We talk about building lists all the time. In Traffic Exchange Live we had a viewer who was going the in house route for sending out emails. There are pros and cons to doing it yourself or doing it with a service.
Auto-Responder Scripts
The biggest reason to use a script and run it yourself is complete control. I do this with StartXchange. I have certain features that I want to be able to do, that wouldn’t work if it was hosted elsewhere. I also don’t have to worry about variables that are out of my control when a third party is involved.
The problem is this comes at a cost. There are SPF records, DomainKeys, Sender ID, Reverse DNS, Abuse Feedback Loops, Unsubscribe lists, and bounce processing.. Just to name a few. There are also whitelists to be added to, dedicated ips, certifications, etc. It costs time and money, and it’s really easy to make a mistake that messes up your deliverability.
If you do it right and are on top of your game, you can get great results. I really love the results with StartXchange’s email deliverability. But if you do it wrong, you end up wasting all that time and money when you could be building a list. On top of that you aren’t likely to get good results unless your list is large and you are mailing fairly frequently.
Auto-Responder Services
With a service there are many of the same problems, but they are no longer your problem. If you go with a reputable service it’s all done for you. You essentially save your time and efforts for the other things in your business.
Of course there are some down sides. You are limited to what the system lets you do. That’s why in some instances you’ll have to go your own route. And you are affiliated with the neighborhood of the service you use. If they have a bad reputation, or weak security, it could affect you negatively.
So what should you do?
In the end for most of you going with a 3rd party is going to be the best choice. I personally do in house email for StartXchange for the specific reasons above. I then use Aweber for my blog because it has a blog broadcast feature.
And then everything else I use Traffic Wave for because it’s downright simple (and you don’t have to pay more when your subscribers go up). I even have a video tutorial showing how easy it is.
If you are like the guy who was talking to us, determined to do it yourself, it is possible. Just know that it’ll take work and research to do properly. Which some people are OK with. (hey I did it lol)
I agree with you that 3rd party is the way to go when trying to save money for your business. It really does free up a huge amount of time. The number one feature I am most adamant about is having a double opt-in feature. I used one without it but spent a lot of time fighting spam complaints, looking up peoples IP addresses for when they did opted in…crazy, crazy mess! GetResponse and Aweber are to cream of the crop, but I’m not ready to start paying more each time my subscriber base goes up. I’m Not Tim Linden Big Yet! TrafficWave’s doing the job for me, thanks to Rusty of course!
What sort of deliverability results are people having who use the GVO eResponder?
Anyone with experience there?
Tim yet another great topic I am with you it is great to have your own in house responder
because you can control how you use it if you abuse it then your results will not be so good
but if you email responsibly your results will be just as good as any of the 3rd party services
like aweber getresponse or trafficwave. Here is a thought what is deliver ability is it the ability
to get your email to the server it was sent to or is it the ability to get the email in the in box of
the intended recipient? It makes me wonder if aweber claims to have a 98% deliver ability
where are they being delivered, inbox, spam folder to the intended server.
Here is another thought if I was using a in house responder and I consistently make $1000
each and every month from my list would I make twice that much if I used a 3rd party, whats
your thoughts.
The money is in the list so every one should be building their list, branding their name and face.
Deliverability is the % of emails to the inbox. If it goes to spam it’s not considered being delivered because the system removed it.
As for increasing income, well it depends on how your in house system is setup and which auto-responder.
Why are you not talking about your own product RR? It seems to be a great system, no limit on email subscribers. I am having problems because I am not a programmer or html person, I need to know where exactly to place the API code on my Thank you page.
For most people using a 3rd party email system like traffic wave is the way to go. There are rare times to use your own in house, but that also can be a lot of hassle you may not have time to deal with.
I use ChimpMail to manage my list, it’s cheap (also free up to 500 subscribers), has all the important features & most importantly it’s reliable.