Big Hip: Email Marketing for Free

Yesterday I found out about Big Hip, an email marketing service that provides you with powerful tools to manage your email marketing campaigns. I've been with them for less than a day, and I'm already liking their service a lot.

They have some very powerful list management and tracking tools that help you easily manage and track your campaigns. Each subscriber must complete a double opt in process, this makes sure that you only have people who are interested in being on your list.

There's also a cool category feature that lets you define different categorize. New subscribers can then select the categories they are interested in. You can then send mail to only members of a particular category on your list. This feature alone should enable you to target your emails in a way the produce maximum results.

Their statistics are in real time, and you will immediately know how many emails were delivered, and how many people actually opened your email. One feature I really liked, was the geographic statistics. It tells you exactly where your readers are located. You can then even send emails to users in a specific geographic location. Imagine being able to send a special email to only list members located in the UK. Amazing!

Do you want to know which links people are clicking in the emails you send? It's as easy as setting up a custom tracking url. This is built right into the system, and you'll get detailed information on which links were clicked.

Service and support is outstanding. You get unlimited phone and email support. There also a live chat support option. I used it today, and talked to a really helpful rep.

I found out that there some very exciting up coming features just around the corner. First, there's an auto responder feature. This will let you setup automated follow up sequences, based on a schedule you set up. Second, there will soon be a feature that can automatically categorize members based on their behavior over time. I didn't get the full details, but I image that you'll be able to get access to categories such as subscribers that read a certain percentage of your emails.

Finally, if you are familiar with email marketing you know how important it is to get your email delivered. Big Hip is AOL White Listed, and a member of the Bonded Sender Program. This means improved access to over 230 million mailboxes, MSN and hotmail use this program. So if a lot of your list members use MSN or Hotmail, this is an added advantage.

If you are interested in building a list, I highly recommend you take a look Big Hip. The started plan gives you free usage for up to 50 subscribers. You'll be able to send 1,500 a month. This basically means, you'll be able to email a list of 50 people every day of the month without hitting you limit. Other plans with more subscribers range between $19.95 and $249.95 a month.