Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Recommended Email Service Co's For B2b Newsletter?

Posted by Anonymous on 4/5/2007 at 8:16 PM ET 250 Points
My company's about to launch a couple newsletters for clients/prospects (business executives), and rather than go thru our internal IT group (slow, bureaucratic), I'm thinking of outsourcing to an email service company.

Circulation will likely be 5000 - 7000, issued monthly to start. We've got the mailing list already (housed in Salesforce.com), and can create our own HTML template.

We're a division of a $300M company, so it's important that we don't look "small business" to recipients -- one reason I'm reluctant to use somebody like Constant Contact that puts their logo on the message.

In my initial research, I'm finding dozens of companies that seem like they'd be candidates -- but any "expert" recommendations on who to put on my short list would be MOST appreciated. (Vertical Response? IntelliContact? Silverpop?)

Thank you very much for any quick advice/opinions!
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 4/5/2007 at 8:30 PM Member
    The volume and appearance issues aside, there are a number of other things to consider.

    Do you need the ASP to gather and host any data, or will you be uploading a list each time?

    What will you do with the response data, if anything?

    Some more color as to how you will really use the ASP will be helpful. Having said that, how much do you really want to spend on a list that size and a monthly deployment?

    As I am sure you know, there's a huge variance in pricing even between the small number of solutions you've named.

  • Posted on 4/5/2007 at 10:09 PM Accepted
    First of all, even with Constant Contact, you can specifically ask them when you register (I did with them and with IntelliContact) to set you up so that their logo doesn't show up in your mail campaigns. I'd insist on that with any provider; most of them default to showing their logo but of course this can be removed.

    I liked constant contact when we used it, but they pulled a real nasty one on us by making us do a double opt-in when someone put a spamtrap e-mail in our list (we don't harvest, so we deduced that it must have been done maliciously). We then went to Campaigner, which was okay but much more expensive, and not as user-friendly. We are now with IntelliContact, which is fantastic. It has the pricing and flexibiliy of Constant Contact with the added benefit of surveys and autoresponders. Highly recommended from someone who has worked now with three of the major players.

    Budget-wise, Intellicontact, like Constant Contact, charges for the size of the list, not the amount of e-mails sent out (although there is a cap). I have always preferred this because we've found it works out much cheaper.
  • Posted by MajorHal on 4/6/2007 at 4:37 AM Accepted
    Take a look at this provider: www.aweber.com

    I use them. They are reliable, great service response and value for the cost (low). They use the double opt-in method only for leads that sign-up at a web site. The reason they do this is to keep from being blacklisted. It doesn't really matter how many names you have on a list if the email doesn't get delivered. And your wasting your money.
  • Posted by Mark on 4/6/2007 at 4:47 AM Accepted
    Just a quick note. I haven't used them, but I believe VerticalResponse integrates with Salesforce through the latter's AppExchange. Might be worth investigating if you want a common interface.

    As a side note, I've used Constant Contact happily and have heard only good things about the following low-cost options (given your relatively simple needs):

    VerticalResponse
    Emma
    Intellicontact
    MailChimp
    Campaign Monitor
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