Cost of services

[Matt Koshko]

Nobody likes to pay more for a service than they need to, Autoresponders being a great example. I recently began looking in to the cost of autoresponders out of curiosity and recent billing frustration.

 

The popular autoresponder/email marketing services offer pricing based on the same, or very close to the same, model; pay per subscriber. Now, I don't mean you pay $.10/subscriber and that's the entire structure, but generally speaking that IS how it works.

 

Most offer packages for groups of subscribers such as $xx.xx for up to 2,500 subscribers. However, what they don't clearly disclose is how those subscribers are calculated. We are literally talking about each and every subscriber within your account, no matter if they are added 1 or 10 times. And how can an individual subscriber count as 10 subscribers? Well, when you have multiple campaigns or lists and the same person is a subscriber to each one, they are adding to your bottom line, to the total subscriber count.

 

Do you use multiple campaigns with duplicate contacts, as mentioned above? Or, do you stick with one list?

 

When you run multiple websites and/or services, it's a bit challenging to have everyone subscribe under one campaign/list if you need to cater your messages specifically to subscribers to one service verse another. But, it could cut your costs significantly with one campaign/list.

[Darren Olander]

Interesting discussion, because unlike most services, the prices of the most popular autoresponders have actually increased quite a bit over the years instead of declining. I was lucky to join and use a couple different autoresponders years ago and keep their lower pricing...

 

BUT I also believe autoresponders are justified in a way for their prices... it's big money. Email marketing is absolutely huge... I can write a broadcast in like 5-10 minutes, send that one mail to my list and make hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars just from that. That's not even taking in account the automated follow-ups that can be set-up. I know for the size of my list I don't even make as much as others can/do from that because I just don't send broadcasts out that often... so in the grand scheme of things autoresponders are just taking a small percentage of the potential money on the table.. it's not their fault if you sign up for their service and never use it (send mails to your list). Without an autoresponder I'd make a lot less money, so why shouldn't they charge to make that possible?

 

I have many duplicate contacts, but seems like a necessary evil to me, just wish I wasn't paying for the same address more than once.

 

Even the most expensive autoresponders I believe you should be able to easily recover the cost and make great profits if you consistently build your list and send broadcasts/follow-ups regularly.. that's why people join your list anyway - they want to hear from you!

[John Bell]

Auto Responders can get very expensive, very fast, and the worse part is that the more expensive they get, equally harder it becomes to move (list growing)..

 

When it comes to cost though if you aren't getting a full return (regardless of price) then you are doing it wrong lol, lists are very effective as we all already know..

 

When it comes to auto responders, for me, deliver-ability is the top priority, second by filtering tools... other than that the price doesn't matter too much.. it doesn't matter how cheap the AR is if your emails aren't arriving, thankfully I've had very good luck with Traffic Wave and the price is nothing compared to some of the other prettier ones..but like I said, #1 is deliver-ability, I'd pay 10x-20x more than I am if the deliver-ability started to drop, though realistically now I mostly just send from my own scripts and use the actual AR list as a back-up and for automated mailings

[Troy Wray]

I agree that it's the main service where you should pay for quality and quality varies. What I dislike about aweber is that the model of paying for the total number of subscribers you have just doesn't make sense. If I don't mail in a month, I've been charged just for them holding some names in a database.

 

The billing should be based on some flat rate plus a price per mail. That way, people that like to not mail their list too often are not penalized.

 

Maybe with other flat rate plans for those that mail frequently.

 

Oh and you have to be sure to clear out unsubscribes cause they charge for those too.

 

Regarding people being on multiple campaigns, yes it sucks that that costs more too. Another argument for the billing being proportional to total mails sent. Amazon services get it right in the main. I wonder if they plan an autoresponder - that WOULD be something to look out for I reckon. Some more competition. Most of awebers features aren't needed by most people.

[Guest MarketingYouControl]

The most important thing is this: is your system scalable?

I thought for a short time that I could "save" cost by using self hosted autoresponder solutions

like ARP Reach - but they are a nightmare to maintain and update and run and even if you run

your own dedicated server its a headache with limitations.

 

I now totally switched to OntraPort (which I found via www.emailmarketingyoucontrol.com) -
they only count contacts as contacts and do not inflate subscribers artificially like Matt mentioned here.

You also get what you pay for. Aweber and Getresponse are really overrated - because most
often you want automation that can grow rapidly without making things more complicated than

needed.

[Leonid]

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