business, so I try to catch EVERYTHING at once. It’s not easy and very time consuming. This article just saved my time, efforts and my good mood
Twitter: alexmakarski
September 2, 2009 at 12:08 am #
Lada, glad you find this useful.
I use mailchimp for the Ferndale Newsletter (http://www.ferndale-achill.com) it is really great and easy to use… 5 stars –Chris
Twitter: alexmakarski
September 8, 2009 at 12:18 pm #
Thank you Chris!
Hey Alex
good article. We use iContact.com for all of our Email newsletter mailings as well as autoresponders. They offer great support and are very cost effective.
I have used ConstantContact, 1Shopping Cart as well as Infusion. I like iContact a lot. They can be used to integrate to Membersites as the bigger systems do at a better rate.
Just my 2 cents.
I use mailchimp for the Ferndale Newsletter (http://www.ferndale-achill.com) it is really great and easy to use… 5 stars –Chris
Another very strong and powerful post. I’ve been reading through some of your previous posts and finally decided to drop a comment on this one. I signed up for your newsletter, so please keep up the informative posts!
Good luck on your blog, and feel free to comment and subscribe to my blog as well when you get a chance: Make Money Online with Dino Vedo.
Twitter: businesslocker
March 2, 2011 at 3:28 pm #
Hi Alex,
I found you on Linkedin and followed your threads. We use autoresponseplus (ARP3) and it has both its positives and negatives.
1. we are currently tracking over 100 000 opt-ins, so its functionality is great.
2. it tracks open rate and keeps track of dead emails, and after 3 tries it advises in red to update it
3. It’s a one time licence fee (cheap cheap $147) for life. There are no costs per email delivery
4. We send thousands of emails per day, so this cost saving function is good however, we think our open rate would be higher with a paid-per-delivery email system. It’s a give and take here.
5.They do have an affiliate program, though I haven’t seen a cheque in over a year (I have students buying this all the time. I tell them to send me proof of purchase and I give them a free training video)
They have okay support, maybe 5/10. Because we know how to use it inside out, we don’t care too much. The issue is that we look bad when we send our students there, and they don’t get a great customer experience.
It’s a good system for us. Not for everybody. But if you are an advanced internet marketer managing huge lists, it may be an option to look into.
Twitter: alexmakarski
March 2, 2011 at 4:30 pm #
ARP is a good product for a self-hosted solution, arguably the best. And if you don’t want to host it, there are some companies out there that will even host it for you and will take away both the headaches and the cost saving that come with self-hosting but will give you the ultimate control of your list (import / export / merge /etc). Not that it makes any difference, but I think it costs $197 now.
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