How to pick an Email Marketing Service Provider

Are you using email marketing for your business?
Are you trying to decide what email marketing service provider to use?

If you are using email marketing for your business, or you are considering using email marketing, you have probably found out that there are hundreds maybe even thousands of email marketing service providers out there.  So how do you decide which one is right for you? It would be impossible for me to mention them all in this post, so I have narrowed it down to the top three that seem to be at the top of everyone’s list; MailChimp, Constant Contact, and AWeber.  Based on the popularity of these companies, I decided to do a post that compares these companies on customer base, price and product features.

MailChimp

MailChimp has the largest customer base with over 4,000,000 customers according to their website.  I suspect that their large customer base may have to do with the fact that they have a “Forever Free” product that allows small businesses to use their product and several of the main features for free as long as they don’t have more than 2,000 subscribers.  In addition, if someone opted to upgraded to a paid account, MailChimp  has the lowest priced monthly package of the three companies at $10/month.

Another advantage MailChimp has over the other Email Marketing Services providers is that they have several great features like automated list segmentation.  Their system allows you to segment your email list based on several already defined factors that you can select or adjust (i.e. member rating, subscriber activity, location, etc.).  MailChimp is also great if you want to upload an unlimited amount of images to use in your email.  Constant Contact and Aweber have limitations on the amount of images you can upload to their systems or the storage size available for the images you upload.

MailChimp also offers the following features that neither Constant Contact or Aweber offer:

• Event Triggered Autoresponders–  this allows you to send a follow-up email to someone based on an action they have taken within your email.
• A/B Testing–  this gives you the option of testing elements of your email campaign to see which one works better via A/B testing.
• Inbox Preview–  this offers you the ability to preview your email and see how it looks over various email providers like gmail, yahoo, aol, etc.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is in the middle of the three companies with over 500,000 customers according to their website.  They are also in the middle with price.  They offer a 60-day FREE trial option, and their lowest priced package after the trial period is $15/month.  One of the features that stands out with the Constant Contact email marketing product is the fact that they offer you an extensive Contact Management System that allows you to treat your list as not just subscribers, but contacts in which you can add additional information on each contact like the person’s phone number, address, special notes, social networks, etc. making the system more of a type of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) instead of just a list of subscribers.  Constant Contact also offers its customers direct access to quality stock images to use in their email, but there is an additional cost for this feature.

In addition, although email marketing is their main product, Constant Contact offers a suite of solutions for small business owners (at an additional cost).  Allowing you to create a dashboard of online marketing tools that complement your email marketing product.  These tools include:

• EventSpot-  A tool to help you manage events online
• Social Campaigns–  A tool to help you grow your fans on social media
• SaveLocal–  Allows you to create offer deals to send to your customers
• Online Surveys–  Online Surveys, Polls, & Questions to get your customers feedback
• And more…

Constant Contact also offers a lot of support.  Depending on where you are located, Constant Contact offers many local FREE workshops and seminars to help educate the community about email marketing.  Another great feature that Constant Contact offers is FREE coaching for its customers and phone-based customer service.

AWeber

AWeber comes in at the lower end as far as amount of customers served with over 120,000 customers according to their website.  AWeber does not offer a free option or free trial, but does offer the first 30 days for $1.  After the first 30 days the lowest priced package is $19/month.  As far as features, an outstanding feature that is include in the AWeber email marketing system is  the ability to convert your blog post into an email newsletter with the click of a button (MailChimp also offers this feature).  AWeber also claims to offer some of the best email delivery rates in the business.

AWeber also offers customer service via phone 7 days a week (Constant Contact also offers phone support).

So the key takeaway from this analysis is you have to figure out what features are most important to you and select the company that has those important features!

Please see the chart below for a full comparison:

All information in this posts is based on information on the email marketing service provider’s website or obtained after talking to a representative from the company.  Features are based on current (January 2014) information.

Disclosure:  I have used both Constant Contact and MailChimp for my clients.  I have not used AWeber.  Although I like to feel that my analysis is not bias, I believe it is important to mention that I am a Solutions Provider for Constant Contact.