Email Marketing Software Review: Email Benchmar

Email Marketing Services

E-mail & Newsletter campaign management made quick and easy! Newsletter and email campaigns are a proven way to not only stay in touch with existing clients, but recruit new ones. The problem with newsletter and email marketing strategies is that many times,

These campaigns can be both tedious and time consuming, taking up hours to create and send each e-mail and newsletter campaign. Benchmark's bulk email marketing services have eliminated the drudgery, the tedium, and the hassle of publishing and managing any e-mail or newsletter campaign, taking newsletter and email campaign publishing and delivery to the next level!

Benchmark's newsletter and email campaign management services provide the finest, easiest, most affordable method for handling the online and offline publication and delivery of newsletters and mailings of any type, whether they are promotional, personal, or seasonal.

There are many newsletter and HTML email publication and delivery services out there and Benchmark realizes this. But we've designed a system that eliminates many of the hassles associated with newsletter campaigns and e-mail publication and delivery, providing clients with a foolproof system that few (if any) email marketing service can match. New Email Campaign Features

Create Drip Autoresponders

Craft no-fuss, easily managed drip campaigns with our email autoresponder tool. Using this feature, you can set it up so our system automatically sends out e-mails or newsletters based on the response of your customers. Let Benchmark do the work for you. Once you’ve set up your drip campaign, you’re ready to move forward.

Find out more Generate List Builders

Use our ListBuilder tool to gather customer contact info on your own Web site. We have 12 buttons to choose from (or you can upload your own) and flexible features to help you mine e-mail addresses, names and other info.

Once you’ve chosen your ListBuilder, create single opt-in and double opt-in autorespond e-mails where you can either automatically respond to customers and thank them for signing up, or send a second e-mail verifying that they’d like to hear from you. Find out more Use Characteristic-Based Campaign Tools.

This feature lets you triage and send e-mails according to specific customer interests and traits. Use our tools to sort and send e-mails to customers based on their age, what types of items they buy, whether they have a pet or other attributes. Find out more

Email Marketing through Newsletters

So you want to start publishing an online newsletter? Why? Because that’s what all the online marketing experts and gurus said to do. You’ve been told you’ll pull in lots of new customers if you just start publishing an online newsletter AND purchase their list magnet ebook. I am not going to tell you that because I know it’s not that simple. In fact, I’ll tell you the truth as I’m always compelled to do, and offer you an alternative while I’m at it.

First, publishing is the fun part. Writing and getting articles and finding resources to offer your subscribers really is the fun part of your online marketing campaign. However, then comes the part where the rubber meets the road: sending that newsletter out to your subscribers. First, you’ll need a list to send your newsletter to. Second, you’ll need an auto responder for subscribers to make sure you’re in compliance with the “double opt-in/opt-out” so you won’t get in trouble with your ISP or the spam law. You’ll need to decide if you’re going to publish and send out your newsletter daily, weekly, or monthly and get it delivered when you say you will.

This is just the basics. You’ll find it gets more complicated as you go on, especially legally. You’ll have many of your emails come back because they were “bounced” by these rigid new spam filters installed by our diligent ISPs to stop (yeah right) spammers. You’ll also have some of your new subscribers “forget” they subscribed and turn you in as spammer. Oh, what fun! So, what do you do? You want to publish; it’s a great way to establish your online marketing presence and also your credentials in your field of expertise. So, what do you do?

Well, I accidentally found the solution and I’m going to share it with you. Before I started online marketing through email publishing, I was submitting articles I’d written to online article banks. That is another way to promote yourself in your online marketing campaign. While I was submitting an article to www.thephantomwriters.com,

I noticed a banner there that mentioned a new way of publishing –without email, without spam, but WITH RSS technology. I knew what RSS was because I had been receiving different online newsletters for webmasters. I subscribed to those so I’d know what was going on in the world of technology just for my own knowledge. RSS is “really simple syndication”; well that’s one of its definitions anyway.

The banner on The Phantom Writers site stated that Quikonnex had the solution to our online marketing ezine dilemma. Good thing I went there, saw the writing on the wall, and took the leap of faith! Whew! I almost made the email marketing error.

Quikonnex is a great way to keep the fun you want as a publisher, and more. You don’t need those lists, or auto responders, or need to worry about spam, or any of that junk. Here’s what is even better – the search engines get pinged each time you submit an article or “item” as we call them on Quikonnex. You don’t need a delivery date.

You can submit “items” as you come across them. You can use graphics without overloading a subscribers inbox like in email. You don’t need email, as your subscribers subscribe through a “viewer”. They can keep in contact with you through your personal private messenger provided so generously by the founders of the Quikonnex system at no additional charge to you.

You get live online support and twice weekly training and meetings, all inclusive in the minimal monthly charge. One of the best things: all of your “items” go in to a database that is clickable under category titles you create in templates. Very simple, fun, and best of all, hassle-free.

So instead of sending out email newsletters that may get read, then deleted after all your hard work, you publish on a “channel” that is a syndicated RSS feed, with an “editor” provided if you don’t know HTML, that goes into a readily retrievable database, that pings the search engines and then stays on the internet indefinitely meaning it is searchable!

This means your newsletters are cumulative, they don’t get deleted, and all your hard work stays available for each new subscriber who comes along without you doing anything. You just keep on publishing! How great is that??? So before you take the email plunge, consider the benefits you’ll have publishing the new way – in living RSS technology.

Email Marketing Explained

Email marketing is, as the name suggests, the use of email in marketing communications.

What sort of email?In its broadest sense, the term covers every email you ever send to a customer, potential customer or public venue. In general, though, it's used to refer to:

Sending direct promotional emails to try and acquire new customers or persuade existing customers to buy again Sending emails designed to encourage customer loyalty and enhance the customer relationship Placing your marketing messages or advertisements in emails sent by other people Give me an analogy...You can think of these three main forms of email marketing as the electronic equivalent of:

Direct mail Sending people a print newsletter Placing advertisements in subscription magazines and newspapers There is, however, one extremely important difference - the issue of permission (see later).
Why is email marketing so popular?Email marketing is so popular because:

sending email is much cheaper than most other forms of communication email lets you deliver your message to the people (unlike a website, where the people have to come to your message) email marketing has proven very successful for those who do it right For more information, see the article Why do email marketing?.
Let's briefly review the three types of email marketing:

1. Direct email: Direct email involves sending a promotional message in the form of an email. It might be an announcement of a special offer, for example. Just as you might have a list of customer or prospect postal addresses to send your promotions too, so you can collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses.
You can also rent lists of email addresses from service companies. They'll let you send your message to their own address lists. These services can usually let you target your message according to, for example, the interests or geographical location of the owners of the email address.

2. Retention email: Instead of promotional email designed only to encourage the recipient to take action (buy something, sign-up for something, etc.), you might send out retention emails.
These usually take the form of regular emails known as newsletters. A newsletter may carry promotional messages or advertisements, but will aim at developing a long-term impact on the readers. It should provide the readers with value, which means more than just sales messages. It should contain information which informs, entertains or otherwise benefits the readers.

3. Advertising in other people's emails: Instead of producing your own newsletter, you can find newsletters published by others and pay them to put your advertisement in the emails they send their subscribers. Indeed, there are many email newsletters that are created for just this purpose - to sell advertising space to others.

Where's the catch?This all sounds great of course. Imagine how much cheaper it is to send a message to thousands of email addresses, rather than thousands of postal addresses!

It's not that simple, unfortunately. Quite apart from the complexities of designing and delivering email messages to the right people, getting them to actually read and respond to your message, and measuring and analysing the results, there is the issue of permission.

What's "permission"?Responsible email marketing is based on the idea of permission. This is a complex issue and the subject of intense debate in the marketing community.

Essentially, you need an email address owner's permission before you can send them a commercial email. If you don't have this permission, then the recipients of your mail may well regard your message as spam; unsolicited commercial (bulk) email.

You do not want to send spam!

If you are accused of sending spam, then you may find your email accounts closed down, your website shut off, and your reputation in tatters. In some parts of the world, you may even be breaking the law.
Quite apart from these practical considerations, there is also a strong argument which says that long-term successful email marketing relationships with customers and others can only work anyway if they're permission based.

The big question, of course, is what constitutes permission...and that is the main subject of debate. It's important to remember that it's not your views, or even the views of the majority, that count, but the views of those receiving your emails and those responsible for administering the infrastructure of the Internet.

An example of permission is when your customer buys something from your online store and also ticks a box marked "please send me news about product updates via email". You now have "permission" to send that person product updates by email, provided you also give them the opportunity to rescind that permission at any time.
Educate yourselfIt's important to stress that anyone considering email marketing must read up on the subject of permission and spam. If you don't understand the importance of permission and the risks of ignoring it, then you could be heading for commercial disaster.

Don't panic, though. It's actually relatively easy to ensure that the address lists you use or build yourself are permission-based.

OK, now that you're armed with some brief background information, browse the rest of this site to find the resources you need to develop a better understanding of how email marketing can work for you and your (potential) customers. Or to speed things up, try some of these