Targeted email advertising is fast becoming a more important tool for online retailers. Communicating relevant offers and special savings to your email lists can provide a high return on investment for a relatively low cost.

phpList is a free, open source email marketing manager. It is a fully capable system including features such as: Double Opt-In Subscriptions, Scheduling, List Segmentation, and Bounce Management. It is a possible substitution for services like Constant Contact and iContact.

phpList Pros

• Free! Just visit phpList.com and download it.
• Includes most features used by email marketers (segmentation, bounce tracking, templates, scheduling, etc.).
• Very easy to install and set up.
• Utilizes extremely stable PHP scripts and programs.
• Self hosted, no third party companies to rely on.
• High level of customization available from subscription forms to account management to automated responses.

phpList Cons

• Harder to use and learn than alternative services.
• Have to be very careful when sending emails – spam complaints can lead to a block being placed on your website.
  
• Menus are sometimes a bit hard to use and can confuse even the most skilled users.
• Most web hosts limit email submissions (might have to throttle email sending process).
• Templates can be difficult to manage, especially if you use several.
• Completely lacks open/view tracking. Can only track bounce rate (unless you custom code your website to recognize the email as the source).

In the end, I feel phpList is a great substitute to the (sometimes) costly services available today if you are sending newsletters to small lists. The added risk of Spam complaints and Domain blocking when sending to larger lists is not worth it. If you send a monthly newsletter to 1,000 addresses then this could be the way to go.

For most retail businesses phpList just doesn’t fit the bill. While it is stable, it doesn’t offer the level of personalization that other services provide. Its somewhat cumbersome menu system makes maintaining several templates at one time difficult. And most web hosts do not allow unlimited emailing from their servers (GoDaddy.com for example limits servers to 1,000 sent emails per day). The risk of having your domain blocked by an ISP is too great when sending to large lists.

For help creating or managing your email marketing campaigns, please feel free to contact me. 2 Guys Consulting offers a range of services to help you create a successful marketing program.

phpList.com, Constant Contact, iContact

With the costs involved in obtaining a legal copy of the Microsoft Office suite I keep hearing the question “Is OpenOffice any good?“ Hopefully I can shed some light and provide some useful information.

OpenOffice Pros

• Free! Just visit OpenOffice.org and download it.
• Includes all the basic (and most advanced) functions MS Office users utilize.
• Looks and feels much like Microsoft Office 2003.
• Pre-installed with compatibility pack for reading and writing MS Office documents.
• Fairly large number of free and retail extensions for more advanced users.
• Export to documents to PDF, slide shows to Flash without additional software (and free).

OpenOffice Cons

• Harder to use the advanced features (the MS Office generally does a good job making menus quick and easy to use).
• Doesn’t look nearly as “pretty” as Office 2007.
• File sizes are larger than the new Office 2007 XML-based documents.
• OpenOffice – Microsoft Office file conversions are sometimes a bit picky (formatting can get skewed).
• OpenOffice lacks an email client like Microsoft’s Outlook.

In the end, I feel OpenOffice is a great substitute for home users that write a few documents and play with spreadsheets (but don’t write many functions). Many of these users are already utilizing their Hotmail/Gmail/Yahoo web-based email clients, so the loss of Outlook has no influence on their decision (and for those who need an email client there is Mozilla Thunderbird – a pretty good app when set up properly).

For a business environment Microsoft Office is still king. The latest version provides faster loads, drastically smaller file sizes (using the new XML format), broad compatibility, and, of course, familiarity (no need to train employees). For those IT professionals managing an Active Domain or Enterprise Server installation is a breeze.

Winner: Tie (I hate ties)

OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Office