The StyleSheet - For businesses that use the internet

Send Your Message in Style: 3 Email Campaign Services Reviewed

Posted June 16, 2010 By Mike Wisian |

If you send out frequent updates to your customers about upcoming events or sales, or if you regularly send out email newsletters with the latest developments from your group, you might consider using an email campaign service. This web-based software helps you manage subscriber lists, adhere to spam laws and get incredible metrics on how successful your marketing efforts are. You can see when folks open your emails and which links they’re clicking. You can even test different version of emails with different segments of your subscriber list.

Today, we’re looking at three email campaign services — Campaign Monitor, MailChimp and Constant Contact.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is a flexible tool, suitable for both novices and experienced developers. You can choose from a sizeable library of prebuilt and ready-to-use templates, or you can easily create custom templates of your own. You can preview your campaign in a variety email programs and on various mobile devices before you send it. Campaign Monitor also has a robust API, which lets developers and other programs use its data. For example, you can integrate your Campaign Monitor subscriber lists with your existing customer information databases.

Pricing

Campaign Monitor charges a small flat fee of $5 for each email campaign you send, but the service also bases pricing on your number of subscribers. Each recipient costs just pennies to send. This can be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on the size of your list. Emailing small lists with only a couple hundred people can be very affordable, while emailing tens of thousands of people can get expensive quickly.

MailChimp

MailChimp is another service that offers a robust API. The MailChimp API touts its ability to sync with e-commerce tools. Another cool feature allows you to fully automate newsletters based on your blog or another RSS news feed. A double opt-in process using MailChimp is in most cases required for new subscribers. Customers must sign up on your website then click a confirmation link sent to them via email. This process is terrific for ensuring that your subscribers are interested in your content and are less likely to mark your newsletter as spam. But it also decreases the number of successful conversions by making the signup process longer.

Pricing

Unlike the other services we’re looking at, MailChimp has a free plan for smaller lists. For more frequent or larger campaigns, there are various monthly and “pay-as-you-go” plans. Nonprofit organizations receive a 15% discount.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact also offers a large library of email templates, but they’re not as flexible and fewer elements can be edited. The Constant Contact API is not as useful as those of the other services we’ve discussed. For a small additional cost, Constant Contact offers “image management and hosting,” which includes access to several thousand stock images that you can use in your newsletters and email campaigns.

Pricing

Constant Contact’s pricing is monthly, based on how many subscribers you have. You can send as many campaigns as you want for a flat rate. Discounted rates of 10-15% off are available if you prepay for 6 or 12 months. The discount increases to as much as 30% if you’re a nonprofit organization.

So which email campaign service should you choose?

It depends on your unique needs. Constant Contact and MailChimp have nearly identical pricing, but Constant Contact offers better discounts for nonprofits while MailChimp is free for small subscriber lists. Campaign Monitor has the strongest API and the most flexible templates. MailChimp lets you automate newsletters if you have a news feed on your website. Constant Contact offers stock images.

All of these services offer useful metrics and can make reaching your audience easier. Check out these three email campaign services next time you want to spread the word and you don’t want that word to get silenced by a spam filter.

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