Hi mimig,
My personal favorite Web-based email marketing program is "Constant
Contact", from Roving Software, http://www.roving.com/.
I've not only used it myself, but have recommended it to various
clients who have been very pleased with both its capabilities and low
cost. Constant Contact allows you to quickly and easily build email
invitations, newsletters, customer letters, and promotions. You can
create
professional-looking, personalized HTML email with it in minutes.
Using Constant Contact's templates, you can deliver your email to your
readers in HTML, AOL and text versions. You add copy (headlines,
sub-heads, body copy) simply by filling in form boxes. You can also
link to your own images and photos on the Web. You don't need to know
any HTML to use Constant Contact, but if you do, you can also use it
to create a fully-customized invitation. If you look under the
"Announcements" in their Email Wizard, you'll see eight different
templates suitable for event invitations. Of course, you're not
limited to any one category, and you might find one of the templates
under their "Promotions", "Newsletters", or "Seasonal" categories
better meet your needs.
An important part of any electronic newsletter campaign is your
mailing list, of course. With Constant Contact, you can import your
own mailing list, have vistors sign-up to your newsletter through your
web site, or add names online. Constant Contact also rents opt-in
email lists to customers (opt-in is important. You *do not* want to
rent a spam mailing list). Constant Contact allows you to track the
results of your campaign, how many emails were sent and delivered, how
many people actually opened the email, and so on.
The price is also right, in my opinion. Ps ricing is based on number
of
subscribers, starting at Free (yes, free) for up to 50 customers, $10
for up to 250 subscribers to $250 for up to 50,000 subscribers.
Roving Software offers a free 60-day trial, and I recommend you try
them out.
Another online eMarketing program I've used is iMakeNews
http://www.imakenews.com/ Although primarily focused on electronic
newsletter campaigns, iMakeNews also offers multiple templates for
invitations through their "eCampaigner" solution.
http://www.imakenews.com/page.asp?p=solution_campaigner
In general terms, I feel iMakeNews is more suited to the larger
enterprise, while Constant Contact is probably a better fit for the
do-it-yourselfer small business. In my opinion, it's somewhat more
powerful than Constant Contact, gives the more knowledgable Web editor
better control over content and tracking, but is harder to use and to
manage.
Pricing is on a monthly basis, and varies per customer, but would
probably be
significantly higher than the cost for Constant Contact. iMakeNews
also offers a free 30-day trial of its software.
Those are two online HTML template programs I've used myself for
eVites and newsletters. I also did a search for similar programs or
remplates available for purchase...
Template Depot http://www.templatedepot.com/index.html might be of
interest to you. Many of their Web templates could be adapted for an
event invitation. Cost ranges about $20 per template.
TrueFire's "MailDog" http://maildogmanager.com/about.html offers some
good-looking templates.
I think any of the above would be a better choice, but SubscriberMail
http://www.subscribermail.com/login.cfm claims to "make sending
eye-catching, content-rich e-mail newsletters" but offers little
information beyond that and no template examples. You would have to
email or phone them apparently, for additional information.
Hope this information helps. Good luck with your eVite!
rico |
