MailChimp is a purpose-built email marketing service that ranges from free packages that only allow for a limited amount of subscribers and transmissions, through to monthly paid packages to suit your needs.

Features:

• Detailed reporting - MailChimp's free reports give you details about who opened and clicked your campaigns, who forwarded to friends, overall ROI and more.
• Pre-designed templates – this can cut down the cost of your development / design of your newsletter. MailChimp templates are easy to use and modify to suit your needs – e.g. add your Logo to.
• Google Analytics Integration – This allows you to easily track how users are viewing and responding to your newsletter. E.g. Do they get to your website and leave after viewing one page only? Or do they carry on and make a purchase or send an enquiry?
• Autoresponders - Use these to create and schedule automated messages that make your subscribers feel special and encourage engagement.
• List management - You will have more control of your list, MailChimp automatically handles all of your hard bounces and manages your soft bounces. You can track which users are responding to your newsletters and target them specifically if you wish using list segmentation. Another example of list segmentation could be to only send to people who liked a specific product you provide.

MailChimp are constantly adding new features to their system and, as it is a purpose-built Email Marketing system, it is the most powerful system we can offer.

It is important to note that to comply with anti-spam regulations (and to show respect to your customer base) you need to have permission to send newsletters to people.  Your newsletter subscription function (sign-up box on your site) will have a double opt-in function.  This means that the owner of the email address gets an email asking them to confirm that they signed up.