Email Marketing Basics: Sign up with an Email Service Provider

by | Jul 11, 2008 | Email Delivery Best Practices, Email Marketing, Email Service Providers | 1 comment

Using an Email Service Provider instead of your PC to send your email marketing messages. Here are some reasons why this is a good ideaL

  • Sending email is all ESPs do – email is their livelihood and they will do their utmost to help you deliver your email.
  • Turn on the double opt in option if it’s not already so. This will provide you with a clean list of active email addresses, whose owners are actually interested in hearing from you.
  • Use the spam test option that’s usually built in – ask your ESP about it.
  • Remove bounced addresses promptly – ISPs like Yahoo, MSN, EarthLink, for example, will punish you for repeatedly trying to send to an non-existing address. Many ESPs do this automatically for you.
  • Give your subscribers a choice of receiving HTML or PLAIN TEXT emails.

Most of these tasks are done automatically, behind the scenes by your ESP.

Recommended Toolkit: Email Service Providers that I use and recommend are Aweber, GetResponse and 1ShoppingCart  which also have auto-responder services. For simple and easy e-mail newsletters, I recommend ConstantContact.

1 Comment

  1. Boris Mahovac - Your Ezine Coach
    Boris Mahovac - Your Ezine Coach on Aug 18, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    For the last couple of months I’ve been following the developments at MadMimi.com, a newcomer to the ESP scene. I like very much what I see and wholeheartedly recommend them. They offer a free service to anyone who is just starting with e-newsletter publishing, if you have fewer than 100 subscribers! Their paid service options start at only $12/month with no long-term commitments, and you can send unlimited ezines to up to 5,000 subscribers. Ezine creation is so simple that MadMimi should get a prize for its tool.