Email List Management?

topper · #1 06-16-2009, 06:53 PM

What do you all use for email list management? We've got a list of about 400 fan email addresses and its a little much to just handle in a personal address book. I'd like to use something like Constant Contact or iContact, but they're kind of expensive. ($15/month is expensive in my book)

We got a "free" LiveWire Musician account with our latest CD duplication project. This "free" service ends up costing us $6/month because of our number of contacts. That price is more like it, but I can't stand the LiveWire tool. It really sucks.

Anybody using Reverb Nation or Mail Chimp?

What else is out there?

**jmattbassplaya** · #2 06-16-2009, 11:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by topper

What do you all use for email list management? We've got a list of about 400 fan email addresses and its a little much to just handle in a personal address book. I'd like to use something like Constant Contact or iContact, but they're kind of expensive. ($15/month is expensive in my book)

We got a "free" LiveWire Musician account with our latest CD duplication project. This "free" service ends up costing us $6/month because of our number of contacts. That price is more like it, but I can't stand the LiveWire tool. It really sucks.

Anybody using Reverb Nation or Mail Chimp?

What else is out there?

Be 'cutting edge' and get a twitter that your fans can follow. Update it every other day or so and let them know what`s going on. I haven`t heard of bands doing this yet, but I`m thinking it could be big in the near future.

Facebook is another good thing to do since notifications always pop up and you can do those basically nonstop all day. You can also send mass emails to up to 5,000, I believe.

jimc · #3 06-16-2009, 11:53 PM

We use fanbridge.com

marksmith85 · #4 06-17-2009, 07:24 AM

And there's always myspace too....

topper · #5 06-17-2009, 07:55 AM

We've got a FaceBook group that we never migrated to a fan page. The process of doing that seems daunting. There's maybe 50 people in the group. That leaves out 350 fans.

We've got a MySpace page, but our fans don't seem to be there. We've never really garnered a fan base there.

So either of those options leaves a lot of people out. I fear the same would be true of twitter, but maybe even to a higher degree.

We do the multi-pronged approach with FaceBook events, our own website and email. That seems to be a good combo for our people. But the email piece has become hard to manage.

Fanbridge looks promising. I'll check it out.

I spent some time yesterday getting to know mailchimp.com. It seems pretty slick, easy to use, very robust feature set. It would be $10/month unless we top 500 fans. Then it jumps to $30.

topper · #6 06-18-2009, 07:41 AM

So I looked at FanBridge as jimc suggested. It is definitely better than LiveWire. Not quite as good MailChimp. The price is right (free) if you plan to send fewer than 400 messages a month.

For us, with a contact list of 400 peeps, we like to touch base with them twice a month. So we'd pay $7.

I really like MailChimp, but I'm concerned about what happens when we go over 500 contacts. We could easily do that this year, and then we'd either have to jump to the $30/month plan or do their a la carte pre-paid option.

With Fan Bridge, when we go over 1000 messages a month, there's a $12 step that would give us up to 10,000 messages a month.

So the price for MailChimp seems worth it now, but wouldn't be if we grow a little more.

Is there anything else out there I should be looking at?

Have any of you been using MailChimp or FanBridge for a while? Can you tell me how you've liked it over the long haul?

MatticusMania · #7 06-18-2009, 04:02 PM

I use Microsoft Outlook, myself.

Lindsay · #8 06-21-2009, 01:36 PM

We use this:

http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/

and Facebook

**Stumbo** · #9 06-22-2009, 01:01 AM

http://www.xtreeme.com/mailxpert/

topper · #10 06-22-2009, 10:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lindsay

We use this:

http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/

and Facebook

That looks promising!

topper · #11 06-22-2009, 02:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lindsay

We use this:
http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/

I think we have a winner! This is a great tool and an incredible value. It's not as fun to use as MailChimp, but it has everything we could possibly need and the price is fantastic! $6.75/month for up to 2,500 emails.

We'd have had to pay $30/month for that with mail chimp. And this is much easier to use than LiveWire or FanBridge.

Thanks Lindsay!

Lindsay · #12 06-23-2009, 04:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by topper

I think we have a winner! This is a great tool and an incredible value. It's not as fun to use as MailChimp, but it has everything we could possibly need and the price is fantastic! $6.75/month for up to 2,500 emails.

We'd have had to pay $30/month for that with mail chimp. And this is much easier to use than LiveWire or FanBridge.

Thanks Lindsay!

No probs