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Last updated: Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Apologies to my more advanced readers, but lets go back to a couple of basics.

LIST BUILDING is everything

There is no doubt that the key to any successful business is direct marketing - to do that the vital purpose of every contact with a customer is initially to capture their details and build a list. Most customers wont buy on a first contact. They are sceptical. It can take several contacts to persuade them to buy. So unless you have their details, chances are they will disappear, and not remember who you are.  So if you build a list you can build a relationship. And if you build a relationship you can sell by direct marketing. You dont wait for your customer, you contact them.

What does an AUTORESPONDER do?

So an autoresponder, is a piece of sofraThere are several approaches to autoresponders. There are the big companies such as AWEBER and 1SHOPPINGCART - chances are if you are contacted by one of the internet gurus, they will be using one of those big companies.

And sure, they are sophisticated. They allow easy creation of opt in forms. Which are a permanent feature on your website, or slide in or over or under as popovers or popunders Your customer can then subscribe. They manage the sequence of double opt in which is recommended to avoid accusations of spam. They send out messages.

So the key functions of autoresponder software are:
(a) To manage creation of opt in forms.
(b) To manage a database of users
(c) To allow you to define which information you want to collect.
(d) To send an email to the user for confirmation
(e) To allow the user to unsubscribe, to ensure CANSPAM compliance.
(f) Then to allow the creation of messages to send to the user list.

So is PHPLIST a good alternative?

At present I am using phplist, 1shoppingcart and aweber on different websites and this is what I have found.

On the positive side.
PHPlist is a comprehensive list management tool which can do what the bigger autoresponders do.
(a) You can keep separate lists of different users.
(b) It is all configurable from an easy menu system, and can sit behind the website.
(c) The list pages can be given the look and feel of your website, by editing headers and footers.
(d) It manages optin, and whether confirmation is required - and is less fussy than the autoresponder companies in this regard.
(e) You can send messages jsut to subsets of the list.
(f) There is a wordpress plugin that allows subscription from within wordpress
(g) It is totally free!

On the negative side.(a) Setting up although straightforward is more complicated than a conventional autoresponder
(b) Some of the control ( such as changing from TEST MODE to RUN MODE is done by editing a config file.
(c) If you want popunders or overs, you need to get slidein code - which is not as hard as it sounds: go look at any slide in website, and you will see the script you need!

The biggest drawback.Of all the negative points that phplist has, these two are the key.
(a) At present you cant send a timed message sequence, such as deliver a seven part course automatically.
(b) You are using your own ISP to send the messages. They may think you are spamming if you send out thousands of messages.

So the conclusion

I would use PHPLIST in any situation in which I did not need timed sequences of messages, and had no immediate need for slideins. I find it no harder to use than 1SHOPPINGCART. And it has most of the basic features of all of the autoresponders and is FREE.

Other details can make it necessary to use the others in special situations: AWEBER for example, allows the split testing of optin forms, but only if you dont want to modify the basic form. 1SHOPPINGCART has integration to the shopping cart, but of the three I think it is the hardest to setup.

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