I get a lot of questions, especially from Spa members, about what program I use to manage Newsletters in Focus.

I use 1-2-All and I do recommend it. So, I thought I’d tell you a bit more about why I picked this particular program, and the pros and cons I’ve run into.

I selected 1-2-All because it had a couple features that were really important to me, namely:

• The ability to send several “welcome” messages.

  Something that can really boost the effectiveness of your list is scheduling more than one welcome message to go out to new subscribers. The first welcome message should go out immediately, and then you can follow up with a second (or even a third) message about 24 hours later. I recommend sending a regular welcome message, and then following up with the latest issue of the newsletter along with a personalized note at the top.

  (I.E. saying something like, “Again, welcome to our newsletter, FirstName. I thought you might like to see the most recent issue. I’d love to hear your thoughts on [the subject of the issue--"naming your dog," perhaps, or "teaching your children table manners," or "choosing a distribution vendor"].)

  With 1-2-All, I can schedule an “unlimited” number of these automatic messages. (I put unlimited in quotes because everything is technically limited–either by your web host’s space, or by your own or your readers’ patience ;-).)

• The ability to build an extensive database of information.

  1-2-All allows you to collect, essentially, whatever information you’d like to collect. You can ask readers for their names and email addresses, along with almost anything else you can think of. You can ask for mailing addresses, birth date, pet’s name, etc etc.

  One of the ways I use this is for Newsletter Spa members. In the database for members (which is also administrated by 1-2-All), I have a field for user name and another field for password. This helps me keep track of the information ;-). Because any fields you add can also be easily added to your email messages, it means I can quickly customize a message that includes your user log in information.

• User information is editable.

  Something that’s really helpful for your readers is to be able to access all their information. This way, they can easily change their email address, or they can go back and edit their interests, for instance. Any data you keep on your readers can be accessed by that individual subscriber through a “profile” page.

  Alternatively, you can keep the profile link unpublished, and then readers *can’t* change any of their information without emailing you about it.

• You can manage multiple lists.

  This was a must-have feature for me because I have lots of lists. To start, I keep the subscribers for the HTML and plain text versions of NIF separate because it reduces delivery issues (we can talk about that in another post ;-)). Plus, I have a list for testing out client’s newsletters to ensure the design will make it past spam filters. Then, I have a list for Newsletter Spa members. And I have a couple client lists that I manage there as well.

  All of the lists are 100% separate, but you can also send a mailing to more than one list at the time. This part of the program is very easy to use, and quite well designed.

• It allows you to run queries.

  This is a feature I haven’t yet used at all, but to give you an example of how it would be used… I ask all new NIF subscribers for their country. If I were giving a talk in Egypt, for instance, I could send a mailing exclusively to readers who were located in Egypt by running this query.

  You can run a query based on any information you’ve gathered, but it’s easiest if the information has a limited number of responses (so, for instance, running it by birthday month [12 possibilities] as opposed to birthday month *and* day [365 possibilities]).

So, those were the features that caught my attention. Now let’s look at the day-to-day pros and cons of the program.

Cons
Tech support could be a lot better. They’re competent, but not especially friendly. For one installation I did of the program, I had to email them almost a dozen times before they admitted the problem was on their end (up to then, they kept insisting I had done something wrong. I hadn’t.). And, even then, they didn’t have a fix for the problem. But, unfortunately, tech support is generally not up to my standards in any distribution program or service I’ve tried except perhaps at Constant Contact where they tend to be very friendly and responsive.

You have to host it on your own server. And that means being really independent when it comes to technology. It can be a big commitment. But, I haven’t yet had a problem I couldn’t handle, and I don’t know much about php.

It could offer better reports on your users. Most of the reports it offers are by issue instead of by user which means you have to open the specific issue you’re curious about and look at the open rate information from there instead of being able to access it independently.

What I’d like to see here, personally, is no tracking by subscriber email address [which has privacy implications, so I don't ever look at these reports] and instead tracking by a random number assigned to each subscriber. What would this do? It would let you see, over time, subscriber behavior. Do new subscribers stop opening issues after their third issue? Or does your open rate go up the longer someone’s on your list? Do subscribers stop clicking on your links altogether after being subscribers for six months? etc. It would also be great if you could automatically purge subscribers who’d taken no trackable action [opens or click-thrus] in a certain length of time. This would keep your list cleaner, and lower your “rate of annoyance”–some subscribers just aren’t interested in receiving the newsletter anymore, even though they don’t take the time to unsubscribe.

Pros
Super easy to use. Sending each issue is a breeze. Setting it all up is a bit more work, but that’s a one-time activity.

Really comprehensive. You can ask readers for any data, track their behaviors at a minute level, and run queries.

You can preschedule issues. I love this feature–it means I can write an issue and load it into the system and not need to be in the office on the day the newsletter goes out. Seriously, I use it every week.

Lots of personalization. Any field you ask for, you can return in an issue. This goes far beyond first name personalization and means you could say to a reader, “How’s the weather in [Country] today?” and a reader in Canada would read, “How’s the weather in Canada today?”

Easy give-away campaigns. We talk a lot about joint venturing to grow your list, and 1-2-All makes it easy to automatically set up subscribe forms and giveaways. Simply create a new list, offer the gift (free report download link, for instance) in the welcome message, and add the subscribe form to your special JV page. Then, you can either merge the new list with your regular newsletter list, or simply check both boxes every time you send an issue.

All around, it’s a solid program that’s easy to use and does a great job. It offers advanced features and will grow with you. If you’re looking for a new distribution option, check out 1-2-All and see what you think. (It offers lots of features that I didn’t mention here, too.)