Three Picks for Email Marketing

Email campaigns and newsletters are an effective way to stay in touch with existing customers and build your business. A well-known and popular online email marketing service is Constant Contact. But, while it has name recognition, it’s not the only option available. Two other online services getting attention and positive reviews are Campaign Monitor and MailChimp. Our client Dan McCormick, of Photographytips.com, is finding Campaign Monitor to be both an effective, and economical means of distributing his company’s newsletter.

“Constant Contact charges a lot on a monthly basis to maintain an account even when no newsletter is sent out,” says Dan, “but with no additional cost whenever a newsletter goes out. Campaign Monitor charges very little on a monthly basis, but charges a lot to send out each newsletter, dependent on how many recipients there are. So, when I wasn’t regularly sending out newsletters, like every month, I was wasting money on maintaining my Constant Contact account. It is cheaper, when not sending out a lot of newsletters, to maintain an account with Campaign Monitor.”

The upside of both Constant Contact and Campaign Monitor is the full-featured service and extensive support. MailChimp on the other hand, offers bargain pricing, including an ‘always-free’ option. The trade-off: MailChimp does require users to embrace a do-it-yourself approach to some extent. One of the three services is probably right for you. Get in touch with Mastermynde and we can help you find the right fit for your email marketing needs.

Time To Reconsider The Walking Fingers?

A Yellow Pages ad has been a pre-ordained part of most companies’ advertising budgets for decades. But with local search capabilities becoming more refined every day, it’s a good time to re-assess your need to be locked into a print ad in a book that’s declining in use. The big search engine companies have recognized local search as the final frontier for contextual advertising. For purely business reasons, they are dedicating significant resources to ensuring companies of all sizes have a chance to utilize the medium. The spin off benefit for smaller advertisers is an advertising medium where it’s finally possible to customize ads and localize content in an ongoing fashion at an affordable cost, enabling a changing response to the market, rather than being locked into a single advertising message (both in print and online).

If you know your Yellow Pages ad is still bringing in more money than the cost of the advertisement, you may wish to continue. But, if you’re advertising there because it’s a habit… and your customers are finding you on the Internet, it may be time to rethink where you’re allocating the budget for your marketing strategy.