I’ve been using iContact for several months now to acquire and manage my email prospects. I like the program but it has not been generating enough business to justify the expense. Aren’t there any freebies out there?

I use I contact too... They are one of the best in the terms of easy to use and set up. They are costly....

You should have an email sign up on every page.

Ken, Careful of free services- your e mail may never get through. Even with I contact, AOL addresses often get bounced back, though they mostly have that straightened out now.

So, specifically how are you USING you E mail list, and what do you WANT to get out of it? It's not the service you are using, it is what you are doing (Or not) with the service that will make the biggest impact.

Ok, I just signed up AND looked at your web site. So, the first question is... who is your newsletter for? Is it for teachers and educators etc.? or is it for kids?

I would do TWO of them.... One for each, and do it monthly , bi weekly or weekly, NOT quarterly. Or make it for the adults, with a seperate section for the kids that the adults can print up and give to them.

Every issue, send them a newsletter with an EXAMPLE of a motivational message for kids. Talk about what kids fear, dream, want, their troubles, society and kids, and give an example of your philosophies and messages.

People will read, or not read, a newsletter based on what is in it for them. So give them something of value. Toss in the occasional promo video, PDF flyer attachment, special discount during slow seasons or what-have you.

For the kids, maybe include some basic magic they can do, kind of thing one finds in a children's magic book, public domain.

Incude PDF puzzles that can be saved, cut out and shown to others ALA the kind of promo pieces Dell-O'dell used.

I would even consider setting up a year's worth of newsletters, one per week, on an auto responder, so once they sign up you don;t do anything and they get the first years worth of articles for free, every week. Then you can trasnfer them to the manual list after a year if they are still with you.... even send a personal E mail and ask if they stillw ant to get your newsletter and have they every thought of hiring a live performer, etc....

Leaping Lizards,

Thank you for taking the time to share those ideas. Here is my dirty little secret: At present, I don’t have any kind of newsletter campaign! Early this year I made the decision to get my act together and start taking advantage of this new way to market. The first step would be to get a good list together. That’s when I subscribed to iContact and put the sign up sheet on my web site. Then when I got a list I would seek the council of some nice folks like yourself (thanks, again), and put the actual newsletter program together.

The problem is in the past 4 months I’ve only got 3 people to sign up (4 including you). So, I was starting to wonder if spending money on iContact every month was a good idea.

Truth is I have not been as aggressive as I should be and I agree with you when you say, “It's not the service you are using, it is what you are doing (Or not) with the service that will make the biggest impact.” Good suggestion, Curtis, about putting sign up sheets on every page. I can also make the sign up be more attractive too. Like, “Get a FREE magic trick if you sign up” or something like that.

Still, there are some free services on the internet that have worked very well for me. Like, Blogspot, Jotform, youtube, limewire, and, oh yeh, the Magic Café, to name a few. I was just wondering if anyone came across something like this and could testify to the quality, or lack there of.

Thanks again for your suggestions. I may be PMing you in the near future.

Feel free to PM any time.

I use SugarCRM for managing my client relationships, bookings, opportunities, advertising campaigns etc.

It took me some time to customize it for the magic business, but I would be happy to help anyone get it set up if they're interested. In addition to being a free full featured CRM solution, it also has a built-in email marketing manager. I can easily design and send newsletters, track views, click-throughs, unsubscriptions, see reports on how effective each campaign is etc. It's a great tool, PM me if you want more info.

I've used SugarCRM as well and it's an amazing (and FREE!) tool. Be aware, however, that installing the open source version on your hosting server does require a wee bit of computer savvy -- if you're already uploading webpages to a Linux server using FTP and the letters MySQL don't scare you, then go for it.

And if you do, make sure to read through the support forums for SugarCRM, as just about all the challenges you may experience... have already been faced by someone else before...

--Jack

I love icontact. I've been using the service for a year and a half and I'm able to promote myself to my clients on a monthly basis. More than once I've gotten calls for big shows that were triggered by my email newsletter. at about $15.00 per month for 1000 contacts, I'd say that was a bargain- especially when compared to the cost of postcards and stamps.

For a free 15 day trial, go here: http://www.intellicontact.com/a.pl/87273

Icontact has a lot of problems. If someone on AOL in your mailing list reports you as spam, they will cancel your prepaid account. Most of the online marketers look down on Icontact. The more popular mailing list programs are adweber and getresponse.

With getreponse you can have 10,000 subscribers for only $17.95. Icontact charge $74.00 for 10,000 subscribers.

Besides the low selling price is the features. Getresponse has more bells and whistles than Icontact.

Their autoresponsder sends an email to prospects requesting information. On top of that it send follow up emails to your potential clients. You need to be seen more than once not to be forgotten.

Check them out for yourself.


http://www.GetResponse.com/index/rafaelmagic


Rafael Garibaldi
Corporate Magician

Icontact is an "opt in" or permission based service. If you follow the rules and send messages only to people who have signed up for or want to be on your list, you should have no problems. This is the case for all of the online e-mail forwarding services. I have a sign up link on my website and whenever I exchange business cards with a potential contact, I ask permission to subscribe them to my newsletter list. I've have very few issues with this and even the two contacts who, for some unknown reason, flagged my message as spam, my account was not cancelled.

I don't have experience with any other service, I'm only reporting my personal experience with icontact.

I have a mailing list of over 16000 and use I contact.
Every time we send out a mailing we have issues with the AOL subscribers. We have less than .01 not even 1 percent of complaints. But Icontact makes us jump through hoops to keep our account.

A major reason for this I think is that I use my production company name in the FROM section.
So we are changing it....

All the mailing lists have permission based "opt-in", its standard. I used to use Icontact till I discovered getresponse, I switch, saved money and have more features. The AOL problem with Icontact is common.

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=543577

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=876250

The majority of internet marketers, which is what your doing with this software, use either adweber or getresponse. I use getresponse. It has a little more bells and whistles than adweber, and better pricing.

http://www.GetResponse.com/index/rafaelmagic

Rafael Garibaldi