Email Newsletters
I've been sending a monthly email for one of my apartment sites for almost a year now. Not only has the newsletter been a great way to keep subscribers familiar with my site, but they also forward the email on to their friends. There's a lot of talk about viral marketing and building buzz these days, and a simple email newsletter is just one way to help accomplish it. Of course newsletters aren't as sexy as a video that get forwarded on to millions of people, but it still helps. Plus, with about 3,000 subscribers in a highly targeted market, sponsoring the email is valuable to my advertisers.

Sending a newsletter on your own isn't practical for a small business without it's own dedicated mail server. There are a few reasons for this. For one, you don't want to have thousands of addresses in the BCC field. For another, your ISP and whoever else might be hosting your email account tend to limit the number of emails you can send. I've commonly seen the max number anywhere from 200 per day to about 2000 per day. If it weren't for this limit I'd consider buying some software for managing, tracking and sending newsletters. Those 3 features are critical to any newsletter you send.

Since the number of emails I can send is limited, my only option is to use an email sending service. There are tons of them out there, and they can help you send just about any kind of email (not just newsletters). Prices vary. Some charge a flat monthly fee tiered by the number of email addresses you store (regardless of how often you email them), some charge monthly fees tiered by the number of emails you send, and others charge a per email sent rate. Currently I'm using Constant Contact. I get a slight discount because I signed up through my web hosting company and that's why I went with them. They're not bad, but they're not great either. I also just started trying out Microsoft's ListBuilder email service for one of my other apartment search sites. It's lower cost, but much more barebones than Constant Contact. Other services out there include: Bronto, VerticalResponse, JangoMail and MailChimp. Soon I'll write a review of Constant Contact and then ListBuilder. If I try out any other services I'll review them as well.
- posted by Drew @ 1:18 PM