[CFW]

Hi all,

I'm looking at email marketing service providers, but I can't find an ideal partner, and I thought you all would have some good ideas & experience with this. Ideally, I want something:

1) free (a must for now)
2) allows use of single opt in sign up forms
3) is easy to use (not much coding required)

I signed up to Mail Chimp because it's free and there's not much coding involved, only to discover that it requires double opt in sign ups.

Is there a provider that offers all 3 things & what email marketing providers do you guys use?

Thanks in advance!

[afternoonsun]

Here is the list of email marketing service which you can look into:

Posterous
MailChimp
Campaign Monitor
Constant Contact
YouSendIt
10MinuteMail
Mad Mimi
Emma
Postmark
Zimbra
Aweber

They are free service providers. Some of them requires service charge but less as compared to others.

[Selij]

email marketing is very effective way to retain your existing customers and acquire new customers it will also maximize the effectiveness of the business.

there are many free email service providers as you can try madmini or mail chimp.

[JoyUnltd]

Most email services require a double opt-in to make sure their service doesn't wind up on spam lists which would affect all their clients emails being rejected. I have seen articles how single opt in builds a list faster, but this doesn't take into consideration all the fake emails submitted.

Just curious, why do you prefer single opt-in? What are the advantages?

[CFW]

Thanks for the help guys!

Just curious, why do you prefer single opt-in? What are the advantages?

I'd like the option to test, more than anything.

At a company I worked for previously, we always used double opt in for all the reasons you know already: make sure all emails are valid, reduce bounces & spam, higher quality addresses, etc.

Because we used double opt in, we had a large list of single opt in email addresses (people who had signed up but not clicked the confirmation link) that were doing nothing for us. We decided to test that list against our double opt in list. We were surprised to find that the single opt in list performed better than the double opt in list in almost every metric - opens, clicks, CTR, and conversions.

I'm not saying that works for every website in every industry, but in that niche, for that website, it worked. I would like to have the option of testing single vs double for my own website.

If I have to use double opt in I will, but with Mail Chimp (for example) I won't be able to even test the single opt ins (as far as I know).

[daiarian]

Aweber offers a first class comprehensive service at about $19 per month, free options are available as stated in other posts but as for everything in this life you get what you pay for (Well nearly always I guess).

[CFW]

Originally Posted by daiarian

but as for everything in this life you get what you pay for (Well nearly always I guess).

So true... once I have enough $$$ for a budget I'm happy to upgrade, but until then it's bootstrapping time.

[JoyUnltd]

Originally Posted by CFW

...Because we used double opt in, we had a large list of single opt in email addresses (people who had signed up but not clicked the confirmation link) that were doing nothing for us. We decided to test that list against our double opt in list. We were surprised to find that the single opt in list performed better than the double opt in list in almost every metric - opens, clicks, CTR, and conversions.

I'm not saying that works for every website in every industry, but in that niche, for that website, it worked. I would like to have the option of testing single vs double for my own website.

Thanx for the info! You hear "only do double opt in" for so long, it becomes a mantra & you don't even question it. So how do you deal with spam claims with single opt ins? Or wasn't it an issue in your vertical?

[CFW]

For the time I was with the company, spam complaints were not an issue. We got more spam complaints than with double opt in, but since the number of email addresses we were sending to was much higher, the percentage was still very low. Remember, single opt in people still have to give you their email address.

There is a post at blueskyfactory.com that (in my opinion) is a good discussion of single vs double opt in
I think there are too many good points in the post to quote them all here, but I think it's a good read - gets the ol' brain juices flowing.

As with anything, it's always best to test different things - even when you test against the current conventional wisdom (sometimes especially then).

[Chuck Hamrick]

Here is something else to consider when using email marketing, good article on the numbers from Internet Retailer: One in five e-mail messages never reaches the inbox, report says

[Afreshup]

I do not understand why you would pay a company to send and manage your email list when there is perfectly good software out there that does it for you. The programs cost around $500 and they run from your server. No monthly fees.

I administer an 80k email list that we send twice a month.... that would cost me $500 per month from one of these list services ... am I missing something here?

[Chuck Hamrick]

Not everyone is comfortable using their server for emails/newsletters. I think it is justified when you grow to a list of that size.

[Afreshup]

You're right, it wasn't very comfortable at first, in fact I screwed up a good portion of my list when I first started out by having my PTR set up incorrectly and using a self-signed certificate.

I was also on a shared server which added to my negative footprint. My ip got banned by several big email repositories like Gmail and Bellsouth.

So, I got my own dedicated server with a fresh set of ip's and hired someone from elance to provision my server ... about $350, bought the best software I could find and It's been smooth sailing since.

So it is a pain at first, but the software I have is as easy to use as the online email centers and I am saving major bank every month.

[rasel786]

There are lots of useful software available in the net. You can use any of these software. It would be helpful for you in terms of email marketing. If you use this software, you need not to spend money for this.