Ecommerce Beginnings - VII

Monday, January 29. 2007

Welcome back for this week's article on Ecommerce Beginnings. I hope everyone had a great week!


Research

During the past few weeks I did a lot of research on Email Management Services providers. I needed to find a solution to manage my email marketing efforts. So, like many people I went to the Google Search Engine and typed in: email marketing solution. This query returned 4,120,000 possible results. What to do next? To save some time I pretty much did what most people probably do - I investigated the options presented on the first page. All of a sudden I was faced with another entirely new language to learn. Terms like: permission based email marketing, pop-up creator, double opt-in confirmation, unlimited autoresponders, and on and on the list went????


Decision

I ended up narrowing the list down to 4 different email marketing solutions. I read each of their features offered lists, checked out their price options, some were by the month, some were set up to charge based on the number of emails sent each month, some were set up based on your birth date, combined with your mother's maiden name and if anyone on the list was named Smith.

Well, I almost felt like this after trying to compare all of the apples to apples to oranges options offered by each company. In fact most of the options were very similar, which made the decision process a little more difficult.


Note: I am currently signed up to recieve several ezines from well known and reputable businesses and online marketing gurus. Each one seems to use a different provider and they each mention how happy they are with their email service provider. Just another curveball thrown at me in the decision process.

Well, I like things to be fairly straightforward and simple. You know, I like lots of features, but I also like the options to be easy to understand and implement. I don't need to load my brain up with too much more as it is! I ended up choosing GetResponse because of several factors:

* their website layout (logical and well organized)
* online video tutorials (very helpful - also provided in PDF format)
* streamlined plans to choose from (you know the KISS principle)
* and last, but not least, their pricing, (either a limited free plan to start out with, or a Pro version)

Note: You know those marketing types. They use terms like: basic, intermediate, etc. and then they use the term: "PRO"! Well, who wouldn't want to be a user of the "PRO" version? Doesn't "PRO" sound so much cooler? Guess which one I chose? Those marketing people are geniuses aren't they?


Learning to Use

As I mentioned above, GetResponse has 4 well organized videos that you can watch to learn "how to" set-up and manage your email marketing campaigns. I will admit that I watched the videos twice. It definitely helped and was prompted more by my lack of knowledge in this area.

I decided that I wanted my website's newsletter to be formatted on one of my website pages vs just a text email message with links. I felt that this was a better choice for marketing purposes. Next I had to create several new web pages and an opt-in form. Click here to see the NEW FORM

The new pages I created were to support the process of capturing an email address, verifying they meant to make this choice, sending another email for their free e-book download, then the actual newsletter notification email, the newsletter itself, with the multiple articles and product download options. Whew!!! It was a lot of work, but I actually enjoyed it. I was just like a proud new father showing off his new child to the world! Click here to see my 1st NEWSLETTER Please let me know what you think of the newsletter and/or if you would like to see other options/choices offered in it.


Conclusion

As I stated above there were many excellent email marketing solution options available to choose from. Here are links to 4 that I felt were the best options to choose from:

* GetResponse
* Constant Contact
* Aweber
* Vertical Response

I'm sure there are more excellent options available, I just didn't have the time to keep researching all of them. I hope this information proves helpful to you. Make sure you stop back next week for another entertaining and informative article and Have a great week!

Mark@Original-New-England-Enterprises.com