Newsletter or Autoresponder Service Provider - The Features To Look For
You know that an email newsletter is very important for your blog, and you definitely need one.
You also know that although you need to pay a monthly fee for one, running a newsletter through an email newsletter service provider (hosted newsletter) is better than a self-hosted newsletter.
So now, let’s have a detailed look at the features that an email newsletter service should offer you to make it worthy of your money!
Basic Newsletter Features
Email Deliverability
This is the number one reason for you to opt for an email newsletter service provider instead of hosting your own newsletter, so the service provider has to be good at this!
Here are some of the features that should be offered:
- The provider should take steps to keep spammers out of their service so that everyone using their service is not penalized.
- They should promptly remove people who have unsubscribed so that they don’t mark emails as spam.
- They should automatically remove email IDs from where emails are repeatedly bouncing.
- They should provide some mechanism by which you can check your email messages (before sending them out) and find out if they would be flagged as spam by common email filters.
Newsletter From Blog Posts
Creating Newsletter Emails From Blog Posts Using RSS Feed
This is another key feature – the email newsletter service provider should allow you to automatically send emails from the blog posts that you write.
You should have the option to send the entire post as an email, or only an excerpt. You should also be able to decide of the email newsletter would be sent out after publication of every post, or after a specific number of posts are published.
These emails can ideally be generated from your RSS feed so that the process can be fully automated.
Scheduling Emails
The email newsletter service provider should not dictate when your emails are sent out – you should be able to decide the exact time of the day when the emails are sent out.
The time of the day when emails are sent has a big impact on the open rates, so this is crucial for your newsletter’s success.
Social Media Integration by Your Email Newsletter Service Provider
Social Media Integration
There should be some form of social media integration with the newsletter. This would ensure more engagement with your newsletter.
For example, maybe a Tweet from your account should be sent out or a Facebook post should be made whenever a newsletter email is sent out.
Online Newsletter Archives
The email newsletter service provider should have a facility to store your past emails, and display them on the internet as archives.
If people are hooked to your newsletter, they might want to see the past issues, and having this facility would help!
Signup Forms and Opt In Forms
Signup / Opt In Form Options
People have gotten used to seeing newsletter signup forms in sidebars. So just like ad blindness, people have developed opt-in form blindness!
Signup Email Opt In Form Design Options and Templates
The email newsletter service provider should provide you with a variety of signup form options – like a lightbox, a popup, a pop under, regular signup form, etc.
If you have more options, you can be creative and place opt in forms in such a way that your opt in rate goes up.
Note: If your provider doesn’t provide lightbox based newsletter signup forms, you can have a look at Popup Domination. It is a WordPress plugin that has been proven to increase opt in rates many fold.
Templates and Designs
Apart from the types of signup forms, the newsletter provider should also give you many opt in form designs, templates and color schemes to choose from.
The more the designs, the better it is, because then you can choose a design that is most appropriate for the topic of your blog – this would increase your opt in rates.
Jazzing Up the Forms
No one pays attention to text-only, plain looking opt in forms. You need signup forms that draw attention, and result in signups.
Your email newsletter service provider should give you an option to have images, subscriber count, drop down menus, radio buttons, and more in your email opt in forms.
You should also have an option to let the form slide in from the edge of the page, so that it draws your readers’ attention!
Timing the Appearance of Opt In Form
Above all, you should be able to decide exactly when the subscription form appears.
You should have control over whether the form appears on page load, or after a few seconds, or when the mouse pointer moves towards the address bar or the back button.
Email Opt In Form - Simple Graphic Designer
Ease of Designing Forms
All these features – colors, templates, designs, effects and animations, timing of appearance – should be easy to define.
You should not be made to jump through hoops to get all this. Ideally, an easy to use graphic editor should be provided.
Split Testing
You should be able to design multiple forms for your site, and your email newsletter service provider should give you a facility for A/B split testing.
This way, you can try out different images and copy, and find out the performance of each opt in form design.
Once you know which works the best and results in maximum subscriptions, you can run it blog-wide!
Newsletter Emails
Templates and Designs
Just like templates for an email opt in form, your email newsletter service provider should give your plenty of designs, colors and templates for the actual email messages.
Email Newsletter Designs and Templates
These designed can range from simple, 1-column layouts to complex multi-column layouts.
Ideally, there should be themes to suit different types of blogs. Also, if possible, there should be email templates available that match the opt in form design to maintain a coherent feel.
Ease of Designing Newsletter Emails and Autoresponders
Again, using the templates and designing the emails or autoresponder messages should not be a complex process.
You should get a simple graphic editor, and creating an email should not involve any messing with HTML or other code – it should just involve typing of text and drag-and-drop of images.
Subscriber Management
Tracking Subscribers
Your email newsletter service provider should give you the complete picture of your email messages and campaigns.
Tracking Subscribers of Your Email Newsletter
You should of course know who has subscribed and who has unsubscribed from your email list. But you should also get to know which subscriber has opened which email, which links were clicked by him / her, and which web pages on your blog were subsequently visited.
Ideally, you should also get the details about the revenue generated by each customer or click.
Segmenting Subscribers
segmenting your subscribers let’s you precisely target your email messages, thereby increasing the likelihood of them opening your emails – which means more revenue for you.
Your email newsletter service provider should let you segment your subscribers based on at least the following:
- People who have opened your email, and people who haven’t
- People who have clicked on the links within your email, and people who haven’t
- The location of the subscriber
Tracking, Analytics and Reporting
Tracking
Tracking, Analytics and Reporting
We discussed this a little earlier – you should get data about who has subscribed and unsubscribed, who opened emails, who clicked the links, etc. You should also be able to segment your subscriber list so that you can fine tune your emails and make them more relevant.
You should also be able to see trends – whether the number of people subscribing to your list is increasing, are more people unsubscribing lately, is the open rate of your emails increasing, are more people clicking on the links within your emails, etc.
Graphic Reporting
All this data should not just be provided as a table or as a CSV export. Your email newsletter service provider should present this data in an interactive, graphical format.
This makes the data easy to interpret, and makes it much more usable!
Autoresponder Features
Basic Features
Your email newsletter service provider should provide the facility to send immediate welcome emails so that you can make new email subscribers comfortable.
You should also get the ability to create custom “thank you” pages – this helps you present the most relevant message to your your subscribers, and it lets them know the next course of action.
You can also use these custom pages to promote special “one-time offers”, which can result in more revenue for you!
Templates and Designs
Just like email opt in forms and the actual emails, there should be plenty of templates and designs for your autoresponder sequence emails too.
You should have full flexibility in selecting the colors and designs that are appropriate for your blog.
Performance Tracking
Just like the regular emails for your newsletter, you should be able to completely track the performance of your autoresponder emails as well.
Tracking and analytics of autoresponder sequence emails is even more important, because in all likelihood, you would be sending your affiliate offers through them!
Scheduling in Advance
Scheduling Autoresponder Emails in Advance
Your email newsletter service provider should let you define the exact time of the day when the autoresponder email should be sent. Ideally, you should be able to define this time on a per-day basis (Monday: 10.00 am, Saturday: 2.00 pm, etc).
This would help you send emails at the time when your subscribers are most likely to see them – which increases your open rate, and your profit!
Attachments to Autoresponder Emails
Your email newsletter service should let you attach files with the emails and autoresponder messages. This is crucial, because only then, you can easily send your subscribers free reports, free plugins, etc.
These can be presented as an incentive to your readers for subscribing to your email list, or can be offered later in your autoresponder series as a way to retain people on your list.
Integration With Other Services
Blogging Platforms
The email newsletter service you use should be easy to integrate with various blogging platforms. This makes sending automated emails a lot easier and completely hands free.
At the least, it should be easy to integrate with the blogging platform that you use (WordPress!).
Other Tools and Services
There are many tools and services available that you may use for increasing your opt in rates (PopUp domination, for example), better analytics, etc.
Your newsletter provider should popular enough so that it is supported by most such tools and software.
Customer Support
Although you hope that you never have to use the customer service, it should definitely be available – and able to solve your problems – when you need them.
Ideally, your email newsletter service provider should have live people to answer your calls or offer help through chat. But at the very least, there should be a responsive support-ticket based system that is fast enough to solve your problems before they get out of hand.
What I Use and Recommend
I have been running multiple blogs, and therefore, I have multiple email lists running into 1000s of subscribers.
Aweber - My Recommended Email Newsletter Service Provider
To maintain these email lists and to run my email newsletters, I use and completely trust Aweber.
Aweber provides all the features listed above, and more. If you are considering starting an email newsletter (or are planning to migrate from a self-hosted newsletter), I strongly recommend Aweber. You can click here to see the full details of their offering.
Their plans are very reasonably priced, and provide great value. In fact, if you want to know how the service works, you can take a test drive today – completely FREE. Just enter your name and email below, and you are good to go!
Can You Have More Sales, Too?
Helping over 102,000+ businesses like yours raise profits and build customer relationships using AWeber's opt-in email marketing software for over 10 years.
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