Who’s managing your opt in list? How to compare email subscription management software.

While creating a professional email marketing campaign a simple process, the biggest benefit to utilizing subscription management software is it makes organizing your list automatic.

It saves you valuable time and ensures that your list members are respected (There’s nothing worse than continually sending emails to someone who has opted out – yikes!)

Even if you only have a handful of subscribers, it pays to invest in subscription management software. You’re going to grow and transferring all that data into a system later will cost you valuable time. Two very popular software programs include:

Oneshoppingcart, http://oneshoppingcart.com/, which is an all in one which includes shopping cart software.

AWeber, http://www.aweber.com/, is another very popular autoresponder program which provides all you need for a profitable email marketing campaign.

Whether your opt-in list has one subscriber or 100,000 it is important to have a subscription management program in place. Subscription management takes care of:

• – Opt ins
• – Opt outs
• – Updating information
• – Tracking opens
• – Tracking bounces
• – Forward to a friend
• – Email scheduling
• – Click through tracking
• – Subscription management software can also provide customizable newsletter or email templates and much more.

Here’s how to compare software products:

Look for software which provides room for your business to grow. You may not need capacity for 25,000 names, perhaps your list is only 500 names right now, look for a software which allows you room to grow and respects your budget.

Look for customizable templates. Templates make email newsletters look professional and they’re easy to use however no public domain business owner wants their newsletter to look exactly like their competitors. That means it’s important to be able to customize. Customization helps branding. Look for the ability to upload graphics, change colors and even change the layout of a template.

Look for tracking data. Make sure you are able to track important data like open rates, bounce rates, click throughs and so on. This information will help you optimize your email marketing efforts.

Look for customer service. It’s important that someone is available to help you if you have questions. Look for a product which at least offers telephone customer service during normal business hours and email during the off hours.

Read reviews and check out the website forum and/or blog. Lastly, check to see what other users have to say about the product and how quickly the developers answer and resolve questions and issues.

Here are my two cents on Aweber vs. 1ShoppingCart:

2) This one is a biggie for me and I think its ridiculous that 1SC does not have a facility for this. In Aweber, you can very easily setup rules that allow you to subscribe / unsubscribe people from one list or another based on certain criteria.

For example, if someone is on your prospect mailing list because they opted in for a free report I want them to be automatically unsubscribed from my my prospect list when they get put on my paid customer list so that they can be naturally carried down the sales funnel.

Aweber handles this automatically if you have your rules setup right – 1SC does not. 1SC will automatically subscribe someone to a list that you specify upon purchasing your product but it does not go back and remove them from the other list. You have to do it manually. This is a huge problem for me because once someone moves from prospect to customer, I don’t want them seeing the emails that I send out to prospects anymore. And trying to work through a steadily growing list of thousands of prospects to weed out the ones that have converted to customers everyday is a mojor pain in the neck.

Anyway, that’s my 2 minute summary of Aweber vs 1Shopping Cart.

Subscription management software is essential for any email marketing campaign. It saves valuable time and the return on investment is next to none when managing your opt-in list.

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