Nifty Email-Building Tool for Freelance Designers…

By jimdiggitydog

I’ve had tons of clients ask for email newsletters and ads, which can be a little tricky. HTML emails are finicky beasts - and mailing lists are even stranger. I’m not overly “techy” and any tool that can cut off hours and still allow for billing is a good (great) thing.

I found a couple recently - MailBuild and CampaignMonitor. They’re very similar - and they’re made by the same company.

MailBuild allows you to build a brandable sub-site that you sent clients to and allow them to build their own emails. Tons of templates, and a lot of customizability. The cool this is that you set the price, the client pays the bill through MailBuild and you reap the profits. The actual rates are pretty low, so you can mark them up and make a little dough on each recipient and each time they send an email. Your client thinks it’s great because they are “doing the work,” and you’re off the hook - you just sit back and wait for the money to come in.

CampaignMonitor is similar - but you get all the control. You design the email, set the send-to lists and do all the footwork. You bill the client directly, but CampaignMonitor keeps up with the sending and Spam control - all the drudgery stuff. They also give you previews of what the email will look like when you send it - in a variety of different email clients. No more worrying about how it will look with AOL versus how it will look with Firefox or Gmail. Sweet!

I’m leaving out a lot of killer features - but they’re both a free service to designers, and they can really help you make some money on your - and your clients’ - campaigns.

Nice!

(and no, I don’t make a penny on either one of these by referring you.)