How to email market - Email marketing for dummies

Cost - Make sure not to pay more than $30-40 a month for this service. While some providers claim they have added features that warrant a higher monthly cost, you likely won't use those features or they aren't really worth it.

Video - Make sure that your email service provider offers this functionality. In todays media crazy internet, not being able to send a video to your current or prospective customers might end up costing you.

Training Guides - While some people might be very familiar with HTML and coding, most are not. Make sure that the service provides very good manuals or online video training for their software. Without this, you might be rowing up stream for a long time.

Keep reading below as I highlight some services that I use, pro's and con's of each and my final recommendation!

Features - - While iContact has all the normal bells and whistles of an email provider, three features stand out that sets it apart. SPAM testing, auto-responder demograhics settings and surveys. The surverys tool is quite a fun and unique way to get involved with your customers. The SPAM tool scans your current email before it goes out and rates it on how "spammy" it is. The last really cool tool is the demographics tool. What this allows you to do is pull out say men aged 40-60 and email only them.

Ease of use - - This service gets top marks for how easy it is to get setup and running. Tabs run atop the screen a give you easy access to all the functionality. They also have numerous tutorials on how to use their services.

Reporting - - While this service does a great job of telling you how many emails were opened, bounced, clicked-thru etc., it does not have any conversion tracking capability.

Help & Support - - Offering some of the most inclusive help & support, you'll never find a question you can't answer with some sort of FAQ, online video or help forum. This provider gets top notch remarks for customer support.

Test drive iContact here - They've got a FREE 15-day free trial, so you've got nothing to lose!

Features - - No software to download, this completely web based email marketing solutions is not short on features. It offers unlimited email campaigns, email templates, email newsletters, autoresponder series and much more.

Ease of use - - While this powerhouse of an email program offers countless options, I think it is geared a little more towards the techy savvy. They've got great tutorials, online video learning but I think that actual integration is a bit more technical than iContact, thus the reason for the 4 stars.

Reporting - - Aweber offers graphical reporting with automated emailing of reports you specify. It does a great job of giving you more data than you can probably ever analyze.

Help & Support - The site has got all kinds of help and support. From online videos to walkthrus on how to use each feature, has no shortcomings for help and support.

AWeber has a FREE trial too - click HERE to test drive them!

If you are not quite so tech savvy go with:

If you are a geek at heart and love statistics, go with: