I am researching automated e-mail/e-newsletter services that send out a series of e-mails to prospects/clients. Any recommendations on service providers, personal uses and experiences are very much appreciated.

I have some advice/opinion on this.

Forget "newsletters"... most spam blockers block them and those that do get through usually aren't read. When we dropped "newsletters" and went with a personal monthly email from the agent, reading levels (those that were "opened") went from 12% to 60%.

Make sure you have control over the campaigns.

Make sure you have complete control over the timing within each campaign. Some campaigns require more frequent mailings, while some not so much.

Make sure you have complete control over the content of each email within each campaign.

Make sure the email aren't layed out with fancy HTML that you could never generate yourself from within Outlook. The reasons for these emails is to give the prospect a feeling you are following up with them, and on the ball. If these emails look like they are computer generated automatically, you lose what you are trying to accomplish.

Make SURE you use it!

Here's a link to a good article by "Mr. Internet" http://snipurl.com/bb6e

Thank you both for your input. Control over the content and frequency is a concern because I've seen pre-written content with advice I wouldn't give my clients.

Jim - Thanks for the link. I'll further investigate Realtor.org's articles.

Sharper Agent and Gooder Group are two systems I'm currently comparing.

I've heard good things from clients about:

www.goodergroup.com
www.intersend.com

But a few of my clients didn't care for the high monthly fees. So, I looked into getting a system of my own and found a great one that allows me to create unlimited drip or newsletter campaigns for clients with web based access, total customiztion and we can even have forms on the website that automatically populates the database.

Good luck and be sure to compile your results and post here so everyone can learn more about drip email campaigns. Thanks!

Drips have good and bad points. Good cuz they're easy. Bad cuz they're usually very prefab and mostly irrelevant.

I have to politely disagree with OCCastles above, though. If you find a great newsletter to send, it doesn't matter whether your prospect believes that you created your email newsletter all by yourself. I promise you, they don't really care. If you send them something of with real value, they'll keep reading it.

Also, any decent email marketing company you go with will have a strict anti-spam policy and "whitelist" relationships with major ISPs. You're more likely to have your personal monthly emails filtered out as spam than a newsletter from a reputable provider.

Check out the example offered by House & Home Publications.

www.hhpubs.com