B2B Email Marketing Software Review - Part 1

In this series, I'm going to review the top B2B email marketing software products for managing your in-house mailing list. I'm only reviewing reputable hosted email marketing solutions which are recommended for business to business marketing to your internal optin email lists, and not any desktop client side email software.

Overall Rating:

Savicom email marketing software has been around since 1996 and developed the first web-based email marketing software solution in 1998. They started as MindShare Design, and morphed into a top class hosted email software provider.

User Interface:

Savicom just recently upgraded their UI in Jan 2009 to a more user-friendly layout. They make adding recipients, setting up send preferences, creating campaigns relatively easy, however there is a bit of a learning curve before you are able to set up a new campaign. The menus for importing emails and setting up sublists and fields are relatively straight-forward. Setting up a new campaign and loading creative also goes quite smoothly. It does take a bit of trial and error though to begin to target an imported sublist, or field. Be sure to use the "Preview" list function to ensure you are mailing only your sublist, and not the entire database in your account. Click the image to the right for a full size shot of the opening welcome menu.

Features:

Opt-in email recipients can be added in a single batch via csv file upload, or manually. After each upload, a detailed upload summary report is sent showing duplicate, unsubscribed and blocked emails. You can easily set filters for future retargeting of sublists by adding custom fields to each file uploaded. You can import first names or other data for personalization, or setting up mail-merges of information.

When you are ready to create a campaign, it's as simple as choosing a name, and then selecting the recipients. There is a very easy to use HTML editor that even automatically checks your email for SPAM filter effectiveness (using SPAM Assassin open source software by rating it from 1 to 5) and suggesting coding changes needed to better optimize it. You can manually create a text backup email version (for sending multipart HTML/text emails) or have Savicom auto-magically create one based on your uploaded HTML file. Options for personalization, and A/B splits are all available as well. Previewing and testing your emails prior it sending is easily done. There do fall short, however, on any RSS to email functionality, optin sign up form integration with WordPress or Facebook.

Delivery:

These guys are white-listed with all the major ISPs, and their deliver rates are excellent. They maintain a restricted block list of spammers, and apply it to all campaigns.

Reporting:

Very extensive reporting for opens, clicks and deliveries. Nicely formatted HTML emails provide details on delivery stats (bounces, bads, unsubscribers) as well as response. These are sent 24 hours after a mailing. It would be nice to be able to customize the timing of the reports, however, so that you can send them to clients for example if you are an agency or consultant managing an account. Also, they don't go so far as some other email software vendors with reporting by location (via map) or any RSS subscriber data.

Support:

Nothing short of excellent. Fast turn-around, usually only a few hours, personal service and even a phone call if something needs any explanation. Well done! :) They also have an extensive Help function resource for FAQs and other technical support issues.

Price:

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