Email marketing allows you to message customers all over the world instantly.
Email marketing is a way to stay connected with customers and keep them informed of upcoming sales or promotions. Email marketers must be aware of the CAN-SPAM Act, which the U.S. Congress passed in 2003. The law requires that email marketers only send emails to people who have 'opted in', or given the sender permission to email them. Senders must also provide consumers with an easy way to opt out of receiving marketing emails at any time. There are several email marketing systems and programs available, though a handful stand out.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is one of the most popular email marketing platforms. The system allows you to easily design your own email marketing campaigns without using HTML code, so almost anyone who is proficient on a computer can create an email campaign. Over 400 templates are available to help you create your email content quickly. Constant Contact also offers monthly fees that start at $15 per month for a list of under 500 people (as of October 2010). The pricing model allows small businesses and startups with small budgets to use the service with minimal investment. A free trial is also available, so you can test it first before committing.
iContact
iContact is another popular email marketing system. The system allows you to divide your master list into segments, so you can send email marketing messages to different groups within your master list. iContact also has hundreds of templates to easily create your email content, and has built-in spam checkers to make sure your email will get through spam filters and into customers' mailboxes. iContact boasts an inbox deliverability rate of 99 percent, meaning that 99 percent of your emails will reach peoples' inboxes, as opposed to their spam or junk folders. Several tracking features are also included to help track which campaigns are most successful, so you can improve your email marketing efforts going forward. Pricing starts at $10 for up to 250 people on your list, and goes up from there based on list size (as of October 2010).
Lyris
Lyris is an email marketing system used by businesses of varying sizes, though it tends to attract email marketers with established lists of hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Lyris offers two different hosted solutions. It uses Lyris servers to send and manage email marketing campaigns; as well as offering an on-site solution, which provides the email marketing software only, for companies that host their own email marketing servers and databases. Lyris also offers outsourced email marketing resources, including designers, copywriters and web analytics professionals, in case you do not have the time or resources to create, deploy and analyze email marketing campaigns yourself. Pricing for Lyris solutions is significantly higher than others like Constant Contact or iContact, because the Lyris systems are designed for email marketers with significantly more volume than a few hundred or a few thousand people.
Tags: email marketing, your email, Constant Contact, email marketers, email marketing campaigns