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How reliable are web based email newsletter systems?
By Karen Skidmore | September 17, 2008
Earlier this week, 1ShoppingCart (the all singing, all dancing e-commerce system that I regulary recommend to people as well as using myself to manage my online sales & marketing) went down for several hours.
I was testing a few sign-up pages on another site and something was going wrong and then saw it mentioned on twitter. Lo and behold, yup - 1shoppingcart was well and truly down.
Now this was the first time it had happened to this extent in almost 5 years but the impact of it being down meant that nobody could sign-up, subscribe or buy anything from any of my websites. I went to bed that night hoping everything would be up in the morning and sure enough, it was.
I am a huge fan of using wweb-based marketing tools in my business and recommend them over and above of the majority of software you can buy off the shelf or download off the internet. But what this does mean is that my business does hang in the balance when these systems are in maintenance mode.
However, don’t be put off. If we put this in context, yes it is my problem that the systems are down but it’s not my problem to solve them. I am sure 1shoppingcart where putting in all the resources possible to correct the situation and it was nice to know that I didn’t have to sitting at my own PC trying to rectify the faults.
So if you are looking at the various web based email newsletter systems out there, make sure you:
a) choose a company that is big enough to have been established for many years - you can check out their maintenance history and any downtime they have had
b) test out their service desk and make sure you are happy with the quality and speed in the response to your questions if anything was to go wrong
c) go with a company that some of the big internet mareketers use - they can’t afford to be offline for long so using a company they use is usually a great recommendation
Topics: Getting started with email newsletters, Recommended email newsletter software |
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Hi Karen
I totally agree with you.
I was horrified when my own e-newsletter server (http://tinyurl.com/f6h9f) went down two weeks ago. Like with your situation, no one could sign up or verify their opt-in at the time. Also, it meant that I could not manage my account properly. And at the very time I was due to write and put out my newsletter! It was horrific.
Apparently, this was a first and it didn’t take long to get all systems firing correctly once again. But it did induce some panic while it was all down!
I did vow to make sure at least one week’s worth of newsletters was all set up and scheduled to go out at least one week advance. Have i done that? Well, no. Time has yet evaded me.
Then again, I have been reassured that the ‘downtime’ will not happen again. And the upshot is that the system is more user friendly that allows me better to serve my readers and customers to boot!
So, yes, do go with a reliable ‘big name’, and preferably upon recommendation. You will thank yourself for it. And so will your business.