
Deah Curry PhD, CPC
Helping introverted solopreneurs
with the anxieties of doing
business in cyberspace
The No Hype Mentor
tm
& Solopreneurs' WorryTamer
tm
Choosing an Ezine Provider
Called vendors, there are several ezine providers to consider when you are thinking about starting a ezine component as a marketing method. Everyone has their favorites for different reasons -- here are mine.
Constant Contact
I use Constant Contact most often for composing and sending blast emails for the following reasons:
-
they have many beautiful ezine templates
-
the content tools are easy to use
-
I can use special settings to post the ezine to social media automatically when the ezine is mailed out
-
ezines can be scheduled for mailing way in advance or sent now
-
Photos are easy to upload and install
-
They provide a stock photo library
-
I can inset a PayPal button
-
their analytics tools are clear and useful
-
it's easy to add email addresses myself
-
it's easy to start a new list and to divide lists, move people around on lists, and have them on several lists
-
their tech support has been quite helpful to me
-
they have local, in person, often free workshops
-
they provide a marketing tips newsletter
What I Don't Like about Constant Content
The biggest draw back to this vendor is that they do not have a good or easy way to customize attractive opt-in forms. And they are not really set up as a true autoresponder system in which you can associate a specific opt-in form with a particular give-away report, and have different forms for different reports. Since I have many give-away reports running all the time, this has been a major problem for me.
Aweber
Aweber is the preferred autoresponder vendor. They do what Constant Contact doesn't. And I use them for collecting subscriptions to all my special report give-aways.
Aweber can be used like Constant Contact to send regular ezines if you have used one of their very cool subscription forms to collect addresses for a general mailing list.
But Aweber for me is less appealing for other reasons, including:
-
I can't move people around from list to list
-
the email composing tools aren't as easy, despite latest upgrades
-
photo uploads don't always work
-
it's slightly more expensive
Others for you to investigate:
and there are many others. the one that right now (Sept 2019) I don't recommend is Wix's own Ascend / ShoutOut system. Not nearly flexible enough, doesn't approach either Constant Contact or Aweber for functionality and design.
