Email Marketing using Freestyler CMS - How it stacks up

07 May 2008 - By Sean Fishlock

I've been hearing a lot about Constant Contact (and to a lesser extent Vision 6) lately, and these types of email marketing in a box applications seem to have great appeal to people and is very popular.
I recently visited a client who used it regularly. So I got a good opportunity to see what it could do and how it worked for them and the penny dropped. After I had reviewed it, I explained to my client how they already had most of the functions in their Datalink Freestyler, they nearly choked as they told me how much they were paying to use the Constant Contact application. When I came across a second and third contact who uses that or similar applications, I started to think about blogging on the topic.

Datalink actually once offered a similar product based on Freestyler CMS, but decided that we don't really want to compete in this space, so I'm not really afraid to make comparisons with more specialised products. However our own customers, really don't need this application. Most of what it offers is actually built-in to Freestyler. All you have to do is harness its power.

In terms of email marketing, products like Constant Contact appear to offer a lot. What Constant Contact and others like it can't do, however, is integrate with your website CMS. This is really important for a number of reasons, especially if you are running a customer portal, member portal or extranet on your site. Conversely, if you are a fan of Constant Contact, and want something integrated into your CMS, then Freestyler could be for you.

So I thought I'd make a brief comparison between Freestyler and Constant Contact and other applications just like it. I've also provided a brief video demo explaining what Freestyler is capable of in the area of email marketing.

So what do services like Constant Contact actually do ?
Constant Contact is an email marketing service. You pay a monthly fee based on the number of people in your email list. On the surface it looks cheap, but when you consider the amount per month it is actually quite expensive. With Freestyler on the other hand, you get unlimited email sending capacity included with your licence.

Let's have a look at the specific features available:

Email Campaign Creation

Pick the HTML template and customise

This is one area in which Freestyler differs in its approach. You need a web designer to build your email templates in Freestyler. However my experience with pre-built templates and themes is even with the ability to customise them, they don't have the same appeal as one that is custom designed. Furthermore, many of the out-of-the-box email sending solutions don't have the flexibility to tackle compatibility issues. For instance, in Lotus Notes, HTML emails don't always come out right. Freestyler's templates can be coded so that they still look good on Notes. We have quite a few clients who solely use Notes. Whereas from what I've seen of Constant Contact and other similar systems, this is something they definitely struggle with. There is nothing worse than trying to impressyour boss with a spiffy HTML email only to find out that it looks awfulwhen it gets to their desk.
However, if you run multiple campaigns requiring different templates, a pre-built library of templatess could be a real advantage. From my experience, however, you can have one or two templates with alternate variations built using your corporate identity and they will serve about 99% of your needs. Otherwise you're probably getting just a tad too fancy for yourself.

Insert images and links

Once your Freestyler email template is created, you can insert images and links. Using more advanced URLs you can easily embed the sorts of bells and whistles that email marketing programs, such as inserting links to online surveys and coupon options.

Preview and Test your emails

Freestyler 5 now enables you to preview and test your emails

Subscribe / Unsubscribe option / Forward to Friend

Like Constant Contact, Freestyler includes options in the template for subscribing, unsubscribing and forwarding them to a friend.
However if you want to create a more detailed subscription system which interfaces with other databases, such as external member databases, programs like Constant Contact may leave you high and dry.=

Anti-Spam check

While programs like this can claim to avert spam controls, no one can really promise this. An advantage of the hosted Constant Contact service is that some effort has been taken to point out words which may trigger spam filters, with a dedicated compliance team. However this is not a precise science and guidelines, and all they can promise is"above average" delivery (considering how few emails get delivered these days, I would guess that average is actually quite low). Although an ISP relations team is claimed, I doubt that this bullet point sales pitch can really prevent you from the possibility of blacklisting. Common sense work just as well. That is where Datalink are here to assist, as we can teach you best practice at no extra cost.

Scheduled delivery of emails

This is one area that Freestyler could improve. There isn't currently such a facility, but it is a small step to remember how to do this. It is something useful that we'd like to add in future.

Personalisation Option

Constant Contact enables users to personalise the emails. So too does Freestyler. Using a set of mail merge tokens (such as firstname, lastname, email etc) you can easily embed customised welcome messages personalised to each user. You can also draw upon a large number of extended fields, if you have captured them, such as address details etc.

Multilingual

Constant Contact has a multi-language footer, however Freestyler includes Unicode support to enable your whole email to be written inmost languages which is a real advantage in terms of localisation of content.

List and Sending Management

Manage a contact list

Freestyler does this through its user manager, or you can use the Concord database for even more control and rich user profiling.

Import your lists

Like Constant Contact, Freestyler enables you to import a BCC list or import users into the CMS for use elsewhere. Freestyler doesn't sync with Outlook contact lists, but it is easy enough to get around this by using imports and exports.

Segmenting Lists

Freestyler enables you to segment lists by assigning users to groups. You can then send campaigns to specific Freestyler or Concord groups.

Management of Bounces and Spam

Freestyler is capable of detecting email bounces. These are managed by your hosting server. But you also need to consider emails that aren't always bounced because they are invalid.

Content management

This is the real area where Freestyler stands out.

Image Hosting

As a CMS, Freestyler has its own image library which includes folder organisation and thumbnail viewing. While it doesn't store images specifically for email campaigns, this doesn't have any a real benefit. Furthermore, on services like Constant Contact, once you reach 5 images, you have to start paying premium hosting fees. Freestyler avoids high bandwidth charges for image content by automatically resizing images on the server and generating thumbnails as youupload them.

Archiving of Newsletter emails on your website

This is something that Constant Contact doesn't do well and a major advantage of Freestyler.
Adding your emails automatically to your website increases the contention your site, which is great food for search engines like Google.
With these sorts of hosted services, you have to configure them to look like your site, which can be really inflexible and at the end of the day, it is not your real site, so it poses real usability, navigation and search engine marketing issues.
If you don't want your email content to be stored on the website, there are ways that Freestyler can manage this, using inbuilt security. Whensending the emails, the checks the users access credentials, so others can't see it on your site and that the recipients don't have to log into read it.

Tracking and Reporting

Freestyler offers a dedicated reports area which, combined with the personalisation features, enables you to track sent emails and see who has opened them. While it doesn't track opt-outs, it does provide aset of tools for measuring the return on investment from your campaigns, and can integrate with your website reporting tools such as Google Analytics and Google conversion tracking as well.

Coaching and Support

Finally, there is the promise of hints and tips, knowledgebases and a user community. Freestyler has all of these things and this blog contains all the video demos, tutorials and advice you'll ever need. We also have the friendly Datalink team to assist. Unlike people who run email marketing services, we're not just email marketing experts,we're also internet marketing and e-business gurus. This gives you a wider range of knowledge and services to assist your business.

Conclusions

Freestyler, in many ways, provides a lot of bang for your buck in terms of not just content management, but email marketing, campaign management and also Internet marketing and Web 2.0. Datalink can help you to get the most out of Freestyler and your email campaign management.

Additionally, Freestyler is a product which can be customised and extended to meet each client's specific needs.

So if you are looking for email marketing, why not upgrade. Our website CMS can match the best on the market out-of-the-box and will cost you a lot less per month in the long run.

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