I didn't like all the branding, so I bought different email newsletter licenses and we have a new lightspeed server where we've installed it on.
Newsletters can be a very good asset to anyone's business. I subscribe to lots of them, some I read in detail, some I visit the websites, some I store till later to read, some I use as resources as they often have links to informative information.
I know that I am not alone since we track stats on email campaigns we send out for clients.
I had a client who opened an email not one month ago, and clicked 2 links, from a campaign that was sent in February 2010. That indicates to me that the particular newsletter had something of value for them to hold on to.
There are specific types of email campaigns, and different days, different types of headings and different lengths to consider to get the most impact.
I guess I thought the mail chimp stuff was too 'managed'. I don't like the busy interface, I don't like how they charge and I don't like the name, but it is obvious, as with Apple products, lots of people do - I guess it's for the 'least technical' person who just gets blown away by how pretty things look and spends more time looking what it can do that doing it.. just my thoughts.
I guess for me too, since I provide a service to my clients, I like white labelling and can offer my corporate style of clients less branded look and feel.
Also I found the overall industry 'respect' for some products to affect how the mail gets delivered.
And, where they are hosted also affects delivery time.
And, how they offer complete unsubscribe functions. Here, at our office, we are not the nicest people to those who spam and for the websites mail software that does not have a complete 'remove me off anything from your server' option.
If you're in Australia, with Australian clients, delivering Australian news, then the fastest way is through an Australian server.
Some of the newest things I've found in email software is the ability to generate a beautiful newsletter, delivered and sent directly from RSS feeds from your website. I am still experimenting with this but that concept is very appealing because it runs along the lines of 'set and forget' (Not that I every would because of the nature of what it is) but, because at a given set time, will aggregate the content delivered from RSS feeds of articles on your website that you don't have to go in and copy and paste. That to me is a real plus. It does require some discipline in how you create your news articles online I guess - I'm not there yet.
If you really wanted to find out what people are charging, then look at some of the websites that have 'media kits' - they are the prices for advertising on their sites, allowing you to choose where in the newsletter, what day and whether there is something linked to the website.
On the topic of costing as well - mainly for sending - some websites charge you X amount per month for unlimited subscribers but X amount to send X amount of emails - so if you had 1,000 users and wanted a weekly newsletter you'd be on a 5,000 email plan.
Some providers will charge you to host the subscribers for a low plan - say - 30.00 per month as a figure and and then charge you 2 > 5 c per email to send an email and that alone would bring up the costs dramatically over a period of time if you had more than a few hundred emails.. So you have to evaluate the best value for money for your needs. Because we host alot of sites - we have servers in place setup specifically for delivering high volumes of email, so it's worthwhile for us to purchase the software that others tend to use as a hosted model. It does amaze me that people pay 150 > 300 per month to send out rather ordinary email newsletters, and whinge about paying $50.00 per month for their website and email to be running.. but that is another story.
This doesn't sound alot but because I deal with tens of thousands of emails at a time, and if you count my site with 97,000 users, it would cost me a fortune if I had not invested the 2K for software to run it.
I love email marketing - I love the concept of keeping in touch with clients, but it's not just a matter of sending out news.. you need to very carefully put in a strategy of what you want to achieve with an email campaign and then work back from that.
I could talk all day on email marketing and newsletters - but I could also talk all day on ecommerce, self managed sites.. darn... come to think of it - give me a topic I love and I'll talk the back teeth off a horse if it will help someone make less mistakes than me, and ensure they don't burn their email list because that my friends is a reality many many people have to live with when they 'just don't get it'.
Hope you get a few tips from all of this.
Nina
