Does the picture say enough?
Many people I know are reluctant to hire professional services for email marketing. They opt to blast out to their mailing list of 3782 people all through an email client, instead of using a credible third party autoresponder / email marketing services company like AWeber
Is it worth it? When you send out emails like this, how much sales are you losing?
Proper email marketing management is not just about spam laws compliance and blasting out emails. It is about:
- Personalising your email for effectiveness
- Making sure the emails look the same, or at least, similar across browsers and clients
- Making sure your emails get read (see picture above for one that doesn’t)
- Testing different email copies to see which ones hit your list’s hot buttons
- Sequencing emails so your prospects are eagerly waiting for your offer
- Tracking the click throughs for each link
- Segmenting your list to make sure the right offer goes to the right segment
- Building a relationship with the people in your list
- and so much SO MUCH more…
So the question is… Guess, which one I clicked?
Answer: Nah, I haven’t clicked any yet. I clicked on my windows start button to fire up my screenshot capture software! Fooled ya! 
Besides getting a professional, a business owner should also work on his lead management, particularly lead scoring. This is to ensure that he will also be able to focus his efforts, time, and money on e-mail leads that are of value. Those who don’t meet the qualifications can then go back to the lead nurturing program.
If I emailed my whole list through a desktop email client, I’m pretty sure my smtp server would start blocking the messages pretty quickly. Hiring email marketing service is absolutely advisable for anyone with a list larger than a few hundred people. You’re right about the consistency in appearance and deliverability also. It’s just more professional.
You are right there Tan. Personalising the email is really important. So is complying with SPAM laws, making the email deliverable in all email clients (to avoid lack of images like above in Tan’s example) and segmenting lists. But the most powerful feature by far is the ability to dig deep into the stats and click-thru analytics that can not only show who has clicked on what and when; but can also show you ultimately how much it costs to acquire a sale from sending out emails to your list. Powerful stuff.