In last week's post, as well as at the Statewide Meeting a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was using an e-mail marketing service.  I've gotten so many questions that it seemed a post on the topic might be useful.

Since March, I've been using an e-mail marketing service to send e-mail notices to our online catalog customers about monthly specials and new products.  I'm using using Constant Contact, and I've been very happy with them, but there are several other companies that offer this service as well.

What does an e-mail marketing service do?

• An e-mail marketing service allows you to create an HTML e-mail that can be rich in graphics using WYSIWYG templates.

• They provide automated list management services such as unsubscribes, bounce management, and flagging of permanently fatal addresses.  You can import existing contact files.  Once imported, you manage your contacts from within the service's interface.

• You can also include a forwarding link on your e-mail and you can tell who forwarded the e-mail.

• Most provide a widget of HTML code that you can add to your Web site that allows visitors to add themselves to your e-mail list.  You can also set up list segments so visitors can select an interest area.

• The most important feature these services offer is the tracking.  You can not only tell open and click-through rates on specific e-mails, you can also tell who opened each link that was included in your e-mail and when.  For data collection and measuring effectiveness - it's invaluable.

• The service I use has a "Spam Check" feature so you can check your e-mail before it's sent to see if it has the potential to be flagged as Spam.

Marin UCCE is also using a service.  They sent an e-mail announcing their Web-only Annual Report.  Using a service allowed them to see who open the e-mail and who clicked on the link to the online report.

This is not a "Web Action Team" product, it's an outside service.  If you want to use a service you need to set up your own account. Monthly billing is based on the size of your list, sometimes in combination with the number of mailings sent per month.  Some offer discounts for paying in advance, some offer a discount to non-profit organizations (like ours).

When doing my research, I found this site that reviews the top 10 services.