Constant Contact and Aweber and more…

I have been trying to decide which platform for email marketing to use, so that I can deliver to my fans, timely information they want delivered in their email box about my music, my shows, my life. I want to be able to provide an easy to read newsletter and autoreponder using either Constant Contact or Aweber.

I’ve used Constant Contact in the past for another project that I worked on, and it was really easy to format for building a newsletter. The templates were also very “pretty” and looked extremely professional. Even though I knew nothing about programming or writing HTML, my newsletters looked great.

The templates were set up with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) format, just like a word processor. It was like I was typing a MS Word document. I was able to cut and paste my images into the newsletter, as well as place any hyperlinks back to my website with ease. I just read that they have integrated a way to incorporate a paypal button into the newsletter itself, so you could always have your music for sale with every newsletter that email out.

Both Aweber and Constant Contact have simple newsletter or report sign-up forms to integrate into your website. The difference with Aweber, is that that have pretty decent templates, not as many to choose from as Constant Contact, BUT, they have this awesome autoresponder system that allows you set unlimited number of email marketing campaigns that stay on auto-pilot after you set them up. This makes sure that a flow of information about your indie music, is consistently being delivered to your fan’s inbox. You can stay on top of providing them with great service. Aweber also has a function that allows you to Twitter your newsletter subject matter.

Which email marketing system works for you? Which one have you used and what was your success like?