@deairby I don’t know if the other platforms you mentionoffer all the functionality you need. I suggest you make a list of what you use it for now, and what else you want to do and compare.

I am now deciding between Mail Chimp  & Constant Contact myself for my business. As yet I haven’t seen one of the other things you mention offer what they do. Right now I can’t yet justify a true marketing automation tool, but do rely on email marketing as a pillar in my strategy.

@deairby Hi Dea, Me thinks me knows the dirty little secret to all those email campaigns… whether you view them as spam or not…. they work! Companies do see the tangible results in click throughs to their websites immediately after email blasts go out. If email campaigns did not work, we could all abandon them and move to another platform. But they do. So we have to stay in the game. Sigh!

@deairby

Think of it this way, does SME rely on fb, blog, google+,linkedIn, etc to get the word out to its membership?

No, they don’t.

Mike might use those avenues in addition to his email service, but he certainly doesn’t rely on them.

Remember the old commercial where the kids fed stuff to Mikey to see if he would eat it? And If it were good enough for Mikey, then it was good enough to eat?

One of the reasons for my being on SME was to see what the big dog marketers were doing and learn from them. (of course, I work on a much smaller budget…. )

So, if its good enough for Mikey……

good point! @warrenveach

I agree with @annfurnivall, @warrenveach, @kc_kreative, @abigailgorton and @joanmuschampfagnani – email gives you a more controlled and more direct channel to reach your customers.  You can always use email to help drive traffic to social media if you need to engage with them around an email offer, etc.

thanks  dea… its  a long ongoing  thing  for us..but  the  real  draw is  the  store itself……but the  web  work  has really  paid off for  us… 

Hi, I agree with D Scott Walker “more direct channel to reach your customers”, but I also wanted my email to stand out as well, I have started looking into Video Emailing, I think I have found a great system and have signed up as well, but I want to know has anyone else thought about Video Emailing?

@Dea Irby this video will explain it for you http://www.keyof2.com, it is Talk Fusion, what I personally loved about it was I can track who I send my video emails to and not only that but I can see how many times they have viewed that video email as well, so thats why I signed up. Get back to me if you are interested

We just signed up with Talk Fusion for our company, purely for the product. I will admit, I am a little nervous about creating video to mass email. I haven’t had a chance to look at it much, that is on my to do list for this week. We have been using Mail Chimp, should we move our email exclusively to Talk Fusion or do a combination of both?

@joanmuschampfagnani I use both MailChimp and Constant Contact, and I also use a 3rd tool, AWeber. It’s a long story. I would recommend any of them. I am a happy customer.

Here’s what I do recommend. Many people make a decision based on price. I say calculate the costs based on where you want you list to be in 6 months and 18 months, and calculate the price at those two points. What may be cheapest at 6 months may be most expensive at 18 months. Moving a list is possible, but quite disruptive. 

Do you plan to keep your list below 2,000 with no more than 12,000 emails a month? MailChimp!

Do you need to integrate email with invitations to events (paid or free)? Constant Contact!

Do you have a membership site that you must integrate with? AWeber and MailChimp is starting to do that, also.

Check out the email templates. Make sure you find a template that you like and you feel you can customize to suit your business.  Can you do HTML coding?  That levels the playing field between them.

Do you need good training on how to use the email service? Check out the training offered by each one.

Do you need training on the bigger picture of marketing your business? Constant Contact!

Hope this helps.