Making a choice about an email marketing company is very important. Not just the normal who is the best worries but if you pick a company that lets you down you have to build your opt-in list all over again. You can almost guarantee to lose members of the list.

I'm going to analyze two high quality companies and try and decide how to choose between them.

At the top of your list should be email deliverability. Smaller companies can struggle to get high deliveralibility as they don't have the resources to negotiate with the companies forwarding and receiving emails. However Constant Contact and Aweber both have very high deliverability rates. Some say Aweber is slightly higher but it's unverifiable.

Next up, almost as important, is statistical analysis of who opens the emails and what links they click. This can really make your money back and more if you know what you're doing. With this data you can analyze which campaigns are successful and which are failing and allocate resources accordingly. Both Constant Contact and Aweber offer tracking facilities. These allow you to check hotspots in your sales copy amongst other things. Aweber supports simple split testing. Split testing allows you to send different emails in the same campaign to decide which one is most effective.

All companies should have easy to use forms. You will need to be able to edit the HTML on your site although Aweber offers support for paypal shops.

Aweber also offer autoresponder support. An autoresponder allows you to send out emails without thinking or having to log in and do anything. Once you've set up the autoresponse campaign new prospects will automatically be taken through your selection of initial emails from the autoresponder. This can gain trust with your prospect and slowly get them used to your company without overloading them with information they can't read in one go.

Finally pricing. Constant contact is cheaper if you have a list smaller than 500 members. Over 500 members and Aweber is cheaper by $72 over the course of a year at the worst. Aweber do have a sign in bold stating “If you are not satisfied with the results you see, contact us for a full, hassle-free refund.” Obviously they couldn't afford to display that if users weren't satisfied with their service. 

Related Sites:

Constant Contact

Aweber