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How To Choose The Right Autoresponder Service
Your autoresponder service is the lifeblood of your email marketing business. If you choose the wrong service you can end up with your emails not being delivered, and other problems that you just don’t want. This article will show you how to make the right choice.
How Long Has The Autoresponder Service Been Around?
This is something that you cannot overlook. The time that the autoresponder service has been in business is very important. A lot of people use Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail email services these days, and if the company has been in business for a while then they will have built rapport with these companies.
The benefit of this is that you will have a higher probability of your emails appearing in inboxes rather than Spam boxes. As a rule of thumb it is not advisable to go with a company that has not been in the autoresponder business for at least 7 years.
Will Your Emails Get Delivered?
Most of the quality autoresponder companies will produce deliverability statistics for you to look at. This is another crucial decision for you to make. If your emails are not being delivered to a proportion of your subscribers, then your email marketing efforts will be severely compromised.
Most of the companies that have been around a few years will claim high deliverability rates. Look for the actual metrics that they publish. The top companies should claim at least 99% deliverability on their website. When you set up your email list use the double opt in feature as this tends to improve overall deliverability.
How Easy Is The Service To Use?
This is not as important as the first two factors mentioned above, but if you are going to be setting up a lot of campaigns then you must take this into account. This starts by viewing the company website. If it is easy to navigate and intuitive then it is likely to be the same with the email user interface.
You do not want to go through a clunky process that is not intuitive with your email marketing. You want the process to be as simple as possible and include features like drag n drop. The ability to send the same email in HTML and plain text format is also required. There are still some people using email clients that cannot display HTML formatting.
The Price Of The Service
This should be the last factor that you consider. Autoresponder services can be pretty expensive, and usually the monthly subscription increases in line with the total number of subscribers that you have. If you have three autoresponder services that will meet all of your needs then by all means do a price comparison.
Here is a good tip. Most of the autoresponder services are offering 30 day free trials these days. Or you can try the service for a small fee. Sign up and see how their delivery of emails stacks up. Are there any delays?
If you are sending to Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail do the emails go to the inbox or the Spam box? What is the user interface like? Is it easy to use or do you have to keep referring to the help files to work out what to do?
There is nothing like a long test drive to see if you are comfortable with a service or not. Be sure to cancel the subscriptions of the services that you do not want to continue using. You want your autoresponder service to be one of your best friends, so make sure that you do your homework before making a decision.
