Why do you guys pay for email services?

by 13 replies
15
I read about aweber and other services which help you send emails to your subscribers. My question is why do you do that? Why not buy an email sender program and feed it your list and it will send all the emails for you. That will be much cheaper. You provide your own smtp address and list, so it is safe and as good as sending emails from outlook.

Am I missing something?
#main internet marketing discussion forum #email #guys #pay #services
  • spam protection is a huge one fo me.
    and other free solution are not as good.
    • [1] reply
    • hmmm...so you are saying that if I use these softwares then my emails will go to spam folder?
  • This subject has been talked about in other threads.The amount of time you will spend managing your list is not worth the headake.With unsubscribes,spam reports delivery concerns it realy is not worth it.
  • Aweber and Getresponse have contracts with biggest email service providers like yahoo, gmail etc so their emails are not classified as spam. This way more emails get delivered than if you used your own platform.
    Not to mention the load on servers when you have few thousand subscribers.

    Chris
    • [1] reply
    • can anyone recommend a SMTP...i'd love to start a email marketing service and want a high limit or unlimited email capacity...any advice soo appreciated
      jenniferlcarter at comcast dot net
  • Every company that operates mail services like this needs to comply with spam regulations, and demonstrate that compliance to pretty much anyone on demand.

    That can be a full-time job.

    A company like Aweber has already done that. When someone comes up and says "do you comply with X?" they can say "yes" and immediately prove it.

    You can't do that so easily. You have to think "WTF is X?" and go look it up. Then you have to check to see whether you do comply with it, and if you don't, you have to change it all around to comply. And then, the next time someone asks that, you can say "yes" and show them.

    You have to do this for each and every domain you operate that sends email. So multiply that effort by all the domains you have, and then by all the people who ask, and that's how much time and energy it takes to do it yourself.

    Or you can just pay Aweber a few bucks a month and forget about it.
  • Unsubscribe management is another biggie. Systems like aweber and icontact take care of that for you. i don't want to manually have to remove the addresses or make sure they are taken care of. worth the $19 a month to have someone else handle all that.
  • I used to try to do everything that I could myself. I finally asked myself, What am I in business for? Is it to make sure that my emails are getting through?

    Further, I finally realized that I didn't want to spend time verifying and making sure that my email is getting through. I would much rather spend 20 bucks a month for someone else to do that and spend the time I saved to actually do something that makes money.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • I use to do everything manually as well...

    I use STMP Blaster to operate the outgoing messages.

    It's expensive, time consuming, and doesn't save money.

    Adding features such as tracking to your emails is more of a pain in the ass then expected, so I took the plunge about two years ago to an autoresponder service (Icontact) and never looked back.

    Sure there are costs, but one email promotion and my costs are covered so what is there to complain about?
  • Going fully manual is a TERRIBLE idea.. lets take me for an example.. I have a 7 day video series that goes out via e-mail, to my subscribers.. ~20 e-mails in total with a 38 day schedule. Even if I had 10 subscribers that means 200 emails that I need to keep an eye on what is sent to whom when. With a system I set the e-mails once.. and schedule them.. and I'm done.
    For blasts (updates) I'd need to make sure I include everyone.. and who want's HTML or who wants plain text e-mails.. who still wants to be on my list, who doesn't.. it would be a royal pain in the behind.

    Dont' want to pay for awebber or get response? Check out PHPlist or Infinity responder (I am not affiliated and they are both free) ..
    • [1] reply
    • Yep, you're missing a lot if you decide to go solo... especially if you want a HUGE List.

      This assessment is dead on...

      Now here is a guy that knows what he is talking about. Many of the free standing programs will dramatically reduce your success rate in terms of the number of subscribers who actually receive your mass mailouts.

      If you go standalone SMTP style, you'll be forced to keep doing things such as:

      (a). informing your subscribers to look in their SPAM folders
      (b). informing your subscribers to check email account to make sure YOU are on their whitelist; most won't even know what a whitelist is.
      (c). Plead with potential subscribers not use free email accounts such as: gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc. Problem is, most subscribers aren't going to want to jump through those hoops.


      My take; if you want to build a successful truly scalable subscription list, go with Aweber. There are others out there that boast of lower pricing but they cannot guarantee the high delivery rate of Aweber.
  • I think for the money aweber is awesome with all its functionalities, plus they do most of the work for you.
  • For reasons like spam protection, easier list management and a more reliable delivery rate.
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    Why do you guys pay for email services?

    I read about aweber and other services which help you send emails to your subscribers. My question is why do you do that? Why not buy an email sender program and feed it your list and it will send all the emails for you. That will be much cheaper. You provide your own smtp address and list, so it is safe and as good as sending emails from outlook. Am I missing something?