Constant Contact or iContact or ?

Who the hell has time to survey and review all the email marketing companies?

Well, no-one, but I also feel that someone who intends to be helping her clients damn well better know the pros and cons of each before she starts recommending one over the others. So I spent 4 hours today – that's right, four bloody hours that I will never get back, so listen up – scrutinizing the field for you, dear reader.

First stop, Top Ten Reviews, a site that makes it their business to regularly do much of the initial research. Love those guys. Their 2008 review reveals a more accurate view of each contender.

I was surprised to see that Constant Contact was more expensive and had less features than iContact. Constant Contact is easily the best known of them all, so hats off to their marketing department, because they've certainly convinced many that they're the best.

I use iContact.com. Aside from the price and efficiency, I like their interface. It's simple and uncluttered. They offer everything that Constant Contact does, including strict anti-spam policies, but they offer more features at a lower cost.

That said, Constant Contact and iContact are so similar that it doesn't really matter. If you feel more comfortable with Constant Contact, by all means spend a bit more and go with them. Either company will let you download your list of subscribers at any time, so you can always change your mind later.

November 06, 2008 update: still loving iContact and now they are in the #1 spot at Top Ten Reviews. If you want to try it free for 14 days, click here.

Email Marketing: Blessing or Curse?

I hate junk email as much as you. Probably more.

So when clients started asking me to design templates for their email marketing campaigns, I assumed they wanted my help in contributing to this sea of schlock. I flat-out refused to become the Queen of Spam. Nobody opened these annoying emails anyway, so why bother?

And then a funny thing happened.

A client, Carole Murko, of Boulderwood Group fame , challenged my assumptions and ultimately, changed my mind.

A savvy marketer herself, Carole had already tested one of the online services, iContact, and found it to be truly effective. She reminded me that people were so busy that they often forgot to sign up for a seminar, or take advantage of a sale, and a simple email reminder was actually, believe it or not, quite welcomed. Still, I wasn't entirely convinced.

Over dinner, I reluctantly realized that I, Ms.Anti-Spam Herself, was guilty of opening and using certain email offers (JetBlue, Crate and Barrel, if you must know) and in fact, I did appreciate them. Oh crap. Now I'd have to re-think my whole attitude.

After wrestling with this for several hours, I concluded 3 important things:

1) email marketing is simply a tool that can be used or abused, depending on who wields it. Like many people, I had confused email marketing with spam. After some research, I concluded that email marketing is a legitimate, ethical form of email advertising to targeted lists of recipients who have subscribed to receive such offers, and who retain the right to Unsubscribe anytime they want;

2) email marketing offers small businesses (my darlings) a real chance to compete against large corporations because it is an extremely effective, fast and inexpensive method of reaching an audience to generate quick traffic and/or sales;

3) and therefore, this hard-working little tool deserved to be just as beautiful as any website, and who better to do that makeover than Yours Truly?

Thus I have done a 180 degree turn in my attitude to (opt-in/opt-out) email marketing. Now the only question is which service to use? (The answer in my next blog post.)