Price doesn’t necessarily equal quality when it comes to selecting an email marketing application, according to a new study of 19 applications. Software Shortlist, an online comparison and review site for business software, compared average price versus product star ratings for these programs and concluded that a high price can often be a surprisingly poor guide to the quality of the program.
Cheaper Is BetterIn fact, the products were rated the highest in the reviews were typically much more affordable than the lower rated solutions, it found.
Assuming 5000 emails per month, the three products awarded five stars had an average monthly cost of $31 per month, compared to over $166 per month for the two star products. The most expensive email marketing software cost 17 times more than the most affordable.
Products reviewed for the study included AWeber, Benchmark, Campaign Monitor, Campaigner, Constant Contact, Email Brain, Ennect Mail, GetResponse, GraphicMail, iContact, inwise, JangoMail, MailChimp, newzapp, Savicom, SimplyCast, Streamsend, Vertical Response, and Vision 6.
Other Considerations
Of course many firms simply decide to outsource their email marketing campaigns to a third party, thus dispensing with the software selection decision all together. This decision, too, requires due diligence - and some more myth debunking, according to the Email Marketing Chronicles. “All too often companies make their selection based on the wrong criteria, which causes heartache, inefficiency, and a significant amount of lost productivity and dollars.”
Things to consider, according to the post:
1. Don’t limit your search geographically. "In this day of the email and WebEx, communication is easy and instantaneous."
2. Don’t screen out professionals based on size.
3. Don’t make industry experience a must-have. “No one group or individual will ever know as much as you do about your industry, so you should hire them for what they do know: the art and science of email marketing.”
4. Don’t ask for (or entertain) speculative work. “The best prospects–the ones you really want–won’t do it. They don’t have to.”
5. Don’t avoid questions about your budget. "Each agency or outsourcer has certain client budget minimums, arrived at through experience and predicated in part by the economy and their current client load. That’s why it’s important, for the sake of conducting an informed review, that you have some idea of what your budget is or should be."
