Thanks for your great input.

If I had a decent sized list that I needed to transfer I would certainly consider GetResponse. It is certainly true it will be less of a hassle.

Great input on a “thank you” page as well. I have the PHP code to create one anyone can use here:

http://www.FullTiltBlogging.com/submagic

Let me know what you think.

I recommend GR to clients who have substantial existing lists, because it’s easier to migrate them there than to Aweber, which imposes the double-opt in.

One thing I’d like to share about Aweber (and there’s a lesson here regardless of which ESP you use): I volunteer my services to a local “Friends of the Library” organization where I manage their web site and e-newsletter list using Aweber. Before I came on board their “confirm rate” was about 50%, meaning half the subscribers did not confirm their email address.

Implementing a simple “thank you page” which explains to the subscriber that they need to check their email and confirm the subscription has raised the confirm rate to 99%.

Why is this a comment on Aweber? Nobody can say for sure, but I suspect many of the “confirmation messages” landed in spam folders, or were blocked by ISPs. So, there are many sides to the deliverability issue.

@David at DavidNordmark.com,

Re: GetResponse, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a phone call from a live person the other day, reminding me to complete my affiliate profile, because my commissions were on hold.

Also, GR has some nice features AW lacks, that may be important to certain types of email marketers. For some people, even things like the user interface may be the deciding point.

I do agree that choosing the right ESP is important, so by all means, investigate, research, and sign up for 2 or 3, give them a try and then decide.

The chat customer service is a hugely important feature, they also take your phone calls. I have rarely seen this level of customer service. Thanks for mentioning it.

Wanda,

Glad this helped.

Lightening,

Most of the techie stuff is taken care of for you by Aweber–they have an interface that generates the code for the forms, and all you need to do is paste them into your web page in the appropriate place.