The Internet Marketing Spy

E-mail marketing is the lifeline for most internet or affiliate marketing businesses. It is the way that marketers let their potential customers know what they’re up to and what they’re selling. In fact, it is said that you must be in front of these potential customers at least 13 times before they even think of buying one of your products or services.

E-mailing with people who have even a remote interest in your business can be done in one of two ways. You can maintain a folder in your address book that allows to you e-mail your word-of-mouth list from your e-mail client (MacMail, Outlook, Eudora etc), where you run the risk of accidentally forgetting to “bcc” your list thereby accidentally revealing the private e-mail addresses of everyone on your list — trust me this happens A LOT. Or you can use one of the many e-mail newsletter services available, which allows you to put simple code on your site to capture new names and send customized e-mails to everyone on your list using a snazzy template that matches the look and feel of your company’s brand.

So once again, I was back on the trail to make the Esther Experience live up to it’s promise of spending no additional money. I tried at least 5 more programs ranging from free to $19/month. The free one kept deleting my templates and rearranging them from one mailing to the next (it wasn’t pretty). The one that cost $19/mo was nearly as dysfunctional and also had a very difficult interface to understand. Almost everything in between was just as difficult to manage.

Then, I stumbled upon iContact. For only $10 a month, iContact
allows you to capture subscriber names from your website using a simple piece of html code, send e-mails newsletters to up to 500 people as many times as you want during the month, survey your list, and participate in their online community driving more traffic to your website. And if your business is seasonal, you can put a hold on your account which means you can pretty much do everything (except actually send e-mail newsletters) for only $2/month. Not in addition to the $10, instead of!

As if that wasn’t enough, iContact‘s templates are so easy to use. They basically work like a glorified Word program or WYSIWYG html program. Moving around within your account is very easy too. All this and it doesn’t lose contacts or rearrange your templates!!!! Don’t lose time. If you’re not satisfied with your e-mail newsletter program, then iContact is clearly for you!