By Deborah Carraro

One of the things I love best about the work that I do is trying to find the right service for each client. Each client presents a unique set of criteria and needs and I’m at my best when I can look at their business and ensure that we customize their online business plan to work for their business.

This week, I had the pleasure of working with two different services – one that I had used long ago and one that was completely new to me – in order to be able to answer the question “Can you recommend a free autoresponder service?” and “Can you recommend some options to the listbaby service?“

Let’s get crackin’ :

Get Response:  GetResponse is among the first autoresponder services I used. In fact, my experience with setting up campaigns and understanding how autoresponders work is a direct result of having used the system back in 2004.

Not much has changed in that time other than the interface and the addition of HTML templates for you to choose from. Seems everyone wanted to capture a piece of the Constant Contact pie and they quickly built the functionality into their services.

Like many other autoresponder services, they track metrics now too. Yet unlike most other services (only one other that I know of offers the same feature) they allow you to attach files to your autoresponder messages. I’m of mixed feelings on this – while it does make it easy for you to deliver PDF files like your eBooks and other attachments, I believe they have a greater chance of being caught by spam filters or being directed to your junk mail folders. But it is a feature in the Get Response service and can be an interesting way for you to delliver your digitial content without having to go the route of a full-fledged shopping cart.

A new service is their Free Autoresponder account, which is the service I implemented last week for a client who had no money to dedicate to their email marketing.

As with other free services there are limitations, this time in the number of campaigns you can set up and the number of automated messages you can include. A campaign is basically a segment of your mailing list or a different autoresponder sequence. Let’s say you wanted to build a list of subscribers for your ezine and also wanted to build a list of people who have purchased one of your products or services. That would require you to set up two campaigns in Get Response. One for your ezine opt-in and one for your sales to clients.

With the free service, you can only set up one campaign. You would need to upgrade to their paid services but if you only need one mailing list then Get Response is a good option because they do not limit the size of your mailing list.

The only drawback to the free service is that they do limit your broadcast capabilities. You cannot send a mailing to your list other than the five autoresponder messages that are attached to your campaign. So if you’re hoping to send a weekly newsletter, GetResponse is not the option for you. If you’re just hoping to build a mailing list by having people opt-in to receive a special report, then GetResponse is a good fit for you. To see it in action, visit http://www.cartsmartbookkeeping.com.

Good fit for:

  • start up entrepreneurs with no email marketing budget
  • email marketers who do not want to send a weekly newsletter or broadcast
  • marketers wanting to quickly build a mailing list by tracking opt-ins to a special report or audio file.

     

  1. Groupie Corral: First a disclaimer: I only just discovered this service yesterday and have not done much with it other than poke around inside their free account and read the marketing materials on the website. Special thanks to James at http://www.jamesjones.ca/ for turning me on to the service. The interface is cute – lots of pretty buttons that should appeal to the artistic types. Even if you’re not artsy, this could be a great service for you because their prices seem extremely reasonable. You can add your own custom header at the top of your mailing and play around with the fonts and colors which will give you a bit of freedom to match the look and feel of your other marketing materials. 

    It seems fairly intuitive and you can quickly add articles to your ezine but if you’re looking for WYSIWYG functionality, then you need to opt for something like Constant Contact or GetResponse. 

    Their lowest cost service is a bargoon at $54 / year which is great for artists or business owners with small bugets. It limits you to 1500 emails monthly which is more than enough for starter entreprenuers and you’re limited to one campaign (called list in this service). What I like about it as compared to GetResponse is that their free service allows you to send broadcasts but you’re not able to create autoresponder messages so it’s comparable to Constant Contact in that respect. 

    Constant Contact has greater functionality, better template choices and as I learned this week more commitment to ensuring that they toe the line when it comes to CAN-SPAM compliance and blacklist monitoring issues. But if you’re a musician, their Local Hero package can’t be beat!

    Good fit for:

    • start up entrepreneurs and musicians with small email marketing budget
    • email marketers who have less than 1500 readers and do not require autoresponder capabilities
    • someone with HTML coding skills if you want to send an HTML newsletter

    Coming next week: We’ll discover one of the most popular autoresponder services used by many successful online entrepreneurs.
     

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    WANT TO ADD THESE ARTICLES IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this blurb with it: Deborah Carraro is a succcessful online entrepreneur who got her start in the Inner Circle of many of the top Online Entrepreneurs today and is now sharing their business blueprints & online secrets with you. You can get a free subscription to her “Partner for Profits ” ezine by visiting www.myvirtualpartner.com