Communicating via email in a direct, intimate and informal way remains one of the best ways to market and promote your content, services and products online. This is why the most effective online businesses still rely on crafting quality newsletters and email updates to keep their fans and customers updated, entertained and happy. In this
MasterNewMedia guide you will find the best free email newsletter distribution and mailing services available out there, as well as complementary information to help you identify and select your ideal one.
Photo credit: Alex Kalmbach
Email newsletter distribution services are very easy to use, because, if you already know how to use email, you already know most of what you will need to prepare an effective email newsletter. What is new is that through your email newsletter you need to keep writing and sharing in the same way you did with your email friends and contacts, and not as if you were publishing an international magazine.
You need to be personal, intimate and you need to always offer great value. Not just promotion for your content or products. That doesn\'t cut it. You need to meet the needs of your audience and find a writing style that will make your fans read your newsletter as if it were from a true friend.
Here are two interesting statistical figures that should help you realize the
importance that marketers and retailers still attribute to email newsletters for online direct marketing purposes:
- 88% of retailers listed email as a high priority for the year, largely to retain customers. - Forrester Research and Shop.org "Retailing Online 2009: Marketing Report"
- 89% of retailers cited email as the most mentioned successful tactic overall. - Forrester Research and Shop.org "Retailing Online 2009: Marketing Report"
As long as you have understood how critical is today to have a "
conversation" with your audience, the reasons why email newsletters are such a great way to keep in touch with it should be pretty clear. But, how do you go about selecting an email newsletter distribution service and what features and traits do characterize these offerings?
Generally, these newsletter distribution services are characterized by this set of basic features:
- List Management: You can create mailing lists to organize contacts who will receive your newsletter and you can also handle subscribes and unsubscribes.
- Scheduling: You can schedule precise times and dates when your newsletter will be sent.
- Autoresponders: You can design a set of email content templates which are automatically sent when your subscribers perform specific actions. For example, if a reader subscribes to your newsletter, she will receive a "Thank you" email in return, or an email which introduces her to your latest story and offerings.
- Support: You receive assistance in the form of tutorials or support forums, to learn how to manage your email marketing campaigns efficiently, and oftentimes the service you choose will even share with you how to maximize your efforts when planning your email campaign.
While these are just some of the basic features that all free email newsletter distribution services support, there are more specific features that really differentiate some of these services from the others.
To help you identify the best free email newsletter distribution service for your needs, I have setup here below a set of comparative tables and individual reviews to help you check and identify your ideal solution.
Here are the specific selection criteria used to compare these different services:
- Mailing list import: Upload of an existing mailing list to the selected email newsletter distribution service.
- HTML + text: Type of newsletter you can send: plain text or HTML-rich message.
- Max No. of subscribers: Limit of subscribers that the selected service will handle inside your mailing list.
- Max. No. of newsletters: Maximum number of newsletters you can send per month or per day.
- Embed sign-up form: Custom registration form that you can place on your web site to help readers subscribe to your newsletter.
- Analytics: Reports and statistics about the performance of your HTML newsletter. Subscribes, unsubscribes, opened emails, etc.
- Pre-made templates: Readily-available templates that you can use to style your newsletter.
Here all the details:
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