Why I Like Campaign Monitor For Email Newsletters

Posted in Online Marketing
by Clay Mabbitt

I read a profile this week of email marketing software company Campaign Monitor. It got me thinking about why I like using this service and recommend it to our clients. I first came across Campaign Monitor a little over a year ago. Their target audience is me: a web developer who sets my clients up to send and maintain their own email campaigns. Here’s how they make my life easy:

Setting up a new client is simple. I can create passwords and set up billing options in a matter of minutes.
I can add custom templates. Each one of our clients has a unique email template that extends their brand.
It’s easy for clients to create a new email. Using the template as a base, the client can change the content, links, and images without needing to understand a lick of HTML.
Subscriber management and archiving can tie into a website. On each client’s website I can include a subscription form and an automatically updating archive of past issues of the email newsletter.

There’s some other nice touches like Google Analytics integration and verifying DNS records to maximize deliverability, but the features mentioned above are the biggest – and the most important of those is how easy it is for clients to create a new email.

They just open up the template with default text. Anywhere text is editable, they’ll see a pencil icon. Click on the icon, and they can start editing that text. No HTML required. Some of the images on the newsletter will stay the same from issue to issue (like the logo), but others will change. Those images will have a link in the bottom corner that says “replace”. Click that and upload the new image that you want to go there.

The interface is the easiest I’ve come across for a person who doesn’t spend all day working on HTML code to be able to manage their email campaign. It’s extremely powerful. Here are some close-up shots of a real template to show just how easy it is.