Email Marketing

I was asked the other day which was better Top Producer or Constant Contact.  As I have used both I can share my thoughts.

First Top Producer.  This is a web based system that works something like Microsoft Outlook and in fact can be set up to sync with Outlook.  It is a great tool if you are working with traditional Realtor Lead Generation web sites that will feed into it and want to have multiple auto responders set up.

Where it excells is at being able to set up an unlimited number of marketing plans and have it remind you and in the case of the email send it for you.  So if you have contact a that needs a phone call in 2 days, and email in 5 days, a printed letter in 10 days, another phone call in 20 days, and then a follow up email every 20 days after that, you can go in and prewrite all the emails and letters, and set up scripts for the phone calls and then turn it on.  It will tell you when to call, merge and send the email, and then merge and tell you to print and mail a letter.  You can set up 100's of differnet plans and turn them on as you ad contacts.  Perfect for the realtor.

But what if you have gone through all the follow up email and you want to write and send a fairly current email newsletter to everyone at once.  Get too many in your pipeline and Top Producer bogs down, then you need a direct email service that will send a lot of emails at once, get past the screening filters on the receiving end, and be consistent in formatting and sending what you want sent.

Constant Contact is the answer for this:
1.  It is the most consistent about sending out the email you created.  I have used similar services and what I had in my preview window and what my recipents got did not match, this can be  real pain when you had photos and links that either don't show up or don't wor, or even rearrange everything.

2.  The other thing you run into in email services is needing the recipents to confirm that they want to receive emails from you.  This is fine and dandy if they are filling in a sign up box online somewhere.  But if you have a preexisting email list or are collecting emails at a live event, having to input them into the system yourself, and having them have to confirm they want emails from you 1 or 2 times just does not work.  Constant Contact will allow you to import a list (they will want to screen it, but no double opt in as they call it).

So if you are just starting out on building an email marketing list, start cheap and use the email service you have, but once you start getting over 100 people to email, look into Constant Contact.  And if you want to try it out, under 100 contacts for Free for 60 days, click here.