Just like big businesses, SOHO (small office/home office) owners can leverage email marketing systems to communicate with customers, partners and employees.
Just like big businesses, SOHO (small office/home office) owners can take advantage of email marketing systems to communicate with customers, partners and employees. Many email marketing and service providers (ESPs) offer totally free email plans for low-volume senders.
Recommended Reading The following Webopedia term definitions will help you to better understand email marketing services: email marketing, email software, email services, conversion marketing and CAN-SPAM.
3 Small Office / SOHO Email Marketing Services
Key features to look for in a small business email service include email list management, opt-in subscriptions, CAN-SPAM compliance, newsletter templates and analytics and reporting. Here are three email platforms to consider for your SOHO operation.
1. Campaigner
The free version of Campaigner lets you send as many emails as you want to a maximum list size of 500 people. The free service includes 500 email templates you can customize to your liking, 1-MB of storage, email address management, multiple email groups and campaign tracking.
2. iContact
iContact offers a free version of its Web-based email marketing tool that would be useful to individuals, local organizations and very small businesses. The free offer is a bit skimpy as you can only maintain a list of up to 100 subscribers, but it does have all the standard features including 24 email templates, reporting and email or chat support.
3. MailChimp
The MailChimp email marketing service offers a Free Forever plan that’s perfect for small office business owners. You can save up to 2,000 subscriber contacts (across all lists in your account) and send up to a maximum of of 12,000 emails per month. With the free service you’ll also have access to a number of features including email templates, a designer tool, RSS-to-email, campaign archives, Facebook integration, A/B Split testing and reporting.
Looking for more SOHO software? Try SOHO Business Solutions: Office Productivity Software.
This article was originally published on May 22, 2012
