I also provide production of email campaigns from the content you provide, or I can hook you up with a copywriter.

Email marketing consulting and coaching in email marketing best practices, list building ideas, etc. is available.

Typically I charge $80 for email production (per send), template design is $247; other services are separately priced per project. Please contact me by email or call toll-free 877 424 9269 Mon-Fri 9:30am-4:00pm EST to discuss your needs.

It sounds to me that your priority is ease of use. If that’s the case I highly recommend MadMimi. They have the easiest-to-use email editor I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. If you can use a computer you’ll be able to use MadMimi.

MadMimi will allow you to create as many lists as you need, e.g. one for your clients, one for your prospects who sign up on your web site. As with any of the services you mentioned (Aweber, ConstantContact, etc.) you will need some basic HTML skills to add a sign up form to your site. With MadMimi you can create several sign up forms, each adding subscribers to a different list. This is not possible with Constant Contact, unless they’ve changed this recently.

MadMimi is my top recommendation also because of their best-in-class customer support. If you ever have a question you will be able to chat online or on the phone with a real person.

As for video, one word of caution: you won’t be able to actually send video with your emails, as most email programs your subscribers might use do not support this. However, using any of these Email Service Providers you will be able to send an email containing a link to your video (which may be hosted by a third party, such as YouTube, or hosted on your own web site)

Some email services, such as Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, will automatically show a preview of a link to a YouTube video in your email newsletters.

I hope this makes you choice easier, but please, do not hesitate to contact me, via this page or directly, in case you have any questions, or need help setting up your ESP account of choice.

Which one would allow this and also let me have video in all my newsletters and a link back to my site. I mostly need to a service that is very easy to use.

Thank you for stopping by my blog.

From the description of your business(es) I’d say you definitely want to pick an Email Service Provider which has the ability to create multiple auto-responders. An auto-responder is simply a set of pre-written emails that are sent out to a subscriber on a set schedule, e.g. the moment someone signs up for one of your seminars (or buys a product) they will receive the 1st message in the auto-responder sequence. Two days later they will receive the 2nd one, etc. You set the schedule to whatever makes sense. You can even use auto-responders to deliver e-courses, chapters of a book, or other electronic content.

There are 3 auto-responder services which I have used in the past, and recommend:

• Aweber
• GetResponse
• iContact

They compete well in terms of features and price, so I’d suggest you try them out to see which seems easiest to use.

Having multiple businesses should be no problem, as most of these services allow you to create “campaigns” for each business, then when you want to send an email you simply select the the appropriate campaign (or “personality,” if you will).

If you’re after simplicity and ease of use, then I’d recommend MadMimi. Their service is also half the price of Aweber, but you’re limited to one auto-responder per account (just like in ConstantContact). However, you can get around this limitation by creating sub-accounts for your different businesses, or products. MadMimi also has the best customer service I’ve ever had the pleasure of dealing with, bar none.

As for payments, the simplest solution is to use PayPal. It is widely recognized and accepted.

If your web site is by any chance a WordPress blog (which I highly recommend) then get yourself a shopping cart plugin, and also consider setting up an affiliate program using this affiliate plugin. These two plugins work nicely together and are compatible with PayPal.

I agree that the more you invest in your online infrastructure, the better your results are going to be in the long run, however, with greater complexity comes a longer learning curve. You can always start small and then add things as you learn, as someone famously said: “It’s better to do things poorly to start with, then to wait until it’s perfect.”

This article is probably the best one I’ve come across so far because it gets technical and I want to know those technical and “down the road” things that I will need to consider down the road.

At “Point A”, it is easy to go for ease, price, and what everyone else uses.

But somewhere in my journey I know that I will start to get nitty gritty with details and wonder what those things are so that I can accommodate a growing following and product line. Someone wrote this to me:

“The problem with Constant Contact is that as you grow your business online (with information products and teleseminars), Constant Contact does not allow you to have multiple autoresponder emails. That’s going to be a serious problem if you want an online business. If you have a shopping cart with AR capability, you’ll be okay. But if you only have something like PayPal, Constant Contact will be a huge pain in your rear. That’s why I recommend Aweber….their customer service is awesome and you’ll have so much more functionality that serves an online business”

I don’t know what all that means but it was helpful to see down the road. My particular business is going to be both online and in person. At this point - a lot of it online with tele-classes, newsletters, programs that are online based (not necessarily in real time). From what I know of my business now (i’m just starting out in this new field) these are my needs:

1. I want to keep stats of my newsletters and emails so I can tweak my copy to gain the results I seek.

2. My customers need to have an easy option to pay for services.

3. I do want to conduct multiple campaigns, classes and products at one time. So I am wondering if these products can keep track of these things separately.

4. Also, I have multiple businesses. Do I use one account for all my businesses?

5. I like the ease of CC and have heard from many that Aweber is hard to use. But is the investment in learning it better for the long run based on what is commented above and in some of the comments in your post?

Thank you so much for untangling this headache!

I’m a health coach and LOVE business - it all shouldn’t be so hard!

Aloha from Hawaii,
Lisa

Which is better: MadMimi or iContact? It would depend on your needs. If you’re looking for the easiest-to-use tool for publishing your newsletter or promotional emails, then I’d go with MadMimi.

If you need multiple auto-responders attached to multiple lists, or you’d like to use surveys then go with iContact.

I use both myself. Most of my self-serve clients use MadMimi, advanced users prefer iContact.

Regardless of the list size, but taking into consideration all the other factors you mentioned, I’d say MadMimi wins for ease of use and simplicity. Throw in the best customer support service and you can’t miss going with Mimi. At only $8/month for up to 500 contacts it’s as close to a free lunch as you can get.