Idealware's A Few Good Email Newsletter Tools

ONE/Northwest has been using What Counts as the eNewsletter solution for its clients since about 2004. By 2007 we realized that the reasons for adopting this service needed to be reevaluated. The nature of email has changed substantially in the 21st century, and the direction and focus of our consulting practice has also changed quite a bit. In particular, we needed a solution that has tight integration with Salesforce, the powerful CRM database.

In Autumn of 2007 ONE/Northwest set out to explore the landscape of Email Service Providers (called ESPs in the trade) in an effort to understand how the world of e-newsletter delivery services had changed in the last few years.

Results

Vertical Response

At the end of our evaluation we decided upon Vertical Response as the focus for our email newsletter consulting. Early on in the evaluation process it was clear that this was a very strong candidate.  All aspects of the user interface were well liked by the evaluators: images are easy to upload and insert, and the workflow from campaign creation to send is very clear and helpful. Vertical Response can also send actual postcards via the US Postal Service to your subscription list (designed and paid for by you), which is a service not seen anywhere else, but probably a good fit for non-profits. Salesforce integration is there, as well as segmentation, profile management, and best of all no monthly fees. You simply buy blocks of email "credits" when you are ready to do a send. This makes budgeting easier, especially for groups who send only occasionally. Demos are free and provide access to the full suite of tools.

The Comparison Matrix

For a quick-and-easy comparison of the various email newsletter tools that we evaluated, see our comparison matrix. You may click on the thumbnail image to view the full-sized matrix.

Use this matrix as a starting point for discovering which tools are most likely to meet your email newsletter needs. Don't base your final decision on this matrix alone. Every organization is a little different, so you'll want to do some evaluating on your own before choosing a tool.

For a full description of our evaluation process read our Comparison of Email Newsletter Service Providers [Word 200Kb].

Alternatives

Sympa

Sympa is the open-source email list tool that has powered ONE/Northwest email list hosting services since late 2002. It's very simple, extremely inexpensive, but offers a relatively limited feature set. It's a great starting point for low-budget groups or people just wanting to dip their toes into email newsletters. It's also good for folks who need to send to very large lists or very frequently at low cost.

Good candidates for Sympa:

• Have no budget for email newsletter services
• Need a system that requires minimal setup effort
• Don't require advanced functions such as click-through tracking, polls & surveys, and forward-to-a-friend
• Have the abililty to compose their own HTML email messages using tools such as Dreamweaver (plain-text messages are also an option)

WhatCounts

After seeing all the other options on the field, WhatCounts doesn't stand up very well to the competition. Some features common to all others are missing from What Counts: Automatic inclusion of an unsubscribe link being the most egregious omission. All that said, WhatCounts has one of the best segmentation features out there and some robust reporting tools. The editor is decent, but inserting images is something of an arcane art which has been a stumbling block for many of our clients. Client of ONE/Northwest are eligible for major discounts - so groups who have very large (20,000+) subscriber lists could save money with this service.

Good candidates for WhatCounts:

• Groups who need to do very large sends on a recurring basis
• Need to use list segmentation frequently
  
• Don't need Salesforce integration
  
• Are comfortable with HTML editing