So your vertical response platform of choice shouldn’t be a choice at all, right? AWeber for the win!

But not so fast. Whenever something comes at a price, there should be a question we as potential customers are always asking: is there something out there that’s not only better, but cheaper? Let’s take a look at five email marketing options not named AWeber and see which might be the best “alternative” for you.

1. iContact

Here at Clickfire we wrote in our iContact review that iContact is concerned not only with the function of vertical response, but the visuals as well. Sending out an email newsletter, after all, is a visual experience unless your emails make more noise than mine do. iContact differentiates itself from the mainstream boys like AWeber by making things easy on the eye – and that’s exactly what some people prefer.

If you’ve got an online business or presence that needs to worry more about how your brand looks than how its newsletter operates, this might be the vertical response software for you.

2. Constant Contact

The beauty of Constant Contact is that they immediately make a name as an AWeber alternative with the classic offer: try them out for free. Sure, it’s not hard to find free trials of online services these days, but Constant Contact’s 60-day free trial is noteworthy enough that it alone should merit your consideration.

Constant Contact’s features are all there, and the pricing plan – once you enter day sixty-one, that is – is affordable and definitely a great alternative to the likes of AWeber. Should you decide to opt for Constant Contact, you’ll likely wonder why you considered many other alternatives.

3. StreamSend

StreamSend, although somewhat difficult to pronounce, definitely sets itself up as an AWeber alternative by adding plenty of features. After all, it’s hard to miss the big guy like AWeber if you find someone else that gives you all the goods.

All of the features, from analytics and full-on email crafting, are here – but it’s not any one particular thing that StreamSend does that merits your consideration as making it your AWeber alternative. It’s the combination and the compilation of all of these features that ends up hitting the home run.

4. JangoMail

We like the catchy name, as you found out our JangoMail review, and although the actual email editor looks like it belongs in the late 1990′s-Internet, the combination of price, features, and overall quality were enough to give a general thumbs-up for yet another AWeber alternative.

How does JangoMail make it happen? A simple pricing plan that’s fair, solid analytics and of course, the aforementioned email editor that does everything AWeber is capable of. JangoMail might sound like a simple but catchy younger brother to AWeber but it packs a more powerful punch than that.

5. myEmma

Emma (review), located at myEmma.com, is the email marketing solution that you should really give a second look at. It’s not only a considerable AWeber alternative, but it’s an alternative to the four other email marketing solutions we’ve already listed.

Why? It’s focused on the visuals, and makes a perfect way to brand your email newsletter as a small business. You can essentially “download” all their good stuff for immediate use and look like a quirky professional within a matter of minutes. Is that enticing enough to leave AWeber? For certain businesses it is.

The point of all the above is to demonstrate that while AWeber is a fine choice as your email marketing solution, there’s a lot more to the story if you’re just willing to dig a little and find out what else is out there. Today’s web isn’t all about the one or two companies doing it right (cough – unless you’re talking about Google – cough), but the multitude of options you have on your plate. Make the best use of them.

SEO has never been an easy job. In fact, it is arguably one of the most difficult jobs out there in the world of computing. Why? Well, simply because it changes so often and there is no exact formula to achieving the first page rankings that so many companies desire. It is also an extremely competitive industry and one that requires a well organised, smart, up-to-date SEO campaign in order to be successful.

You might think that you’ve got your SEO campaign covered and this may very well be the case, but for how long? In an industry that moves forward as quickly as SEO, you need to be one step ahead of the competition and the search engines if you want long term rankings, but how do you do this? The answer; with video.

Strangely, very few SEO’s appear to be using video in their campaigns at all. Many of them are viewing it as “the latest trend” but it’s much more than that. Video is almost certainly the future of the web and those SEO’s that haven’t yet realised the huge benefits of video are going to quickly fall victim to the competition with SEO’s that have.

Don’t believe me? Here’s 4 reasons why your SEO campaign is truly doomed without video.

#1 – People Love Video

Let’s face it, people love watching videos online and it’s doubtful this is going to change any time soon. Take the recent success of viral sensation, Gangnam Style for example. This video is closing in on a billion views which is crazy when you take into consideration that the global population currently stands at just under 7 billion.

Of course, people love a lot of things; chocolate, money, gold, the love of a beautiful woman/man and you might be thinking; “why should I care what people love? I’m just an SEO after all”. The answer to this question is because that’s your job!

Think about it. Why do you spend hours writing a guest post? Because people love reading great content and will likely link back to it if they love it. Why do you create stunning infographics? Because people love information presented in a visually appealing way and will often share this. SEO is all about creating what people love as this is what attracts attention and inevitably leads to high quality links to your website.

#2 – Google Owns YouTube

What’s the one search engine that every SEO is trying to please? That’s right, Google. It’s the Google algorithm updates that everyone pays attention to and we have to remember, Google owns YouTube.

Why is this important? Well, firstly, it shows the faith that Google has in online video content. Since Google bought the site back in 2006, daily video views have escalated to over 4 billion views per day (and this was reported back in January 2012) and Google has started incorporating YouTube results into their organic search results. Secondly, YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world (only second to Google). This means there are more searches every day on YouTube than on Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com or any other search engine. Obviously, this means people are searching for video content regularly which presents a huge opportunity for SEO’s and online marketers.

YouTube video views have been rising at an exceptionally high rate since the site first launched and there is no sign of this slowing any time soon. This further emphasises the point that video really is the future of the internet.

#3 – Online Video And Social Networks Are A Match Made In Heaven

As an SEO, you know just how important “social signals” are to Google and other search engines these days. Social shares on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks show that people are actually engaging with your content and therefore, your content must be high quality and also something that Google should be recommending to their users.

Obviously, getting genuine social shares is not an easy task, even with exceptional written content. However, it seems to be a completely different story with video. How many times have you seen a video in your Facebook or Twitter feed? Probably quite a few as people are constantly sharing videos; I see them on a daily basis.

Clearly, as more people see your video, it is going to attract more attention. This can often be media or press attention which can mean a nice, juicy link from their highly authoritative website.

#4 – Your Most Fierce Competitors Are Already Using Video

You know what they say, the early bird catches the worm and when it comes to video and SEO, this might not be far wrong.

Every industry has competitors, both online and offline, and it is quite likely that your most fierce competitors are already using video in their SEO campaigns. The truth is that if you ignored every advancement in SEO (such as the importance of high quality guest posts, social signals etc), your competitors would soon start ranking a lot higher than you and quite soon, you (or your client) would start to lose out on a lot of business.

If you don’t start thinking about video now, you’ll have a lot of catching up to do when you realise that your competitors have already gone through the lengthy process of having a video produced and have also started to integrate it into their SEO campaign, resulting in an influx of highly authoritative links to their site.

Sure, you can try and copy them at this point but the fact you didn’t act first means you’ve already lost the battle. It means your competitors are more “on the ball” and are likely going to be one step ahead of you in terms of SEO for the foreseeable future.

The Final Word

Incorporating video into your SEO strategy isn’t as hard as you might think. You can start by setting up a YouTube channel, sharing your video on social media profiles, adding your video to business directories and of course, your own website. The more of a buzz your content generates, the more attention, links and ultimately sales it’s going to generate for your business.

Remember, you don’t necessarily have to spend thousands on a professional production to create something your target audience will relate to. In fact, some of the most successful viral ads in the world were produced on shoestring budgets. So long as you create something that represents the personality of your business and appeals to your target market, you’re good to go.

Image Credit: Id Software LLC

It’s not a bad approach, and it certainly has its appeal with today’s savvy Web 2.0 crowd, the type of user who expects just about anything and everything to integrate with Twitter and Facebook. And while many vertical response platforms are capable of integrating with social media profiles, few place the emphasis in the sales pitch – and then the execution – like GetResponse.

Of course, that’s not the only characteristic that makes for a quality vertical response service. You need the whole picture: quality in features and in services. GetResponse delivers on all fronts while providing an easy-to-understand pricing system to seal the entire deal. Basically, GetResponse is an excellent service that you’d be proud to recommend to friends. For my part, I’m happy to recommend it to you. In this GetResponse review, you’ll learn why.

The Features Make the Sale

Many email marketing services advertise their individual features as a litany of reasons you should make the purchase at their site. GetResponse’s features are so well-developed they’re listed in feature type and still impressive. Among their features you’ll find split testing, voice messages, video email marketing, social media integration, iPhone app integration, online surveys, hundreds of templates, unlimited follow-up messages: it’s a cornucopia of GetResponse goodness and it happens even if you’re going with their minimal price plan. Worth noting is the fact that users can pick up the phone and talk to a real person for support.

It’s a good start.

The entire list of features explains how GetResponse works: it’s basically a do-everything-at-once email marketing service that allows you virtually limitless options for how you construct your marketing campaign.

If you’re an avid Twitter user and want everything to run through there, you should have no problems doing that. If you’re all about the templates and need to create a really attractive email message, GetResponse has you covered. If you’re a marketing geek who’s all about the analytics, you can run split tests to your heart’s desire. It’s really all there for you.

Of course, none of this would really matter if the interface and control panel were tough nuts to crack. You don’t want all of those excellent features hidden behind a thick shell. But there’s nothing about the GetResponse interface that will trip you up any more than the other services out there – heck, I think it’s probably easier to navigate than AWeber. Issues like choosing signup forms and browsing through HTML templates are really not issues at all.

If we’re going to evaluate the entirety of the GetResponse service, we’re going to have to be comprehensive and remember that none of this really matters without a solid price. And while we’re accustomed to “getting what we’re paid for,” there’s another pleasant surprise in this area of GetResponse’s strengths.

GetResponse and GetPaying

First, I have to get it off my chest: there is one major – major – advantage to the GetResponse pricing structure that catapults it up into 5/5 stars territory.

Free? Yes, free!

It’s the option to always use GetResponse for free. Yes, there are limitations – you can only host up to 100 subscribers for that price – but this is such a rare offer in the world of email marketing that it genuinely excites me. If you’re serious about building a subscriber list that’s bigger than 100 members, then you can afford the next-highest tier.

But if you simply want to indulge your curiosity and sign up with GetResponse right now, the always-free option should confirm that you’ve made a good decision.

Simple? Yes, simple!

The rest of the pricing structure over at GetResponse doesn’t disappoint. The structure is easy to understand and the prices are fair and modest. $9.95 monthly is all it will cost you for the first non-free tier, in which you can get up to 200 subscribers and send unlimited emails.

And, yes, that does mean all of the higher pricing tiers include unlimited emails, as well. Score one for the frequent emailers.

If this isn’t an exciting price plan for you, it’s probably because you’re focused on the limitations of the free option. Yes, there are limitations. But there’s no limit on how long you can continue to keep your email list free, provided you retain a small email list. If you’re building something even greater, then you probably don’t have to worry about the price of your email marketing software anyway.

If you’re interested in more options for a free service, then you can check out Constant Contact‘s 60-day free trial, which gives you plenty of time to indulge your email sweet tooth without so much a commitment as giving them a credit card number. But GetResponse also facilitates your desire for “free” in a mostly satisfying way.

Get GetResponse

I’m not going to tell you which email platform to use, because there are a lot of advantages to the different 5/5 star-rated ones you can find here at Clickfire. The aforementioned Constant Contact’s excellent free trial is worth a look, for example. But GetResponse’s permanent free trial is a great way to “dip your toes in the water,” so to speak, and should introduce you to a really professional, simple experience that grants you access to a lot of features you never even knew you wanted.

That’s a fancy way of saying that you get lots of stuff at GetResponse. Lots of integrations, lots of features, lots of abilities. It’s email marketing done right, and if you want your email list to reflect someone who knows what they’re doing, then you’re going to want to use a service like GetResponse. Everything is attractive and easy enough to use that there’s really no excuse: even newbies should have no problems with the initial introductions.

GetResponse is by Simon Grabowski’s Implix and is an example of something that nails just about every feature possible: quality, quantity, and pricing. If you’re looking for a better email campaign manager out there, you might want to quit before the going gets tough and simply opt with a service like GetResponse.

Rating:

GetResponse Free Account

And other people prefer the littler guys: services like JangoMail. Providing quality email management services for a regular, predictable fee is just about all you want out of your email marketer, and JangoMail delivers by being upfront about its offerings and its pricing structure. And heck, after reviewing ExactTarget, that sounds like a prospect that’s downright refreshing.

But in order to refresh properly, JangoMail’s got to deliver the goods – and deliver them at a reasonable price. Throughout thisJangoMail review, we’ll take a look at JangoMail’s features and stack them up together for an overall impression of an email marketing service that just might be exactly what you – and I – have been looking for.

Features, Features, Features

You can kind of tell how good an email marketing service will be by how upfront they are about their features. Yes, I’m very adamant about this principle, but it’s not a bad one.

Are they vague about them, preferring to tell you instead of what benefits you’ll receive by signing up to their service? Or are their feature pages more like JangoMail’s, using the service’s own characteristics as a selling point?

I obviously prefer the JangoMail approach because you know what you’re getting into before you even start. That’s good news if you don’t have a free trial opportunity – although JangoMail does, but more on that later. The list of features on JangoMail is impressive and rivals any of the bigger-name email platforms out there. Issues like transactional emails, HTML emails, analytics, email deliverability – it’s all there in plain English.

As for my experience, I was able to sign up for the free trial within about a minute of deciding that I would (which, of course, means no credit card required! Yes!). It wasn’t long before I was using services like the email editor, as you can see here:

Okay, so it’s not the most attractive editor ever – and the entire control panel kind of looks like that – but if it gets the job done, it gets the job done. With all of the features present in JangoMail’s offerings, it looks like that will be the case for a vast majority of email marketing customers out there.

An email marketing service like JangoMail is really only superior to its competition, however, if it can deliver on two basic principles of product quality: overall functionality and price. Before we get into the price of JangoMail, let’s take a further look at the features and see if truly stacks up to the competition.

…and More Features, Features, Features

JangoMail’s main attraction being its laundry list of features, that’s what this review is focusing on. The simple fact is that JangoMail has all of the little nooks and crannies that you’d expect from a quality email manager. While JangoMail explains in its FAQ section that the reason to go with an email campaign manager rather than send out your own emails is that using a manager allows for features like avoiding spam folders and sending out emails to a lot of different people, there’s more to the story than that.

Features like editing your “From” bar to easy HTML editing, or tracking campaign performance via analytics and building different sections of your list are all part of the standard “list” of services provided by most email managers. But it’s not a good email manager unless it provides the goods on all of these features. JangoMail does.

Other features you’ll find include the usual – sign-up forms, automated responders, list scrubbers – to the slightly more obscure and technical – database connectivity and the API/web service. While not any one particular feature will jump out at you as shock-inducing, you’ll probably find that the overall result of all these features is that you’re comfortable you’ve purchased a product that can handle just about all of your demands.

Pricing Structure

But lest this review of JangoMail crumble like a falling tower of Jenga, the pricing structure put in place really needs to hit the spot.

First, the free trial offer provided by JangoMail is permanent, which puts it immediately in the upper echelon of email marketers with something free to give away. You know Clickfire.com loves free, and since JangoMail offers its services for free up to 200 emails – a number I haven’t yet seen – there’s clearly a bargain to be had here.

As far as the paid pricing structure goes, there’s nothing really out of the ordinary in either a good or a bad way. Sending up to 1,000 emails will cost $15, and then $25 for up to 2,500 emails, all the way up to $3,200 for 616,000 emails. It’s the pricing structure we’ve all come to expect from an email marketing manager: it’s not pay as you go, it’s pay as you grow. I think many of us are fine with that.

Conclusions and Recommendations

JangoMail is basically what I expected: a quality service stacked with features that offers a decent pricing plan. There’s really not much more to the equation than that, unless you count the stellar free trial account – something just about anyone starting off with email marketing will want to employ.

Whether you’ll still like JangoMail after your list grows to 201 subscribers and you need to start paying will be your own affair, but for those first 200 subscriptions it’s reasonable to expect you’ll find yourself learning a lot about how email marketing works. That’s just how JangoMail puts it together: there are a lot of ways to explore your own strategies and tools, and there are enough of each that you shouldn’t get bored.

JangoMail’s a great service for the beginner also because of simplicity and a bare-bones approach to the overall interface. You might move on to more sophisticated and stylish email marketing managers later, but for now, who cares? You’ve got JangoMail to work on.

Rating:

Making money online is easy… well not as easy as the pic suggests

Think you’ve got to be a web genius to make money on the Internet? Think again. There are tons of ways to make money on the Internet and here are just a few to chew on. The “MMO” possibilities are infinite on the world wide web. Pick one and make it happen.

1. Ecommerce: sell your product on eBay or your very own website

2. Affiliate Marketing: sign up free with networks like Commission Junction, LinkShare and Shareasale

3. Graphic Design: learn the basics and charge for service

4. Writing: charge webmasters for your content (use Elance or oDesk)

5. PayPal: ask friends or site visitors to donate to your account

6. Blogging: monetize by putting up ads that are relevant to your content

7. Create a Membership Site: charge for your content or services

8. Email List Marketing: sell your product to the contacts you buy

9. Create AdSense Sites: any website can bring in nominal ad revenue

10.  Sell Domains: buy domains that will accrue value over time, sell at a premium later

11.  Self-publish a Book: sell it on Amazon or to an eReader publisher

12.  Create a Recurring Podcast: put it for sale on iTunes

13.  YouTube: become a partner

14.  SEO: use your personal or professional experience to charge for consulting

15.  Online Consulting: start a company and recruit clients

16.  Create a Web Tool: like a plugin or WordPress theme

17.  Crafting: sell your homemade goods online at sites like Etsy

18.  Photography: sell stock photos online at istockphoto.com

19.  Journalism: write for a respected news magazine or paper online

20.  Fiverr.com: sell any service for $5

21.  Transcription: transcribe audio files for cash

22.  Create a Viral Video: promote it on TubeMogul.com

23.  Tutoring: teach others another language or skill online for a cost

24.  Build Niche Websites: sell them on flippa.com

25.  Promotion: help build local business online for a fee

26.  Software Installation: offer help online for a small price

27.  Interviewing: know any interesting professionals? Conduct interviews and sell them

28.  Get Creative: create and sell Twitter and MySpace backgrounds and ebook covers

29.  Are You Musical?: record a song then sell downloads online

30.  Use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: Get paid for doing HITs – Human Intelligence Tasks

31.  Life Coaching: it’s a great service to sell online

32.  Virtual Assistant: web workers need people to do their grunt work

33.  Be a Reviewer: sites will pay for reviews with cash or goods

34.  Build a Twitter Network: then sell your tweets to marketers

35.  Mystery Shopping: sign up, review, and get paid online

36.  Craigslist: great place to offer a service for a fee (think driving, painting, etc.)

37.  Logo Design: create some logos and sell them at places like digitalpoint forums

38.  Surveys: online survey houses pay in gift cards and cash for your time and input

39.  Get Design Savvy: sell your talent to t-shirt and promotional companies

40.  Good at Games?: build up a MMORPG account and sell or trade it

41.  Reward Programs: you can earn cash by shopping like usual

42.  Love Social Networking?: sell your expertise to small companies

43.  Directory Sites: set up a local business directory online

44.  Photo Editing: get good at Photoshop and sell your editing services to brides and photographers

45.  Forums: charge to host or moderate online forums

46.  Focus Groups: researchers are always looking for participants and usually pay

47.  Become an Expert: be the best in some online field then charge for appearances or instructional lessons

48.  Data Entry: work from the keyboard at home and earn cash

49.  Develop Software: if you find it useful, someone else will, too (and they’ll pay!)

50.  Translate: if you speak another language, translate documents online

51.  Become a Tester: review things like games, websites and software

52.  Blog Commenting: be a paid contributor

53.  PLR Articles: write Private Label Rights articles and resell them

54.  Be a Promoter: sell your social networking abilities for a fee

55.  Jury Duty: become an online juror

56.  Create Videos: offer to create videos for weddings, retirements and corporate functions

57.  Take Good Lecture Notes: then sell them online to fellow students

58.  Be an Editor: sell proofreading or editing services on the web

59.  eMagazine: start a monthly web publication and eventually charge for membership

60.  Apps: create and monetize a mobile phone app

61.  Admin: perform network administration services remotely

62.  Become a Critic: review a local field on a personal blog and trade the advertising for things like free meals or movie tickets

63.  Provide Research: do the legwork and fact-checking for people

64.  Email Handling: find someone to pay you to sort and respond to emails

65.  Create a Design Template: sell it at sitepoint.com or digitalpoint.com

66.  Illustrate: sell your designs online or to production houses

67.  AV Expertise: sell your audio/visual production services

68.  Voiceovers: offer your voice online for the blind

69.  PowerPoints: create professional PowerPoints for business and students

70.  Site Audit: offer to perform a content and SEO audit of a website in need of updating

71.  Create Link Bait: design Infographics or Top 10 Lists then offer them to relevant businesses

72.  Customer Support: perform job duties online from home

73.  Tech Support: know a lot about computers? Offer 24/7 tech support for a fee

74.  Order Processing: businesses will pay you to perform these tasks

75.  Move Websites: Offer to migrate website files or databases like websitemovers.com

76.  Blog for Fun: blog daily about something you love to build a valuable audience

77.  Multi-Level Marketing: build and SEO a site to garner MLM interest and signups

78.  Install CMS: help people install things like WordPress

79.  Join Pay To Surf Programs: Yes, some companies pay you for this

80.  Telemarketing: all you need is a phone and an Internet connection

81.  The Big Idea: sell a service through your niche website and take a percentage like SendUsOff.com

82.  Sell Keyword Research: learn Google Analytics and crunch some numbers

83.  Recipes: love to cook? Sell your recipes to food websites

84.  Online Newsletter: offer to create, update and run a company’s monthly newsletter

85.  Get Online: if you’ve got a brick-and-mortar company, it’s time to get rolling on an online component

86.  Invest: research and trade stocks online day to day for quick returns

87.  Personal Shopper: online shop for people for a fee

88.  Job Counseling: help searchers find jobs in a specific field

89.  Be the Middleman: if you’ve got the inroads, connect buyers to sellers (think linkedin.com)

90.  Sweepstakes: the law of averages says if you enter tons of online contents, you’ll eventually win

91.  Wake-up Call: offer to email or call in reminders to people like a personal secretary

92.  Build a Database: fill it with useful info and sell it at odditysoftware.com

93.  How-To Videos: educate people (think: dog training, baking, make-up application) through videos you lace with paid ads

94.  Swap: use networking or classified sites to barter and trade goods

95.  Shop for Cash: utilize online promotions to score gift cards and cash discounts when you shop

96.  Link Broker: become a link dealer for SEO and webhosting companies to use

97.  Sell Domains: offer to help manage the resale of unused websites for a commission

98.  Map Sites: Update map information regularly in exchange for credits that can be used as cash

99.  Summarize: read books and watch movies then summarize for sites like SparkNotes.com

100. Travel: offer to be a paid online travel reviewer for sites like Frommer’s or Lonely Planet

101. Media Monitoring: have companies pay you to monitor their online media mentions

Emma, believe it or not, is one of them. They’ve been able to find and exploit a neat little niche not simply by offering email marketing solutions, but by crafting these solutions around a specific type of customer: someone who wants their email campaigns to, well, look cute.

I know the name Emma just sounds cute, but that’s just effective branding on their part: everything about the service is warm, from the stylish, customized-to-your-brand email templates to the way they package all of their features and pricing into a neat PDF for all to enjoy.

So if anyone asks me for an email marketing solution with which they can market their chocolate truffle or teddy bear business, I’ve got the answer for them. And despite a few complaints you’ll read about in this Emma review, I like that.

Looking Good, Emma

Why the love for Emma in particular? Certainly there’s no shortage of email managers that offer design help for your email templates. But if you’re going with Emma as your email manager, I imagine that it’s because this is specifically what you’re looking for, rather than icing on the cake.

That’s because Emma’s designs are among the best I’ve been able to review and not only that, but Emma makes it simple to procure these services. (Sure, simple costs a bit of money, but that’s not what we’re talking about right this instant, you overzealous follower of frugality). In fact, Emma actually recommends starting off with a custom design in order to kick-start your email list building services, which might sound like it comes off a bit scammy but is actually done in a rather elegant way. Emma brings me in and actually makes me want to have something cool for them to design a template around.

Okay, why not talk about price? The basic structure you’ll see for the upfront designs are as follows:

• $99 for “Studio Design,” some of the most attractive-looking template designs I’ve seen.
• $249 for “Concierge Design,” pairing you with a designer whose job it is to make your emails look good.
• $399 for the “Design Suite,” which expands on the Concierge design with a number of varying templates.

It might sound like a lot to pay upfront, but when you consider all of the value you can get out of some of these headers and templates – you can even incorporate them into your website as a whole, or use elements of your website to incorporate into your emails – there’s a lot of value packed in here.

And, of course, the price comes this way because you don’t go to Emma for some ordinary run-of-the-mill email marketing campaign. You’ve got to have a specific kind of brand situated in a specific kind of niche for this to make sense. And if you can nail that niche, Emma really helps you to nail the emails.

Technical Details: When Cute Just Isn’t Enough to Satisfy

All of this cuteness abounding in the world of Emma isn’t enough to override certain technical concerns, of course. Email marketing is by its very nature a technological endeavor, and even if your emails look good on the back end that doesn’t mean things always look good from your control room.

Luckily, Emma doesn’t disappoint with its features list, providing many of the same services you should expect from any vertical response platform. Creating surveys, real-time analytics, member management, autoresponders – all of the basics are covered which guarantees your email marketing program won’t have you looking like you’re wearing a well-tailored suit while working at McDonald’s. In other words, the features rise to meet the assertiveness of the strong Emma templates and designs.

A bit of a complaint here, however, is the pricing of these basic features. In the previous section I was okay with shelling out a little dough for a design – I mean, heck, you’re paying to work personally with a designer for a very reasonable price. But when it comes to the email management side of things, the pricing should be a little flatter.

Consider: a monthly volume of 1,000 means you’ll be paying $30, around twice what I’ve seen from other email campaign managers. The prices as they go up the list remain relatively high even after you’ve paid for the customized designs. If Emma’s main appeal are said designs, why do they seem to want to make so much money on the back end?

This isn’t enough to make me reconsider recommending Emma to certain businesses and certain people. But it would mean Emma’s recommendation comes with a caveat: “it can be a little pricey.” Hey, you get what you pay for.

Who Might Like Emma?

And thus we come back to the central theme of this review: what kind of customer is Emma best suited for? I think it’s someone with a particular niche, generally a business that falls in the “online shopping” category. People like their online shops to be warm and inviting. Heck, even if you’re selling an information product like an Ebook, having a well-tailored email will give you an air of professionalism and therefore trust that you can’t simply manufacture.

Emma’s specialty is in tailoring – not manufacturing – that professionalism. It can be a very important thing in the Internet world, and certainly can mean the difference between making a sale and almost making a sale.

If that’s the kind of touch you’re looking for with your emails, you’ll definitely want to consider Emma as a potential vehicle for your vertical response efforts. If it’s not, then heck, why did you bother reading this review this far? Go visit the other Clickfire reviews for something down your alley.

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How can you leverage your content online?

The following is an excerpt from Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed (2011, Wiley) by Patrick Schwerdtfeger. The book has 80 chapters covering dozens of online marketing tactics that deliver results, especially for small business owners and self-employed professionals. The book is being released on June 7th, 2011. Learn more at 80shortcuts.com.

If you’re smart about content creation, you can create it once … and then repurpose it seven different ways! You can literally flood the Internet with your expertise and work less than most of your competition.

Think about your content as either beginner, intermediate, and advanced. The idea is to give the beginner content away for free to demonstrate your expertise and build trust with your audience. Your beginner content becomes your blog posts, your articles, your podcasts and your videos. The intermediate content is free as well, but only in exchange for their email address. Your intermediate content is used to build your list. And your advanced content is what you’re actually selling; it’s where you drive revenue.

Well, your website or blog is the perfect place for some of that beginner content. Try to organize your beginner content into a series of “lessons” and then write an article about each one. Always make sure your articles are at least 500 words long. If you write an article that’s longer than 1,500 words, break it into two separate articles. Are you ready? We’ll be using your articles in seven different ways, maximizing the bang you get for your buck.

If you don’t have your website built yet, don’t worry. The important thing is to realize how your content can be repurposed on the Internet. Knowing this process will help you deploy your online strategy once you start building.

Step 1 – publish on your blog

First, publish your article as a post on your blog. Easy enough. Your blog is the center of your online identity and any content you publish should also be published (or at least summarized) on your blog.

Step 2 – social bookmarking

Second, ask some of your friends to bookmark your new blog post on a few of the large social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. Doing so will introduce your content to a huge audience who then have an opportunity to endorse it and pass it along to others.

Step 3 – blog carnivals

Third, visit BlogCarnival.com and submit your new blog post to a bunch of upcoming blog carnivals. Carnivals are like online magazines. There are large prominent bloggers on the internet who host “carnivals” about one topic or another, and they can feature your blog post within their carnival, exposing your content to their readership in the process.

Step 4 – article directories

Fourth, modify your article slightly and publish it on EzineArticles.com and some of the other article directories on the Internet. You could even use a distribution platform like iSnare.com to get it on hundreds of article directories within days. Each directory will allow you to include a link back to your website so this strategy will result in hundreds of one-way inbound links to your website.

Step 5 – ebook directories

Fifth, summarize your article into a punchy bullet-point PDF file and make sure it includes plenty of links to your website. Upload your new PDF to the many free e-book directories such as ebookdirectory.com or ebook2u.com. Yes, it’s true. There are dozens of e-book directories and their visitors are searching for information. They can find your information . . . but only if you upload it.

Step 6 – audio podcasts

Sixth, read your article into a microphone and record it. Now you have a podcast that you can register on iTunes and dozens of ‘‘podcast directories.’’ Podcasts accumulate incredibly loyal listeners over time with 90% of them listening to your podcasts at the gym, commuting to work or walking their dog. Not only that but audio content does a great job of inspiring trust among listeners.

Step 7 – YouTube videos

Seventh, get a Flip digital video recorder (about $200) and record yourself as you explain the topic you wrote about in your article. Don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Just speak about the concept as if you were explaining it to a friend. Once you’re done, add your website address to the video and upload it to YouTube. Video inspires trust better than any other type of content. And besides, YouTube is the third highest traffic website on the internet (after Google and Facebook).

These seven effective ways to get your beginner content out into the world will cost you next to nothing (except perhaps if you need to invest in the Flip recorder). Yet very few people take advantage of these opportunities to spread their message across the Internet. By following these steps, you can take one piece of beginner content – one lesson – and use it in seven different formats, populating multiple platforms with your expertise.

This is powerful stuff. It’s extremely efficient and caters to the different ways people use the Internet. Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be. Most people think they need to create new content for every platform. No way! That’s too much work. You could write one lesson every week or two and end up with a massive online identity within a few months.

And don’t think I’m not serious simply because I’m rhyming. ExactTarget promises a lot up front, as noted in its tagline: “Email. Mobile. Social. Sites.” That’s a lot of ground to cover, and it means that this review will also have to cover that terrain. Watch out, email marketers of the world: we’re not in Kansas anymore.

So does the ExactTarget system really deliver on its promises? Ah; that’s what you’re going to have to read to find out. Unless, of course, you already noticed our rating up top. But keep reading this ExactTarget review anyway, because you’ll learn what went into that rating and how we came to the conclusion we did.

The Proof Is in the Hubbing

ExactTarget promises a lot. Here it is in its own words:

ExactTarget is a global Software as a Service (SaaS) leader that powers all types of interactive marketing messages – from targeted email marketing, mobile marketing, social media marketing, and landing page marketing – through a single Interactive Marketing Hub. It’s our mission to deliver business results for clients – from small businesses to large enterprises.

Since I don’t like having a lot of services from one company unless they can be simplified into one single source for me, I like the idea of this “Interactive Marketing Hub.” Something tells me that if ExactTarget is going to pull off its high ambitions successfully, that success will rest on the quality of said hub.

As it turns out, this hub is actually quite successful at doing that. What does the “hub” accomplish? Well, you can access the data related to your brand as it relates to the following:

• Social media like Facebook and Twitter
• Your email accounts
• Mobile marketing

These all come with live reports that don’t require refreshing or running specialized reports, which means you save on a lot of time simply by signing into your ExactTarget hub. The prospect of all of this coming together into a single account is attractive, especially if you’re a one-man operation who needs to add marketing prowress without the extra work.

Of course, this is an email marketing service we’re talking about here, which means these features don’t really mean a whole lot for our purposes unless they can also deliver on some pretty quality email campaign management.

As it turns out, ExactTarget is so dead-set that you pay for all of their services that it’s difficult to separate their email campaign management from their marketing management in general. The aforementioned hub is part of the equation, and while ExactTarget hardly qualifies as a dedicated email campaign manager, it at least delivers the goods on all of the other parts of the equation.

Running an email campaign with ExactTarget is not your cup of tea if you’re looking for email campaign management exclusively. If that’s the tree you’re barking up here, you’ll probably want to – heck, you’ll want to switch forests. That’s just not ExactTarget’s bag.

Does ExactTarget Succeed At Its Own Game?

The attractiveness of ExactTarget is closely related to the way it does things, however. Sure, it’s not a dedicated email campaign manager, but if you’re in the market for some quality Interet marketing services in general, you should be open to the idea of this total integration via ExactTarget hub. You might have never thought about social media or mobile marketing before but now that you’ve got it in front of you, the prospect seems simpler and even a little appealing, doesn’t it?

ExactTarget does deliver a lot of a time, remember. And if the price is right, this definitely makes for a more intriguing offer than any run-of-the-mill email campaign manager. But speaking of price, where does ExactTarget exactly figure in to the whole email campaign industry?

Unfortunately, finding the prices at ExactTarget is a labyrinth with no end. And it’s no surprise that this is the case, given that ExactTarget actually doesn’t have a “canned” pricing structure, as one sales associate informed me. After me pressing the issue to find out any number to quote you, my fine Clickfire audience, I was still told that because they don’t have “canned” pricing.

But that not being enough for me still, I was finally told that the “bare minimum” many clients start out at is $1,500 per year, or about $125 per month. They were quoting me for a subscriber list of 1,000, which will yield a significantly lower price at other email marketing services. Clearly ExactTarget is an instance of an otherwise attractive service being ruined by an unfair, unclear, and expensive pricing structure.

Oh, wait, sorry about that. There is no structure.

Conclusions

If you’re looking for a way your small business can measure a lot of things in a lot of places while delivering the information and control to a central hub, ExactTarget is an attractive prospect. But many people don’t necessarily fall into that category. Heck, you might not have the money as a sole proprietorship to shell out ExactTarget kinda dough, no matter how much you want access to that hub.

My advice is that you find an email campaign manager that is much cheaper and where the pricing structure is much more stable and predictable. In fact, some email campaign managers will allow you to use their service for free up until a certain amount of subscribers every month – essentially becoming the opposite of ExactTarget’s price smugness.

But it’s hard to discount the fact that ExactTarget does provide very interesting services that will be very attractive to a lot of people running businesses with a significant online brand. If you’re a small business, handling all of these services for a paltry $125 a month won’t sound too bad. The problem is that some of us aren’t just small businesses; we’re very small businesses. And we need cheaper marketing services.

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Having an e-mail newsletter or autoresponder is not enough to effectively convert visitors into e-mail subscribers. Far too many websites set up an email opt-in form then simply let it go. This is a critical error – you should constantly work to improve your email opt in offer and form to convert more visitors into email subscribers.

How to convert more of your website visitors into email subscribers:

1) Offer a free gift
To effectively convert visitors into subscribers, you need to entice them with something they want. In some cases, you may be able to simply describe the valuable features of your newsletter. In most cases, though, the most effective strategy is to offer a free gift such as an e-book or e-course.

Here’s an example of a free gift from www.rypmarketing.com, our website:

2) Test different free gift offers
If you are already offering newsletter subscribers a free gift, but your offer is still not converting well, you should probably test different gifts. You need to find a gift that appeals to and is highly valued by a broad portion of your website visitors.

In general, a very specific gift converts better than a less specific gift. For example, a free e-book titled “How to drive traffic to your website” may not be very enticing – there are probably thousands of e-books and articles available on the internet with similar titles. If this was your free gift, you might want to try offering an e-book titled “137 Ways To Get More Sales From Your eCommerce Website” for example – it’s a much more specific and appealing free gift.

3) Use a squeeze page
For some websites, you may want to try launching a campaign using a squeeze page – a special landing page designed solely to capture the visitor’s e-mail address. Squeeze pages typically only offer the visitor one option (entering their name and e-mail to get the free gift), so they typically get a noticeably higher e-mail opt in rate.

4) Split test variations in your opt in offer
Never underestimate the power of effective copy to get visitors to do what you want them to do. Running a series of split tests is a must-do strategy to optimize your e-mail opt-in offer to increase subscribers. Here some of the items you should test:

• Headline
• Free gift description
• Text description versus e-book cover graphic
• Form design
• Submit button text/design

5) Find the optimal location
If your e-mail opt in offer/form is “below the fold” on your webpage, your first step should be to move it closer to the top of the page. Next, you can test different locations on the page to see which one works best – header, right sidebar, left sidebar, etc.

Ensure your opt-in form is above the fold on your website, as shown in this example:

6) Create an an unobtrusive pop-up
Many website visitors hate pop-up windows, as they are rather annoying. When determining if and how to implement a pop-up your e-mail opt in offer, there are three items you should consider:

Pop-ups work. Implementing your offer as a pop-up will very likely increase your opt-in rate.

Balance your goals. If your website is an e-commerce site, a popup may distract users from making a purchase. If your website is a free content website, you may not be as concerned about the possibility of distracting users.

Be unobtrusive. There are some great pop-ups and similar options you can implement that are far less annoying than a typical pop-up. These options include things such as a bar which floats at the bottom of the browser or a peel back corner of the website.

An example of a popup bar from www.dpopup.com (great popup creation software, by the way):

7) Add subscribe options
If you have other forms on your website (such as a request a quote form or shopping cart checkout), adding an e-mail subscription option to them is a fast and easy way to get more e-mail opt-ins. Depending on the form, you can either subscribe users to your newsletter by default, or you can add a checkbox for them to choose to subscribe.

Conclusion
Don’t make the mistake of setting up your e-mail opt-in then ignoring it. Make it a priority each month to convert more website visitors into e-mail subscribers. Increasing your e-mail opt in conversion rate allows you to get more e-mail subscribers without spending any more money on marketing or advertising.

Many of the strategies listed in this article can be implemented immediately. Others take time or ongoing testing. I recommend creating a strategy to implement at least one new experiment or split test every month to continually be improving your opt in conversion rate.

I would love to hear your input – what have you done to increase your e-mail opt in conversion rate?

But before we get ahead of ourselves in the world of Constant Contact, we’ll have to dig deeper and ensure that the free trial isn’t just a mirage for what is ultimately a bad service. You get what you pay for, after all. In this review we’re going to take you through the features of the Constant Contact service and weigh it against the leading competitors like AWeber. If it’s time for you to update your online marketing skillset, this may be the resource for you. But you’ll have to keep reading to find out.

Hey, we never said this Constant Contact review wouldn’t tease you.

The Constant Contact High

Upon first impression, Constant Contact sounds more like a Mixed Martial Arts principle than an email marketing service, but one visit to the site and one quick signup into their free trial are all you need to change your perceptions dramatically.

Why? Because you get all of the features – off the bat – that you’d find at the other leading email campaign managers like AWeber. For example, all the usual suspects are here, including:

• Email campaign analytics with the basics: seeing how many people opened your email
• HTML templates for your emails
• Easy interface and editing
• Variable-rate pricing based on the size of your email list

Okay, so I’m not a big fan of the last one, but this is par for the course when it comes to email campaign managing platforms. Besides, the conventional wisdom tells us, the bigger your list is, the more money you’re making and the more money you’re making, the more you can afford. Still, would it kill a service to produce a more flat program usage fee? Other programs have flat-rate licenses; why not the AWebers and Constant Contacts of the world?

But before I go on the pricing rant (this often happens when I have to pay monthly fees for anything), let’s continue to focus on the features. And there’s more than e-mail marketing features present here, as you’ll see at Constant Contact’s site with a quick hop over. Constant Contact integrates marketing concepts like event planning, social media – they’re very big on the social media – and online surveys.

Granted, not all of these features will have a use to you. If you’re a small business or sole proprietorship, there’s a good chance you’re not going to be hosting any major events that require big event planning beyond the basic Facebook invite. And online surveys? What, are you going to tell your customers that they can get free “stuff” by filling out a few forms? Not all of the features here are for everybody, but it’s always nice to know you have them in case you do have the genuine need.

Overall, Constant Contact delivers all of these features with simplicity and style, the combination that’s near and dear to my heart. They also offer free phone support, which means you won’t have to worry about having any troubles even when you’re on the 60-day free trial.

And besides, when you’re talking about a relatively inexpensive platform that delivers on all of these features at once, one can definitely see the appeal. And what about that inexpensiveness?

Pricing: The Final Frontier

If Constant Contact delivers all of the above, then pricing is the last place it can break my heart. How does it stack up?

It’s great. First, you have the aforementioned 60-day free trial, a credit card-less signup form taking you to two month’s worth of fine Internet features so accommodating you wonder how you ever did with them before. Is that an endorsement? You bet it is. If you want to have an email list for free for two months, Constant Contact is definitely the place to go. I only wish I’d had this knowledge when I created short-lived email lists in the past.

But the free trial, like all of us, is mortal and eventually comes to an end. So what’s the pricing like once you get past the initial fun of having great service without any cost?

It’s not a dramatic upswing, which is surprising considering how easy it would be for Constant Contact to go the upsell route. The bottom tier is set at $15/month, and this will get you a list of up to 500 subscribers. Let’s go up the pricing tiers here:

• $30/month: 501-2,000 subscribers
• $50/month: 2,501-5,000 subscribers
• $75/month: 5,001-10,000 subscribers
• $150/month: 10,001-25,000 subscribers
• More than 25,000 subscribers: “Call for pricing”

It’s almost like they’re daring you to build a list of over 25,000 subscribers. But you get the idea: the pricing is flat, predictable, and reasonable for what you’re getting, especially as you build a larger subscriber network worthy of such heftier monthly bills.

I find this to compare favorably with sites like AWeber, and for all of the services you’re getting at Constant Contact (not to mention the first two months free), I’d say Constant Contact wins out.

Conclusions

Overall, I’m very impressed with Constant Contact. It’s got generous features, generous pricing, a more-than-generous free trial that doesn’t try to sneak you into the backend of their system, and they do it all with an ease-of-use that more marketing platforms should strive for. Basically Constant Contact should be considered one of your top picks if you’re looking at email marketing platforms on the cheap, and certainly should be considered as your long-term solution as well.

I’ll keep Constant Contact in mind for any future endeavors concerning an email list, and if you don’t, then have fun with whatever inferior service you’re using. Because I know me (and my business) will be just fine.

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Constant Contact Free 60-Day Trial.