Comparing Email Newsletter Services by Jennifer Hudson Taylor

If you're looking for a service to provide email newsletters to your readers, here are three comparisons for Constant Contact, Vertical Response and MailChimp. I've used all three.

When I was first trying to decide which email service I wanted, I read up on the comparison reviews of many services and settled on trying these three. I'm glad I did, because I've found uses for all of them. I have since dropped Constant Contact, and now I continue to use both Vertical Response and MailChimp. I've discussed why below.

All three services have customer support, but I feel that Constant Contact is the best at this. They all provide email templates, but allow you to customize your email brand your personal look. You can include photos, videos and social media links to all three services. In short, they all provide the basics of what you will need to send out an email newsletter. The rest of your decision will come down to pricing and personal tastes. Additionally, all three provide ways to upload, download and convert your existing database, website coding that allows people to subscribe to your email newsletter, and spam filters to make sure fewer of your emails land in people's spam folders.

You can click on the images below to get a better view of the charts. 

Constant Contact
This is one of the most popular services, but it is also one of the most expensive. They require a monthly fee whether or not you use their service each month. I send out a quarterly newsletter and cannot see the benefit in paying a fee for the months I'm not using their service. This is the main reason I decided not to keep using them. Their prices are tiered, depending on how many contacts you have. The more you have, the more expensive it gets.

For these expensive prices, you get great customer support by phone, by email, and they hold free workshops in several places. I attended one of their workshops in Charlotte and learned some interesting things. They have more templates to choose from than the other two services, but they limit your photo usage to 5 photos. You have to pay more if you want to insert more photos. This is a problem if you want to archive your newsletters and make them available online. If you swap out your photos, it will leave a white box with a tiny red X in the place of now missing photo. This is the second reason why I stopped using them and why I call them expensive. They provide excellent reporting as to how many emails bounced, were opened, unsubscribes, new subscribers, links clicked on, and other detailed analytical info you might find helpful.

Vertical Response 
This is the one I use most often since I only produce quarterly newsletters and they allow you to pay as you go. They also provide a monthly service fee that is conveniently priced a couple of dollars less than Constant Contact. There isn't a limit of 5 photos. I've been allowed to used as many photos as I wanted without having to pay extra. However, unlike Constant Contact, I have run into a problem with reaching a limited number of words in my email and was forced to scale back. I haven't had this problem recently, so they might have fixed it. They have a good number of templates to choose from.

MailChimp
This is a great plan to get started with until you build up a large subscriber base. Why? Because it is free. They call it the Forever Free Plan. For up to 2,000 subscribers you can send out up to 12,000 emails each month. Few of us send out that many emails. We would drive people nuts! You do miss out on a few perks and they list them on the site, but for the most part, you get most of everything you need.

While I use Vertical Response for my quarterly newsletters, I use MailChimp to send out emails to Influencers. This list is much shorter and it is less than quarterly, since I only send it out when I have a book release. This way Influencers get a chance to see the book cover, a video book trailer if it is available, and all the visual details. And it's free!

If you want more of the bells and whistles through MailChimp, below is their pricing fee for Pay As You Go service, as well as a monthly service. When you compare the number of emails and subscribers vs Vertical Response, the latter is less expensive.

The left side is Monthly Fees. The Right side are Pay As You Go Fees

Have you used any of these services? If so, what are your thoughts. What other services have you tried?

Why You Need to Produce Email Newsletters by Jennifer Hudson Taylor

If you're already actively promoting yourself through blogging and social media sites, you may be wondering why you need to provide a separate newsletter as well. One of the main reasons is because it provides one of the best avenues for direct access and target marketing.

While people on social media sites have direct access to you by commenting on your posts and sending you direct messages, they often don't take advantage of it. Your news posts roll on and off their newsfeeds so fast that they may never see some of your news and announcements. You can't send all of them a direct message or it will be considered spam, and doing this could get your account suspended.

People use social media in varying ways. Some hop on and check it several times a day, while others once a day, and some may go several days between logging on. Just because you have a number of friends and likes doesn't mean they are interested in YOU and what you have to offer, instead many are hoping you are interested in THEM and what they have to offer. Others are looking for friends, but they may not have an interest in what you do or your marketing books to them.

Providing a newsletter, whether monthly or quarterly, gives you tangible names and emails of people who have an interest in what you're providing--the types of books you write. If they weren't interested, they would not opt-in to receive your email newsletters, or if they are already readers, they wouldn't be buying your books. This is your target audience. Your newsletter is delivered directly into their inbox and they aren't likely to miss it as they would on a social media site. It feels more personal when they have something delivered to them and they don't have to go looking for it or stumble upon it.

A social media post is only limited to 140 characters on Twitter and a bit more on Facebook. You can post 1,000 - 2,000 words in an email newsletter, including photos and videos. There are few limitations. It will sit in a person's inbox until they have time to read it in detail, after the kids go to bed, early in the morning when getting their coffee and checking their email, or after they return from vacation. The sense of urgency isn't as demanding as it is with social media. I hate it when I see something on someone's feed, and I don't have time to respond or read it. Later on, I'm forced to go digging for it on their timeline and by then I may not find it.

Blogging is a better advantage in being able to post as many words and images as you want, but people either have to remember to return to your site, bookmark it, or subscribe to it on a reader feed or have it delivered to their inbox. This is more like receiving an email newsletter, but some you don't necessarily know who they are or how often they read your blog posts.

If you use an email newsletter service, you have a general idea of who is receiving it--at least their name and email address. Also, you can see how many people click to view it, which links they click on, how many subscribe and unsubscribe each month. You can view an overall report on what topics and posts appeal to people the most and target future topics accordingly.

Next week, I'll compare and discuss the advantages and disadvantages between using email newsletter services such as Constant Contact, Vertical Response, and MailChimp.

In the meantime, do you already send out an email newsletter? What is your experience? What would you advise to someone who is considering starting an email newsletter?