photo credit: dichohecho

How do you stay in contact with clients and potential clients?

One of the easiest and most inexpensive methods available today is with a well crafted newsletter.  But how do you actually deliver it to your customers?  Sure, you can use your regular email program and send it to ten or twenty addresses at a time – how inefficient.  Let me offer a few suggestions I think you’ll find much less frustrating and a better use of your time. 

There is a discussion going on on the VO-BB right now about the different ways there are to send out newsletters to clients.  One popular solution is to use Constant Contact.  It’s online and it’s easy to publish and send out newsletters as frequently as you wish.  I’ve never used it myself but everyone I talk to that does loves it.  Other online solutions suggested include Email Brain and Vertical Response.  If none of these suit your needs just type “newsletter” into your favorite search engine and you’ll find dozens of sites that offer mailing services.

Before you commit to spending any money see what options you already have available.  For example my hosting service provides CPanel for website management.  Cpanel includes an option for mass mailing directly from the server.  That means I can design a newsletter in Microsoft Office or Macromedia Dreamweaver and mail it directly from my server without any third party involvement and save a little money.   It’s not quite as easy of a process as some of the online services and it takes some time to manually add new addresses so there is a trade off in time versus money.  Check to see if you have Cpanel or a similar option available from your provider.

Other hosting providers may have solutions built into their web packages as well.  For example if you use Go Daddy to host your site they have some mass mail marketing packages available at an additional cost.  Just a note:  I’m not endorsing Go Daddy, I’ve never used them for hosting but they are one example and a popular hosting site.

As you can see there are a variety of options available to deliver your newsletter.  I suggest you contact your provider and see what you may already have available and then investigate on the web if a third party solution is more appealing.