What are your thoughts about Constant Contact? I have a promotion going that I'd like to let my former clients know about, but was thinking of snazzing it up and maybe doing this on a somewhat regular basis -- well, not "regular," but just when I have something I might want to send to an email list.

Hi Julie!

I am partial to Emma: http://www.myemma.com. It's a little more expensive, but more of your emails will get delivered, and they are a way cooler company! :-)

At least take them for a test drive!
~ Charles

Hey there~
I use constant contact, and I really have liked the responses that I have rcvd thus far. Your stats go way up and inevitably people call for bookings (if not wedding, then portraiture). The only thing for me is that it has felt like pulling teeth to actually sit down and make myself do it, even though I know the result is a positive one. So, I definitely do not do one every month, but rather every 2 or 3 months.


~~
Angela

Thanks Angela and Charles,

Charles, I'll check out Emma next.

Meanwhile, I went ahead and signed up for Constant Contact's 60-day free trial or whatever and sent out a very simple announcement about my fall promotion this morning. With the free trial you get unlimited emails you can send, but your contact list is limited to 100 e-mail addresses. So I sent mine to 100 people. The reports are great! Traffic to my site tripled as of now. Plus, only 6 hours after sending the mail, out of 100 recipients, 52 people opened the mail and 23 people clicked through to read more about the promotion. One person booked for the promo, and another booked for next March. So far. That's not bad! Plus four of my pending clients responded to the mail with some question that they'd been meaning to ask me -- so the Constant Contact thing gave them that little reminder and made it easy for them to get in touch.

So far, so good.