Today, I received an email from Emma Email Marketing about a special offer where they will plant 10 trees in my honor if I sign up with them.

In an annoying twist the email was sent with the personalization set to the wrong name. Check out the below screenshot. Oops…

Wrong Name...

They probably flipped their shit when it was discovered but they handled it in a really classy way. They owned up to it. Imagine that; actually admitting your mistake.

They promptly sent a followup email apologizing for the error and making me aware that they were aware.

Owning the Issue

Too many times I’ve seen companies just brush this sort of thing under the rug, just hoping no one calls them on it. It’s nice to see that Emma, at least, has the integrity to call themselves out and deal with the issue immediately.

Now, it should probably be mentioned that I don’t do business of any kind with Emma. I’ve only done research into their company and didn’t really find them to be the perfect fit for my needs at the time. Now that I see their integrity though, I’m going to take a second look.

MailChimp vs. Emma

Email

MailChimp

MailChimp has over 15,000 customers, manages over 65,000 opt-in lists containing over 75 million subscribers, and we deliver millions of emails a day. According to their site they:

strive to make MailChimp easy and affordable enough for a small business to get started, but powerful enough for a large company that’s looking for an enterprise level solution. That philosophy is why we attract so many organizations from all over the globe, ranging in diversity from Mozilla Firefox to Chumby, from PeachPit Press to Harvard University, and from American Airlines to Dee Snider’s House of Hair. The common bond is they all want a powerful email marketing solution that helps them get their work done.

Pros:

Tracks Bouncebacks
Tracks Open Rates
API
Very fast return on contact requests
Detailed reporting
Slick AJAX interface

Cons:

Click track links aren’t white labeled
Requires templated unsubscribe
Email headers are not white labeled

Cost:

For lists ranging from 400,001 to 500,000 recipients, you can send 4 million emails monthly for $1,860.
For lists ranging from 500,001 to 600,000 recipients, you can send 4.8 million emails monthly for $2,220.

Emma Mailing

Emma is a Web-based service that includes everything you need to manage your email marketing and communications from start to finish. It’s a unique platform that combines easy self-serve features, a custom-designed brand template, and personal assistance whenever you need it. You might say Emma’s changing the face of self-serve email marketing. Seriously, try saying it out loud now.

It should be noted that I wasn’t able to perform a hands-on analysis due to time constraints so a lot of this info is from Emma directly. Take with a grain of salt.

Pros:

API
Tracks Bouncebacks
Tracks Open Rates
Tracks click tracks
100% white labeled system
Client interface

Cons:

Custom templates have to be designed by Emma
Lengthy delay in contact requests
Emma requires design options for all internal pages.

Cost

$2500 Custom Licensing one time cost (includes one free sub account, and a free account for a Non-profit (up to 5000 emails/month)
$100 For each additional client account to cover setup/licensing
$250 unlimited Remote Sign-up API
$375 for web services if you needed it.

For up to 5 Million emails Emma charges $.00200 per email. So, 4 million emails would cost 8,000, which is billed retroactively. Send 1 million one month, 6 million the next? The price will fluctuate accordingly.

They provide unlimited storage for email addresses at no charge (ahem….good stuff!) and our delivery team makes sure it de-duplicates when you send it.

Summary

As you can see from the above both companies are pretty comparable in terms of features and pros vs cons breakdown. The biggest advantage that stands out is the white listing option available from Emma. This will allow you to keep your clients in the dark over your methods and allow you to build out your email marketing business.

If you’re just looking for a simpler solution but still want the ability to send bulk MailChimp would probably be best.