Are you considering free email marketing software for your business? Understanding the real definition of “free” as it is used to define this type of software is important. There are two classifications of software tools that utilize this terminology. The first is software that has no month-to-month costs associated with the product and the second is a service that has no associated costs for a trial period, generally thirty days.
For many marketers who are just starting out online, the desire to save money can often be the primary motivation behind their systems decisions. Often times, this is the motivation that leads people to utilize free email marketing software that has no ongoing monthly expenses. Although this may sound attractive at first, there are some factors that need to be understood about using this type of arrangement. For starters, most companies offering a free service place advertising on the outgoing emails sent by their users. The placement of paid third party advertisements on all outgoing emails is used to generate revenues that would normally be created through monthly subscriber fees. The free accounts offered by most of these types of companies have limited performance capability when compared to comparable paid services. For example, a company may limit a free account to having less than 500 email recipients. Anything above that number incurs an ongoing monthly fee or requires the migration to a paid service. An additional limitation often found with these sorts of services is the number of online email marketing pieces that can be sent on a monthly basis. In addition to these drawbacks there are other performance limitations in areas of design, tracking and split testing.
Free email marketing software is often offered on a limited time trial basis. In this type of arrangement the full functionality of the software is unlocked for the end user, so they can effectively evaluate the performance and attributes of the program. A limitation on the total number of subscribers and the total number of emails that can be sent are generally the only limitations seen in this type of arrangement. Unlike the arrangement mentioned above, trial period software contains no third party advertising. All functionalities of the product are available for testing and the overall performance of the software can be effectively measured.
It is critical that anyone serious about utilizing email marketing as a business building tool take a long term perspective, even though saving money on the front end may seem like a good idea at first. With the traffic generation tools available to a marketer today, the ability to grow a mailing list of over 500 people in a short time is well within reach. Having to go back and move that email list to another service in the future is not only a hassle, but it creates an opportunity to lose numerous subscribers, because they do not subscribe to the new email marketing service. In the long run, the headaches resulting from using this type of free email marketing software may become more costly than any monetary savings that may be realized.
It is a considerably more practical strategy to use free email marketing software as a test drive for a paid service. The paid service will offer much greater functionality to their clients and will also have greater versatility for tailoring email campaigns to the needs of the business that is being promoted. The ideal use of this trial period is to learn the functionality of the system, so that it is being fully maximized once the account moves from a free trial to paid subscription status.
Free email marketing software is a great tool for gaining familiarity with a paid marketing platform; having said that, it is not recommended that it be used as the primary tool for an online email marketing strategy.
