It seems that the large email sender software packages are still available, though pricing has increased quite a bit. Your options in this area are:

•  ListMailPRO ($69.00) – My older standby favorite, I still use it every day and it still works like a charm. I could not live without ListMailPRO – it is that good, and it has stood up to the test of time.  I do provide customization, tuning and setup for ListMailPRO on just about any server that you have, though I still highly recommend a fully managed VPS server, or Dedicated server for larger lists.
• OEMPRO ($299.00) – It still looks like a reliable solution but I have not tried it yet, and the forums do report failures and slow sending on larger lists.
• ActiveCampaign ($499.00) – One of the older sending software suites. I’ve tried/tested it a few times and it worked (though slower than ListMailPRO) at the time, it may be better now.  Provides plugins for triggers, birthday sending and much more.
• Omnistar Mailer ($287.00)  – This one still looks pretty good. I did test this out myself many years ago and it performed reasonably, but again, since I’ve not touched it in many years I’m not sure how reliable it is now.  At the time it could not match ListMailPRO.
• PhpLIST (free) – This free alternative looks like it has found good technical replies in the forums, and it could be considered a good match for ListMailPRO, but I’m still partial to ListMailPRO, and I have tested this myself as well.
• DadaMail ($50 Pro) – This software is still being updated, and it looks like a reliable alternative. The last I looked it ran Perl/CGI, but I’m not sure if it still does.

That pretty much does it for the mail server software packages I recommend, except for one other that is in Beta.  It looks to be real promising and I will write up an entire review of it: Amazon SES (Simple Email Service), which includes these Amazon SES Scripts.  Regarding send rates and validating bounce/spam rates, the two big players are still around and worth trying out as they both have free trials available, here they are.

• Email Reach – one of the best choices for checking your email deliverability. Excellent.
• Sender Score – a part of ReturnPath.net they also provide a free trial to let you check your sending, deliverability and bounce rate.

That’s all for this post. Watch for my new review of Amazon SES coming soon as I test that service out. By my calculations, the pricing on Amazon SES could come in at under $1.00/month for sending text only messages to very large lists, and that is very refreshing!

If you require Large List email server setup, configuration or tuning do not hesitate to contact me at my webdesign company website: BGS Web Design

A lower cost Autoresponder is available!

The biggest problem is that about 2-3 months ago all of the white label autoresponders raised their prices, from the looks of things it seems that Aweber does not allow the lower priced options and they are wanting everyone to signup for their full suite of services.  That’s fine if you have good sales numbers already and you can justify the cost, and if you really need all of the additional services such as: ‘send only’ to those who have not opened previously, or you want tracking statistics that are top-notch.

With the advent of using Google Analytics for email tracking, and the fact that current open rates for email are down, as well as click through rates, you might want to consider the lower cost alternatives, and as an experienced marketer (from way back in 1997), there is only one really good one in town – short of setting up your own mail server (which I can happily do for you if you need it).

That service is MadMimi.  The pricing is fair: get up to 10,000 names for $36.00/month! Their campaign tracking, (additional priced: drip sending is at $5.00/month) and other features set them in a league of their own for the thrifty autoresponder user.

MadMimi is available at: http://www.madmimi.com

It’s not hard to stick an Aweber or GetResponse form on your blog, in fact it’s almost too easy (just setup your list and click over to build a form and choose publish, grab the code – to copy/paste and your done), but it’s not easy enough in my mind – and it was not covering ‘all of the bases’: footer, sidebar, exit pop, lightbox pop, etc…

So, several months ago I started looking at alternatives, I found the excellent UFA (Ultimate Footer Ad) and enjoyed how well it worked, it did draw clicks, and I liked that, but was it converting fully…. well, yes and no.  I knew how to create a great looking Footer and how to get people to click on it, but they were not always taking action.  I also tried the excellent, and free, Optin Crusher plugin.  It also had pretty graphics and was good at getting ‘in the eyes’ of my visitors – and staying there, as it did not go away…

Finally while digging around on a few forums I frequent, I came across Digi List Builder – and I’ve pretty much been in heaven ever since.  Now, you may not feel the same way, so let me review some of the other List Building Tools I’ve tried to help you decide which one is right for you.

Optin Crusher (free) – this excellent free plugin does an excellent job of letting you put Audio/Video in your popup!  It’s great for doing that, and I will say I need to do further testing on using Audio/Video to increase list signups, so I will need to revisit these reviews in time to make that comparison.   Overall, it’s a good choice if Footer Ad is what you want. The argument is that a footer ad is not too obtrusive and it will keep your visitors happy by not being too ‘in your face’ as they read your blog.  I do believe that is the case – but they also do not seem as happy to click either, and that can be a problem. Further testing is required so watch this post for updates.

CodeBanter WordPress Autoresponder Plugin (free) – this is another option which does work well for what you want it to do, let you drop an Aweber or GetResponse form anywhere in your blog. Once you install and activate the plugin you can either use Drag/Drop to place your form, or you can use a 1 line of shortcode (PHP code) to place the autoresponder form in your sidebar. It’s easy, and does it’s job, simple as that.  Again, I have the form placed, but I do not see the sign-ups.

Ultimate Footer Ad ($47.00) – this slick footer ad / slide up script is great for incorporating into your Blogs. The main features that let it stand out are the statistics you can gather for each display, and click of the footer ad. Setup rotating ads and split-test them to find which one works best. It’s excellent at what it does, and if you want to test and know which ads are pulling best, it’s the way to go.  Note that the page does not tout it’s WordPress features but it works just find in WordPress as it does on static pages.  Still, though, I wish I had more signups.

Action PopUp ($47.00) – Robert Plank’s original Action PopUp. One of the first WordPress PopUp plugins. Michel Fortin has really claimed it works wonder, I can see why. You can choose your Lightbox ‘Dimming’ color, cool.  A review will follow soon.

WPSuperPopup ($39.95) – Looks nice and does have a few interesting features (Exit Pop, Live Preview, and only show xx times). I’ve not used it yet, a review will follow.

And that takes me to the winner, in my opinion, just for the sheer capability of it, and that is Digi List Builder, read more below…

Digi List Builder ($97.00) – the king of all WordPress list building plugins as far as I’m concerned. I’ve been using for about 1 month now and it has gathered 4 times as many signups as the others have!  Why? Because it offers a full host of blog interaction. This thing is awesome, you can turn on automatic signup forms 1.) in the sidebar, 2.) at the end of each post/page, 3.) in a slideup or footer ad that slides up on every page, 4.) in a fully configurable lightbox popup, 5.) in an Exit popup (pops up when someone tries to close/exit) your website.  All of these are adjustable on/off with simple checkboxes, and you can turn them all on, if you want to, in about 30 seconds.  It’s brilliant.

I will say I got a little carried away the first week I had it running, but I wanted to make sure it worked, so I turned on everything… then I found that people were not signing up frequently, and were getting a little angry, so I turned off the Exit Pops, and the Footer Ads.  The best part is that they keep adding new features and updating the plugin. I’ve had 3 updates in the 1 month I’ve had it.  They recently added stats, so you can see which form is gathering more clicks for you, and so far I’ve found that the Lightbox Popup is doing the trick – I have configured it to poup on every 2nd page visit.  The best part is that ALL of these popups/forms go away after your visitor signs up, by dropping a cookie, so if they signup they will not be annoyed by any of the popups/forms asking them to signup, signup, SIGNUP!  Because there will not be any… simple as that… a lovely piece of work, I highly recommend it.  By the way, all of the signup forms you notice (in the sidebar, after every post that is on it’s unique page, and in the lightbox popup) were all setup, and are tracked with Digi List Builder (in about 5 minutes of setup).

I will be doing a larger review of Digi List Builder in the next few months after I gather further stats on it’s effectiveness.

And The Winner Is:

All of these scripts are winners, in fact they each do a great job at what they claim to do, including Ultimate FooterAd (stats/split testing) and  OptInCrusher (audio/video) but in my mind there is one overall winner because it does pretty much everything the others do (except for the split testing, and the audio/video), and that is:

1. Digi List Builder ($97.00) – you cannot beat it for what it will do for you, without wasting any time. Install/activate and set a few check boxes and start gathering your list – it really is that simple.  Rating: Excellent

Watch for a more in-depth review of Digi List Builder in the next few months as I put it through all of it’s paces… Happy email list building!

Just last month, from what I remember you could still buy pretty low priced hosting for your email list with the so-called Aweber White Label services (these are ISP services that outsource their work to Aweber and basically they setup and use the Aweber customer service/hosting, but not quite the really good Aweber stats tracking and email list segregation options).

If my memory serves me correctly the old pricing was $19.97 for up to 10,000 subscribers, then an additional $9.95 for each 10,000 subscribers after that… not bad, as you ramp your way up, you can stay at a reasonable monthly price (around $20-$30).  You could get it lower if you paid annually, coming down to $14.92/month for up to 10,000, the additional 10,000 subscriber pricing always added an extra $9.95/month.

As you can see, at the old pricing, it was a pretty good deal.  People were asking me what was lacking from this service that Aweber had. From what I could tell it was the Stats/Tracking details, and the segregation options such as Send Only To Those Who Did Not Open or Send Only To Those Who Did Not Click the last Email sent.  Some of these higher end stats just not something as newbie marketer, or even mid level marketers had a need for…  Heck, I hardly use features like that myself, and if you’re not pulling in steady income from your list, it kind of made paying the extra Aweber fees (from $50/month for 10,000 and up to $130/month for 25,000 subscribers) a bit ‘exhorbitant’ in my opinion.

So, having the option of going with the lower price white label services was something I was in the habit of recommending. I could save my clients a good $25-$50/month and they would still have excellent Aweber customer service. It’s just that some of the more advanced features would not be available to them.

Is Low Price Autoresponder Hosting Gone?

Well, that has all changed…. the last time I went to refer to someone to ProSender I saw the prices had increased considerably, heck they were almost double, and now that I look at them closer, they seem to be almost identical to Aweber pricing. From what I can tell, it seems the White Labels can no longer offer the lower-price autoresponder service packages, and are only offering the high-end Aweber accounts, and in my opinion, that is not good news!

If you’re testing the waters, you don’t want to blow $20/month just to see what you can do, and especially if you start gathering 5,000 or 10,000 subscribers, that is when price becomes a big issue.  As the typical open rates drop (I’m only seeing 7% to 15%), and click rates also drop (.10% to 4.9%) it makes it hard to justify the cost.

As you can see, if you’re not selling a $97 product, or more, just trying to get someone to open/read/click and purchase your product is going to take quite a bit of effort, and you cannot just drop them from the list after 2-3 months (you have to give them at least 6 months to 1 year to make a purchase from what I’m seeing)…

Almost, here are some alternatives

So, where does that leave you?  You should seriously start looking at other alternatives… some that are lower priced, and that will not eat up your advertising budget so quickly.  Some of the better alternatives I have listed below, in the order I suggest you try them…

1. MadMimi – this mailer service is one that I have recently discovered.  The pricing beats all the others for what you get. Well worth it. You can try it out for up to 100 subscribers for free, after that you will have to pay.  I really like the way you can quickly layout a theme and campaign here, and the other great thing, there are no dumb opt-in restrictions required when you Import into your list, so if you have a big list and cannot afford to lose many of them on re-subscribe consider MadMimi.
2. MailChimp – still a good deal, your first 500 subscribers are free, so you can test the waters easily here. After that costs are comparable to Aweber. They have recently added Facebook interaction, and an iPhone app for sending to your lists (nice).
3. ListMailPRO – requires that you run your own mail server, but in the end it’s worth it, if you ask me.  I’ve been running my own mail server for years, what does it amount to, about $40/month for over 200,000 subscribers (my active list is around 49,000), and I mail fairly frequently.  It does require that you ‘warm up’ your IP before sending, and get all of the other things setup properly, but after the first 3-4 months it’s just watching and maintaining your lists (while your host manages the rest, with managed hosting).

I will do custom ListMailPRO server setups and configuration if you need it. Contact me through my web design company website at: BGS Web Design for details.

First, a little background: I’ve been running my own mail servers since late 2003, but I ran my own email server from my local machine before that, managing my lists (up to 25,000 or more) during that time with my own custom database code. I’ve probably used about every type of email software you can purchase that runs in windows.

Email marketing was way different back then (nearly 10 years ago). It used to be possible to do all your own sending – right from your desktop, but now that it is not allowed your best option is to purchase, and setup your own dedicated email server (either a VPS server, or a dedicated stand-alone machine) that is managed by a hosting company.  The ‘Managed’ word here is really important, because if you do not choose the managed option, you may get stuck re-booting your server (remotely) whenever it goes down, or restarting your Domain services, MySQL process, or Exim mail process whenever one of those goes down – and believe me, they do go down!  Not frequently, but enough for it to be a problem.

So, the first thing to look for is a company that will allow large email sends from their servers – this is getting hard to find, but there are still some good ones available (see list below).  A VPS server will usually do just fine, as it’s not incredibly taxing to a server to do this, but it does require that your host understands what you are doing, and that you are doing it responsibly, otherwise you could get shut down, and you do not want that to happen. So keep things clean (as in your email lists), remove unsubscribes promptly, and be responsible about your sending – 1.) choose a reliable software, and 2.) keep it throttled (I tend to throttle around 4,000 emails/hour) to you don’t overload the outgoing send queues.

Still, you may wonder, how can I send to 50,000, or 100,000 at a time, without having it take days?  Well, my friend, that is an entire other side of emailing all together.  In that scenario, you are better of with your own dedicated server, which you will likely have to manage on your own. Still, you will probably also want to consider purchasing email ‘white list’ services from GoodMail, Habeas, or any other type of similar service that can guarantee that your email will go through both reliably, and timely to the big name email ISP’s such as: AOL, Yahoo, HotMail, LiveMail, etc.

Recommended Hosting Services for sending to large lists

When it comes to hosts there are very few these days that understand large email sends, and how to deal with them.  Even some of the better hosts will block, or stop large list sending automatically, so you’re stuck trying to use those hosting services (I’ve tried at least one and it did not work).   So, choose from the list below of hosts that are known to respect larger sending volumes and you will do fine.  If you have to handle extremely large sends (over 100,000 at a time) consider a dedicated, co-located server, or purchase co-location services that are managed (some of the hosts below offer these services as well – but you will still need to check that you can do very large email sends from their servers).

• JTL.net – excellent hosting, choose from VPS, Dedicated or Co-location.  I’ve had good luck with this host, their service is excellent too, and their prices are reasonable.
• Future Hosting.com – another excellent choice.  From VPS to Dedicated, you can also choose your server location, London, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, etc.

Recommended Software for sending to large lists

With software you must be very careful that the software can handle larger sending queues and list data.  Choose from the software listed below to make sure of that.  I have either tested these myself with list sizes up to 215,000+, or I have heard from others, and believe that it is true.

• ListMailPRO – I’ve been using this software for years, in fact I’m now known as the List Mail Pro technical support expert, and I have setup, configured and tuned servers all over the world with ListMail Pro software.  The best part is that Dean (the author) has now made ListMailPro completely free!
• Dada Mail – another free alternative, but you will do better to upgrade to Pro for $50.00.  I’ve heard of this software being used to send to very large lists just fine.
• Active Campaign – A paid solution with extra features (reminders, email triggers, etc) that will also handle larger lists.

Now that you have your server, and your software in place, the last step is to make sure it is tuned properly for large list sending.  I’ve not had much experience in the ‘very large list’ category (100,000+ active subscribers), so, you will have to be patient (as I will post up here as time goes by and I learn more), or you can try some of the services referenced below for consulting with technical experts who can handle your list properly.

Reference Information for Large Email List sending

• Sending larger email lists – a post at Active Campaign forum discussing larger sending lists.

Downside it costs money, however if you want to do 6,000 messages a min you need to pay.

• Sending messages really fast with Dada Mail – a post in the Dada Mail support forums indicating that co-location is your only alternative, especially for very large lists.

The thing to do is invest the money into a co-located server either setup by yourselves, or by a 3rd party at a cost of about $1,000 Canadian Dollars a year, and then you can send emails as fast as the server can go.

For us with a newly configured box and DaDa3 we are doing 200,000 in about two hours

• Optimize your Server, Software (MySQL) and Mail Software – for larger sending, this is required, a post over at Active Campaign forums.

Finally, if you need assistance in setting up your own VPS, or dedicated server please feel free to contact me at my web design company: BGS Web Design – where I can answer your questions, you can contact me through my website at: http://www.bgswebdesign.com/Contact-Us.php

Yes, the single most important thing to consider when signing up, or setting up your own mail server is: Email Deliverability! It should come as no surprise really, when you are paying for a service, the first thing you want to make sure of is that when you send an email, it has a chance of making it into the Inbox of the person you are sending it to – right?

Jeeezsh, and to think I ever forgot that one.  So, that makes my top 3 autoresponder services in order of how much I like them as:

1. Aweber – you cannot get any better deliverability in the marketplace, in my opinion. Support can speak to you directly on the phone (business hours, M-F), or by chat (24/7).
2. Xmailpro – a white label version of Aweber, and much cheaper alternative, it leaves out a few ‘statistics’ and the ability to do things like send email to someone who has not opened, or clicked on a link previously – but I can live without that for now, and save myself a cool $100 or more/month.
3. GetResponse – they are still a top dog, and providing good service, as well as now including audio/video hosting too, but I’m not sure I would host all of my multimedia content there.
4. ListMailPro – I setup and tune installations of this script on LAMP servers (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).  You can see my services for doing this over at my webdesign company website at: BGS Web Design – ListMailPRO support and installation.  ListMailPRO is now also free.
5. ActiveCampaign (previously 1-2 All) – ok, I’m still looking into this script, mostly because it is supported well, and even offers an excellent support forum that is active for sharing ideas on how to increase deliverability, conversion rates, and do other really ‘good’ and automated things with Email (from your own server), or from a Hosted version.
6. PHPList – it’s been around forever, and has an active community of supporters.  A great alternative that is free. I have setup a few lists with this script and they work just fine.
7. DadaMail – one other alternative that is free, with an inexpensive ($50.00) upgrade to Pro version.  It’s been around forever, but I have not setup or tested this application.  It does run under PERL/CGI so, it’s a bit older technology, but that’s just fine. It’s well supported with forums too.

Now, back to the topic at hand…. I’ve found some excellent resources to follow when increasing your deliverability rate over at the ActiveCampaign website, see those below, follow them and you will see more money/profits coming in based on your email marketing campaigns.

Email Deliverability,  Email Marketing Delivery resources at Active Campaign.
Serving Larger Email Lists a great forum post in the Active Campaign forums.
Validate your SPF records if you are using your own server.
SPF lookup over at MXToolbox.com
Emails marked as spam and what to do about it.
Optimizing your Mail Server if you run your own, which I recommend.
Using Port25 – PowerMTA to increase your sending rate, and deliverability.
SPF Setup wizard, if you want one way to increase deliverability from your own server use an SPF record.

So, that leaves the question, do I run my own mail server, or do I purchase a service?  That still depends, and my answer is still ‘up in the air’.  So far I am finding that sending through my own mail server increases my conversion rates, but I’m not yet sure if it is due to the fact that I was sending information only to the Autoresponder list, instead of Offers that I normally send to my own server list, or if it is for some other reason.  Further testing will provide answers – for now, I still believe it is best to maintain both, if you can.

But, a month or so ago: late November 2009, and December 2009, my entire list started to disappear rather quickly, I was bouncing about 20% – 25% of my list on every send!  Wow, I thought maybe there was a problem with a black listing, but that does not seem to be the case.  At least not for the bouncing problem.

My first inclination was to move hosts, and I did do that quite quickly, moving to another hosting company on another VPS Mail Server. But, I had a problem with that host in that they could not get my send rate up high enough (5,000/hour) for me to even consider them. Even after several tickets and forum posts, I could not find a solution, unfortunately this host even runs on nearly the same hardware/software platform as my previous host, so, I’ll just cross this new host off of my referral list for large list mail server hosting at this point.

Back to my Old Host

A quick look around in WHM (Web Host Manager for unix/linux systems) and I quickly found the problem. There is a Mail section of the ‘Tweak Settings’ menu option and someone at my old host had limited my email sending to 2,000/hour!  Anything over that amount was showing up as ‘bounced email’ to my Mailing List Software (List Mail Pro – yes that is my affiliate link).  This is quite a disaster, but not one that required too much work to fix.  I quickly restored all of the bounces from December (manually using MySQL) and reset them all to a clean slate (zero bounces), and then I added some code into the bounce handler of ListMailPro (my affiliate link) so that it would never again consider those return emails as bounced messages.

Returned to Normal…

What a relief, I’m not back to my normal list size, and all is running smoothly again on my old host.  I will be posting an ‘Update’ to my Mailing List software recommendations, and also posting my newest findings (my click-throughs are actually higher on my own mail server than on some of the professional services) in the next week. If you would like to have your own Mail Server setup and running (for low cost) contact me through BGS Web Design – my web design company and let me know.

I’ve never been blacklisted before, that I know of, so I was shocked that SORBS was showing that I was blacklisted. When I got down to the final few pages of SORBS it turns out that I was blacklisted because my domain IP was within a range of 255 addresses, and someone in that range had been blacklisted!

Is there a solution? Well, for me, it means that it’s time to move hosts once again. One bad apple on your host can cause big problems with email delivery, and it’s not something you want to risk.  Below you will find my favorite places I used to check my black listing, and the hosts that I recommend.

To check and see if you are blacklisted, you first want to find the IP address of your mailserver.  Using a reverse DNS lookup can usually work, but only if you have your reverse lookup pointing back to your server (which you really need to do, if you are delivering email from that server). More info on how to do a reverse lookup on your IP address/domain is below.

To check your blacklisting status, have a look at these sites (in the order that I recommend their use):

1. http://www.e-filtrate.com  (a paid service, but well worth it, it includes the ability to check your email contents against spam content, let’s you re-phrase your content, and check for bounce backs. I’ve used this service for years and am quite happy with it, yes it is my affiliate link).
2. http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx (a free service that does something others do not, it will check your domain’s IP in a range of IP addresses, just in case). I found this useful recently when it seems my IP address was within a range of a recent spammer!
3. http://www.blacklistalert.org (a free service that also does something very useful, not provided by others services, it makes sure that your Forward DNS listing matches your Reverse DNS, this makes sure that your Forward-DNS and your Reverse-DNS are consistent).

You can check your reverse lookup IP (make sure your site’s IP addresses does a reverse lookup to your domain name) at 3 places I recommend:

1. http://www.mxtoolbox.com/ (a free lookup, but also shows you the DNS lookup (the A record for your domain), the NS lookup (the nameserver definition for your server, the MX lookup, the mail server records for your domain, and the WHOIS lookup, the domain registrar records for your domain).
2. http://www.robtex.com/ip/ (make sure that you click the link to your IP on the second page of this site to find all of the details on your Mailserver IP address.
3. http://dnstools.com/ (a more ‘techie’ oriented approach, but this one will show you everything about your IP address/domain, free).

The hosts that I like to use, and recommend for email hosting include:
http://www.jtlnet.com (dedicated servers for as low as $49.00/month, and yes I’ve used one for over 1 year and they work just fine, if you are mailing larger volumes though you may want to go for more horsepower).
http://www.servint.com (one of the best in the industry that has been around a long time, their VPS hosting can serve you just fine, as well as their dedicated hosting)

If you need help integrating and setting up your mail server, please see my BGS Web Design company website and contact me there (Brett Simpson), I can provide you full setup/installation of mail server hosting/software.

Well, the answers are still up-in-the-air right now, but I should have a definite answer in the next month or so.I’m exloring a few of the main autoresponders: Xmailpro, GetResponse, and I’m still using my own mail server.  Things are going to change a lot, now that GetResponse updated their software to v6.0, unfortunately they raised their prices considerably – as  I expected to come up to what Aweber is charging.

Keep in mind that I’m now paying $15.00/month (with 12 month prepay) for Xmailpro, which is a Aweber white-label, that does not offer some of the newer features of Aweber such as ‘email only to non-opens’, etc. Aweber, and now GetResponse have increased their pricing to ‘premium’ ranges as far as I’m concerned, and 80%-90% of internet marketers do not need the extra features.

Here’s what you really need to think about when you are considering autoresponder services:

1. Do you really need to spend the extra dollars the high-end benefits of GetResponse (surveys, video marketing, split-testing)?
2. How much are you paying now, and should you consider stepping down to a white-label alternative?
3. What are your deliverability rates?
4. What are your click-through rates?
5. Can you do this on your own server?

So far, I’m finding that having your own server, if it is setup properly, is definitely the way to go. I currently run my own mail server with over 50,000 contacts, I can do pretty much anything that the ‘premium’ services (Aweber, and now GetResponse) are charging very high monthly prices (in my opinion) – for example, I can pull out lists of people that did, or did not click on a link, that’s not a problem.

There’s only one area I am lacking at this point: the ability to email someone a followup message within 1 hour of when they originally signed up. For example, if you come to my site and sign up at 2:00PM, there is no way I can send you a followup message (3 days later), at exactly 2:00 PM, Aweber, and the white label both claim that they can do that within an hour or so either way…  So, it comes back to if that is worth the extra money, or if I should consider keeping the white-label (Xmailpro) just for that capability.  Right now, I’m going to keep Xmailpro for a while longer and see how it goes.

I cannot say that I do any worse, or better as far as deliverability is concerned. I’ve used emailreach and found that my deliverability using my own mail server is excellent. So, there’s no need to worry about that. The main point here is that if you want to get the best deliverability, and not spend 100′s of dollars a month, you may want to consider running your own mail server – mine runs me about $40.00/month, much less than the premium services now offered by Aweber and GetResponse.

That’s my opinion for now, I should have a definitive answer in the next month or so, but I can’t see it changing much. I’m going to keep the white-label Aweber alternative: Xmailpro, and I’m also going to continue on using my own mail server to fill in. Basically even if I wanted to consider moving my entire list to Xmailpro, it would take a very long time, because Xmailpro requires that you do a ‘opt-in’ confirm when you import email addresses into a new list, and that my friends can slow you down more than you would ever think…

For more information on having your own Mailing List server setup, contact BGS Web Design.

Watch for an update to this post in the next month or so, until then… keep on promoting!

The first step is to determine your market and then to research how viral marketing is being used to achieve search engine optimisation and to get your marketing message into your market. You probably already know your market, so continue to Google and do a quick search on “your market keywords” +viral (you can also add +ebook too) to see what comes up. You might be surprised to find that there are already many other products or services being used to spread a message virally in your market.

About Viral Marketing

Viral marketing happens when any marketing media (web page, ebook, private message, instant message, email, brandable software, video clips, etc.) allows the receiving person to pass the message on to another person in a self-replicating viral process. Word-of-mouth referrals are one simple example. Any social network method may be used. Eventually the spread of the marketing message becomes pathological, similar to the spread of a virus (and hence the term ‘viral marketing’). Products or services may be used to spread the message, or they may be part of the message
that is being spread – and hidden or transparent to the user. The more transparent the better the viral rate of transfer of the message and more people will see your marketing messages.

What are the advantages of Viral Marketing?

The main advantages are that your message will be able to reach a much larger group of people faster. If your message is one that is talked about and passed to many other people, your message can spread like wildfire to thousands, and even millions of other people. There is little extra work that you need to do as your message is passed from one person to the next.

Are there Disadvantages of Viral Marketing?

It is claimed that one customer will tell an average of three people about a product or service that they like. On the other hand, the average customer will tell eleven people about a product or service which they do not like. The disadvantages are few compared to the advantages, and as long as you have a viral product or service that is useful and works well you may never know of a disadvantage.

What can you do to try out Viral Marketing?

Probably the easiest way is to find a ebook that you would like to market and re-brand the ebook to contain your own website links, and/or affiliate links. This will help to spread your website address to many others very quickly.

ViralPDFSite.com

If you have a website and would like to provide a viral PDF option to any your website visitors on any type of computer, apple Mac, or Windows PC, then consider a viral marketing website service such as ViralPDFSite.com. This script will let you setup a viral marketing html to PDF converter right on your own website, others will come to your website to create eBooks, or to visit because of the static links in any ebook, which are not brandable.

ViralPDF.com

If you would like to create branded PDF’s from your own Windows desktop and distribute those to others so that they can rebrand them using rebranding software, consider a product such as ViralPDF.com. ViralPDF.com will let you distribute your eBook with a rebrander which anyone (with a Windows computer) can use to rebrand your eBook.Links to products/services mentioned in this article:

ViralPDFSite.com – lets you setup a free viral html to pdf converter right on your website.
ViralPDF.com – can provide you with an executable program that lets you create branded pdf/ebooks.