Hi Jonathan, I have a lot of history with all three and am evaluating VR and ET against a new player in the game. Exact Target has some abilities the others don't have that probably matter more for enterprise level application - lock and publish, on your behalf e-mails, aggregate reporting and more. ET's people are some of the best in the business. I worked with them to customize an e-mail program I did for a food franchise with 150 locations and their system was the only one available that could handle the layers of complexity. We set things up so the corporate office could e-mail to the individual franchise location lists and present the message as though sent by the individual locations while also enabling the individuals to send their own messages within parameters that protected the brand. We were also able to tie all the reporting together. None of the other players could meet these requirements. I've been using VR for another endeavor for over a year and have been impressed. They have a different pricing model - no monthly fees at all -you pay by the e-mail. This can save you some money if you have a small list (less than say 2000) or don't send e-mails every month. I'm one to let a variety of small monthly payments add up and it can be cash drain. I like collecting recurring revenue, not paying it to someone. But you'll pay more per e-mail unless you buy your message credits in bulk. Their system has improved immensely, their feature set expanded and their tech support (phone) is great. Their SalesForce integration works well. If your business requirements aren't too unusual and your list size is less relatively small, say less than 10,000, choosing any one of these programs is kind of like choosing a new digital camera - they all work pretty well -pick the one you like and find easy to use. Small differences in pricing and features won't be the determining factors in making e-mail marketing work for you. And it won't be how pretty your templates are. It will come down to list quality, message relevance, the quality of your offers if you're making offers, list segmentation, good subject lines, deliverability and cadence - all that kind of stuff. Deliverability has always been a big issue and is getting bigger. Close to 30% of B2B e-mails are being read first on Blackberry's etc so message size and rendering are now critical considerations. Exact Target has an edge in message deliverability over the others. I don't know if you've seen the article but it's been determined that SalesForce was designed by anarchist chimpanzees attempting to subtly erode corporate productivity and profitability in retaliation for all the years of monkey commercials. I'd been a SalesForce user for three years and when I heard that I finally understood why SalesForce is designed like it is. Dan Green Area President Helping Businesses Find, Get and Keep Customers Online TruePresence 498 South Gulf Road, Belchertown, MA 01007 Office: 413.253.3400 | Cell: 413-658-8470 www.truepresence.com <http://www.truepresence.com/> | dgreen at truepresence.com _____ From: hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net [mailto:hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net] On Behalf Of Jonathon Podolsky Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2008 12:00 PM To: Hidden-Tech Tech Subject: [Hidden-tech] email delivery program I'm looking at these email marketing programs: Constant Contact, Exact Target, and Vertical Response. I'm considering the latter 2 since they integrate with SalesForce which is my CRM. Any experience with these email programs? All the best, Jonathon Podolsky Producer at WholeHealthExpo.com Voice: 413.584.0010 Toll-Free: 877.WHE.EXPO Toll-Free: 877.943.3976 Fax: 413.586.5846 Click <http://www.wholehealthexpo.com/information.php?infoid=6> here for Whole Health Expo website including information about our events and applications Upcoming shows: Cromwell, Connecticut January 27, 2008 Northampton, MA March 8-9, 2008 Portland, ME April 5-6, 2008 Portsmouth, NH April 26-27, 2008 Other shows TBA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.hidden-tech.net/pipermail/hidden-discuss/attachments/20080203/a6792f16/attachment-0005.html