Email marketing should be an essential part of your website/online business (check out article series on it or my Complete Email Marketing Blueprint for everything you need to succeed in email marketing).
Not only does email marketing help in developing a relationship with your readers, but it ensures that you have a better chance to keep in contact with one time visitors to your site and increases the chances that they’ll return.
Ultimately it’s just common sense, because for every second which you have a website without including an opt-in for an email list then you’re leaving potentially a lot of money on the table.
Consequently, the email marketing software which you go with is very important. There are plenty of free options online for download no strings attached, but like with so many other things, you get what you pay for.
With the free options this typically means that you have little to no templates to choose from, little to no analytical capabilities to track the stats of your list and its subscribers; but most importantly and alarmingly, the failed delivery/spam rate for free programs is extremely high.
In my first couple of years as a webmaster I was using a friend’s designed email marketing software but, and no disrespect to him, as email spam detectors stepped up their algorithms, fewer and fewer of my emails were getting through even though every single person whom I emailed was someone who had willingly signed up for my list.
I couldn’t put up with that for much longer, so I took a look at the two premier email market software options on the market today:Aweber and GetResponse.
Features: Both provide detailed statistics/analytics, both enable you to setup unlimited lists, setup unlimited autoresponders, send unlimited emails to your subscribers, and configure several types of sign-up and opt-in forms.
Aweber has 150+ email templates to choose from and 400 opt-in templates to choose from. If you’re a blogger, Aweber enables you to send out an email every time you make a new post to your blog, letting you decide and configure what gets sent when.
Also, you can use your email list subscribers to count towards your RSS total count in Aweber, as well. Features like a lightbox which appears on the front end of your site to prompt people to sign up helps to increase opt in rates.
GetResponse has 500+ email templates and 400 opt-in templates. It also has more flashy features than Aweber such as email to speech. In terms of features Aweber is more of the meat and potatoes whereas GetResponse gives some additional features which aren’t necessary for basic email marketing but can be nice.
Ease of Use: Aweber trumps every other email marketing software option in terms of ease of use as it was designed to be user friendly, ideal for new webmasters unfamiliar with code.
As far as GetResponse, it’s still not difficult but there is more of a learning curve associated with it and is not as pick up and play. Still, these are THE two most user friendly email marketing softwares I’ve ever dealt with and I doubt even the least technologically savvy among us would have any issues.
Customer Support: They both offer great customer support with phone numbers to call, quick email support, and immediate live chat support during business hours. Additionally, they both offer video tutorials to teach you how their email marketing software works to get you set up quickly.
Delivery/Spam Filter: I’ve personally used Aweber for 3+ years now and for what it’s worth I’ve never had a problem with delivery. More importantly, however, statistically Aweber has scored the best when it comes to actual delivery.
This is largely because Aweber has THE best spam filter of any email marketing software available today. Understand when I say this I mean that it keeps your emails in the inbox of your subscriber as opposed to the spam folder.
The program notifies you as you design your email and add more content in terms of text, pictures, etc. so that you know how close that particular email is to being labeled spam and is risking being sent to the spam folder of your subscriber so that you can make adjustments as necessary to ensure your email lands in the inbox.
Price: The price varies between the two. Overall GetResponse is cheaper, primarily at the lower tiers of subscribers. Both charge monthly fees based on how many subscribers you have so that you pay more only when you get more subscribers and reach higher tiers.
Additionally, Aweber charges a base monthly fee ON TOP of the tiered fee. You can visit their respective websites to learn the exact prices, but in doing some quick math, at lower tiers you’re paying less with GetResponse than with Aweber, but as you get into the higher tiers it evens out, even keeping the additional monthly base fee in mind.
Final Verdict: My final verdict is that though Aweber costs more initially, the real difference is in the simplified ease of use and above all else the highest delivery rate, though GetResponse comes in a close second.
If you are using your list correctly, a difference of $10 each month shouldn’t affect you as you should eventually be making back the monthly cost of your email marketing software hundreds if not thousands of times over, regardless of which you go with. Aweber also currently has a promotion where you can sign up and get the service for one month for just $1. That even comes with a 30 day money back guarantee, so if you’re anything less than satisfied with it in that time you can reclaim your dollar, no harm done.
One final important note: once you pick one be prepared to stick with it as I learned the hard way that you can’t automatically transfer the subscribers of your email list from one software to another.
Instead you have to ask everyone on your list to resubscribe/opt-in to your new list and when you do that you’ll find the number of people who can be bothered to do this SIGNIFICANTLY drops as I lost more than HALF of my list when I transferred to Aweber, so it’s extremely important to go with the best from the start.
…OR you can give Aweber a free test drive right now by entering your name and email address:
Helping over 90,000 businesses like yours raise profits and build customer relationships using AWeber’s opt-in email marketing software for over 10 years.