iZachy

After publishing my post on email broadcasting service, I decided to write one more post on email newsletters. Like everyone else, after I saw the poor performance of Zookoda, I was ready to jump ship. However, reliability is only one of several criteria to consider when selecting a newsletter solution provider. I've put together a five-step process for selecting a newsletter solution.

(1) Determine Must Have Features

The very first step is to determine which features you must absolutely have. For me, the "must have" features are auto opt-in and auto opt-out. I ran the email-marketing program for a big corporation. The company generated around $700 million in annual sales, but could only afford a $10 email-marketing program. Someone must have purchased it at a pet store because every time I had to use it, I felt like I was in somebody's doghouse. Why you ask? Well, the software had no way to handle opt-in and opt-out automatically. Every time someone opted in or opted out, I had to manually add or delete them from the database. Two or three email addresses is no big deal, but several hundred addresses is enough to turn me to the dark side of the Force.

(2) Compile List of Solutions

The second step is to compile a list of newsletter solution providers. For this exercise, I am sticking with the four services I reviewed previously (FeedBurner, Zookoda, Squeet, and FeedBlitz). You can have as many or as few solutions as you want on your list. Obviously, the more services you have, the more choices you will have. However, it also means more time and work is needed to make your selection.

(3) Weed Out Services

The next step is to use your "must have" features to weed out the solutions that do not have the features you must have. Remember, this is your "must have" list, not your "I kinda like these features" list. If the solution does not have your "must have" features, take it off your list. In my case, all four of the solutions on my list have my "must have" features.

(4) Compile Criteria and Assign Weight

The fourth step is to compile a list of criteria for evaluating the services on your list. The criteria I'm using are: reliability, ease of use for publishers, easy to subscribe, features, and customization. You can also assign weights to your criteria. For instance, if reliability is twice as important to you than the other criteria, then assign a weight of two to reliability. On the other hand, if you don't want to spend a lot of time learning how to use the service, then assign a higher weight to ease of use for publishers. If this is a bit confusing, relax. I have a couple of examples in the next step.

(5) Rank and Score Services

In the last step, you assign a score from one to five for each criterion. Assign five for great, four for good, three for fair, two for bad, and one for my deceased grandmother could have done better. After you rank each solution, you add up the points. The solution with the highest score wins. Here is an example (weight of one for all the criteria):

In the next example, reliability was assigned a weight of two. To determine the score, you just double the points for reliability:

As you can see, based on how I scored each criterion, Zookoda (21 points) still nudged out FeedBlitz (20 points) when all the criteria were weighted evenly. However, when reliability was weighted twice as important, FeedBlitz came out on top. It's up to you to decide how much weight to assign each criterion.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 1:23 am and is filed under How-to. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.