I have a growing number of customers taking advantage of their subscription email lists to draw traffic and business back to their websites. There are a number online services and downloadable applications to make this easy and provide differing levels of reporting and CRM integration.
The two sites that I've been using most recently are Vertical Response and Campaign Monitor. Both cost about the same providing very similar reporting and tracking capabilities, but I think I may be done with using Vertical Response. My recent experience sending a campaign with Campaign Monitor was great.
Here are plus differences for me:
- I can setup multiple client profiles
- I can customize and brand my own login and portal for each customer to view reporting and manage their lists
- CM offers RSS feeds for customers who wish to track their own subscription list changes daily
- The email creation process was freakishly easy. You can give CM a URL for your HTML email rather than uploading HTML. I found that just a nice convenience.
- Reporting is organized a little nicer - not that the same info isn't readily available in VR, but I found it more customer friendly (for my customers)
If you're looking for a good email campaign solution, check out Campaign Monitor. If you have a better one, let me know.