e_Marketing

I've been doing a series of overviews of different Email marketing systems for posting in the Linknet Marketing Forum. Of course this always takes longer than you think it is going to.

In my first article called Some Email Marketing Systems" I laid out some criteria for selecting an effective system, and then had a look at AWeber.com - one of the leading autoresponder companies on the net.

In my next article I intend to look at GetResponse.com, which is another service I use on a regular basis. Even though I regularly use GetResponse.com and actually prefer it in some ways to AWeber.com, I want to have a really good look at it so I can post a video of some of the basic functions.

In the meantime I've been trying out a couple of systems that have to be installed on one of my own servers and which are therefore not "3rd party" services like the two previously mentioned.

I know this goes against one of the criteria I laid out in my initial post referenced above ("Some Email...") That criterion was "...use a dedicated Email server so you don't have to work through your own ISP or web host." For a variety of reasons I decided I might have been too hasty coming to that conclusion. In any case I think the assumption about the hassles and limitations of running your own Email system are worth testing. So that's what I've set out to do.

Selecting software is never easy because the features never quite match up between alternatives. And to get a really good idea of how they work you actually have to do an installation, learn the system, test it - well, you know what I mean.

So far I've looked at two systems. The first is called OmniMail. I've installed a working copy and tried out some of the basic functions like setting up a list and importing a series of contacts. Although this program looks well organized and close to what I am looking for, there were one or two fairly important things I didn't like (which I will discuss some time in the future) so I decided to look a bit further.

The second program I decided to give a trial run is called OEMPro. It is quite a bit more expensive, but appears to be pretty much what I am looking for. Not only can you create many different lists, but you can also create sub-administrators with their own lists which are only accessible to them.

One of the strengths of systems like AWeber.com and GetResponse.com is the way they handle unsubscribes - signups who decide they want to be taken off your list. This is a critical feature of both these systems and it is generally handled in a very straightforward no-fuss-no-muss way.

That is not quite the case with either OmniMail or OEMPro. I could be wrong about this, but the fact is, building unsubscribing into your Email campaigns is not as easy with these two as I think it should be. I will have more to say about these systems just as soon as I've had a chance to test them a bit further.