There are many email marketing companies to choose from, so it can be a bit overwhelming trying to decide which one is the best for you. Luckily I’ve done plenty of research, as over the years I’ve had to change email marketing services several times for various reasons.
Below is a table which outlines the common features and functionality of each of the popular email marketing solutions. Hopefully this is plenty of information to help you make the right choice.
| Company | Cost per Month (10k Subscribers) | Free Trial | Delivery Rate | Client Retention | Analytics | Split Testing | Custom Segments | Conversion Tracking | Social Media Integration | Surveys |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWeber | $50 |  | >90% | 89% | | | | |  | |
| Benchmark Email | $60 | | >90% | 81% | | | | | | |
| Constant Contact | $75 | | >85% | 83% | | | | | | |
| GetResponse | $65 | | >95% | 82% | | | | | | |
| iContact | $74 | | >90% | 85% | | | | | | |
| MailChimp | $75 | | >95% | 90% | | | | | | |
| Stream Send | $40 | | >95% | 86% | | | | | | |
| VerticalResponse | $120 | | >95% | 76% | | | | | | |
| Imnica Mail | $17 | >80% | 80% | | | | | | |
|
| Mad Mimi | $36 | | >80% | 83% | | | | | | |
Some additional info on these companies
- Has a Free account for under 2,000 subscribers!
- Won’t allow you to import a list from a spreadsheet, requires all subscribers to confirm AGAIN. This is a huge pain for people moving from one email marketing company to another.
Why use an email marketing company?
If you’re just getting your online business going and are unaware of why an email marketing company would be useful for you, here’s a list of potential reasons:
- Deliverability guarantees – Email marketing services have agreements with popular email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail so there’s less of a chance that your emails will be flagged as “spam”
- System performance – You won’t need to worry about making sure your server can handle sending 10,000 emails at once. Believe it or not but this can be a big problem; I’ve had to deal with it myself.
- Analytics – Easily track metrics like # of messages delivered, # of messages marked as spam, and even how many of the links were clicked
- Split Testing – Get the best results from your email campaigns by testing it first! Typically the email marketing service will allow you to create multiple versions of messages (subject and body) and then will test each version for you by sending each to a subset of your list. The version with the best “open rate” and “link-click rate” will be selected for the remaining subscribers. This process takes only minutes and can save you a lot of money!
- Custom Segments – Quickly and easily group your subscribers based on metrics like email activity, geography, and profile data collected from surveys and web forms. Choose the perfect mix of criteria to create and send the right messages to the right people at the right time. This will allow you to increase customer engagement, retention, and campaign ROI more efficiently than ever.
If you know of a good tool that failed to make my list, or if any of the data in the above table is incorrect, please let me know!
