by flickr.com/23905174@N00

We have repeatedly discussed our experiences with email marketing providers VerticalResponse and Constant Contact, but those two providers aren’t the only players at thier low price point – there are other providers worth checking out as well: some of the top competitors in the do-it-yourself email marketing space include Campaigner, iContact, and MailChimp. While each provider has their own unique offerings, the comparison below focuses just on pricing to see how many emails you can get for your buck.

Most providers determine their pricing by mailing list size rather than by the number of emails you anticipate sending each month. This means you could send multiple emails to the same contact list each month, for the same monthly price. This table assumes a small list of 2,500 contacts (or emails) per month:

Campaigner is the clear winner at this low end of the price market, coming in at almost half of Vertical Response’s cost for the same size list.

Some providers – specifically Vertical Response and MailChimp – do offer pay-as-you-go packages which can offer more flexibility if you don’t send campaigns on a regular basis, but you may end up paying a bit more for that convenience. For example, for a one time campaign of 2,500 recipients, Vertical Response ends up being cheaper than their monthly fee at a price of $32.50, but MailChimp would cost you more than double their monthly rate with their price of $75.00 for a single launch. If you end up sending a follow-up email to the same 2,500 recipients within the same month, then you have potentially quintupled the cost of your campaign by spending $150.00 instead of the $30.00 monthly subscription fee. MailChimp does not require a contract nor do they charge cancellation fees for their monthly subscription product.

If you send email campaigns on a sporadic basis, then a provider that offers the pay-as-you-go option is probably a better fit. But if you have a regular emailing schedule monthly pricing, or even the annual pricing (offered by iContact), could be a good choice for the frugal number cruncher in all of us.

Note: Just as we pointed out when we compared Vertical Response and Constant Contact’s survey pricing, a provider’s cost per email can change based on the size of a campaign.

The Learning Center offers interactive tutorials for Constant Contact products, live webinars, user guides, white papers and more. You can also sign up for their Hints & Tips e-newsletter that discusses e-mail marketing and online surveys, or for one of the seminars that they hold in 13 different regions (there are both free and fee based workshops). These are great resources for business owners new to marketing, emailing, or both.

If you are in a situation that necessitates a do-it-yourself email marketing campaign, then I recommend checking out Constant Contact’s complimentary resources. If you need more advanced assistance with your e-mail marketing, we are here to help.

Their service is easy to use, fairly priced, and I have to give them credit for being very diligent about maintaining a no-spam policy. They monitor and report on your e-mail deliverability and act on spam complaints (if this sounds like a bad thing to you, then you might want to look elsewhere). But this attention to detail is one way that Constant Contact works to keep their customers e-mail deliverability relatively high for a low cost service provider.

Also See:

Jun ’07: Choosing An E-mail Service Provider
Aug ’07: Constant Contact Finally Rolls Out New Contact Management Features
Sep ’07: Free Local E-mail Marketing Seminars from Constant Contact

Constant Contact holds local events in some areas, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, New England, Texas, and the Washington D.C. Metro Area. Some of the events are even free…like the September 13 “Power of E-mail Marketing” event in San Francisco that I received an invitation to attend. It happened that it was very convenient for me to stop by, so I sat in on the first 45 minutes of the presentation.

Turns out this event was for true beginners (as I now notice it clearly states in the event description), so in all fairness I didn’t stay for the whole thing. But I will say that I was impressed with the content (based on the part of the presentation I saw, and on the handouts I received), and with the non-salesy approach of the presenters. They touched on topics like “why e-mail marketing,” “how to increase e-mail deliverability,” and “CAN-Spam Compliance.” They also covered the basics of building a good e-mail list and simple e-mail layout tips. All along the speakers took questions from the small audience; it was a pretty interactive session.

Although this particular session’s content wasn’t necessarily the best fit for me, I did like the format (and the price), and I’ll definitely keep my eye out for other events in my area.