Listwire Review

I have mentioned in previous posts how I am not “into” autoresponders and email marketing.

I really am not.

If you are on my email list it is a rare day that you will hear from me. You won’t get droves of sales pitches for the latest shiny thing on the market. You definitely won’t get autoresponder message overload with 5 or 6 mails daily!

However, I have been playing with Listwire for week or so now, and I have to say I am impressed so far.

You can see it in action on my Confessions of an Article Marketer page. It is actually “live” now – you can have my ramblings about article writing and article marketing for 7 days, plus the “Confessions” report and Twitter for Tweeple PLR report.

Enough of the self promotion!

Anyone who has been around Internet marketing for even a short while will have heard that “the money is in the list”. To build your list you need an autoresponder. And, good autoresponders have a monthly subscription which may or may not bankrupt you when you first start out.

Until now.

Listwire is a new FREE autoresponder service.

Normally you would be advised to stay clear of free autoresponder services. They can be unreliable, your mails have a lower delivery rate due to spam blocking. They may have restrictions on list size or the number of messages you can send. Usually you are advised to invest in a good paid autoresponder from the start.

I heard about Listwire as I was setting up The Write Article. At the moment I have my “list” on YMLP, which is newsletter/broadcast service, not an autoresponder. You can only send out broadcast messages (it is very good – nice and simple to use and good delivery rates). Which suited me, I don’t do email marketing

I had also used EmailAces, which I still recommend as a good, far cheaper alternative to the likes of Aweber and GetResponse. But, cheaper is not free!

So it was with some trepidation I decided to check out Listwires free autoresponder service.

No restrictions on broadcast messages.
No restrictions on follow up messages
No restrictions on list size
Double optin only
No ads in your emails
Text and HTML/WYSIWYG editor

Sounds ok so far. What about delivery? Well popping over to their features page there’s this:

List Wire has configured feedback loops with all of the major ISPs that support them. This includes services like MSN/Live/Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Comcast, Road Runner, and many more. We are a whitelisted sender where available, and automatically remove any unsubscribes, bounced and invalid email addresses, and anyone who marks your message as junk, or spam.

Feed back loops? Techno babble to me, but there should be no delivery issues.

Not being one to take much for granted I signed up to my own list from a few mail addresses. All good

So what’s the catch?

Well Listwire doesn’t have bells and whistles. It is a free autoresponder, so if you are looking for one that twits and announces your blog posts or anything special, it is not for you.

You can not mass import your current email lists. There is a facility to manually add up to 20 prospects per day. They will receive an email to confirm their addition.

Not really a downside, but one that annoyed me a little – You have to agree to abide by the CAN-SPAM act. Not a great problem, but I’m not keen on my address being broadcast in my mails. You can use a PO Box though.

Listwire is currently in Beta, while it is fully functioning there is no support documentation as yet. However, the support forum is really good. I had a response to my question within a couple of hours.

The main gripe I have is that when someone signs to your list the first page they see is the Listwire “Thank you” page with a “click here to continue” message. Which means that there is a block before your thank you or OTO page is shown. If your new email list member does not click to continue, they don’t see your offer.

That can be worked around. You can also send a “thank you” mail with your offer etc.

After confirming that they opt into your email list, once again your new member see’s a Listwire page. This time it is an invitation to join other peoples lists – a page of ads. Again, if they don’t click “continue” they do not get directed to your page.

These ads are also a plus point of Listwire’s autoresponder service.

The List Wire copperative list-building system is an automated process designed to help you generate qualified, highly targeted subscribers with no additional effort, and at absolutely no cost.

Well you can’t have it both ways I guess!

Overall, Listwire is a great free autoresponder service which I would recommend to anyone just starting out list building. In fact, I definitely will be setting up my list using it.

Update 29th April - I have just discovered that there is an option to send your broadcasts to your twitter followers too…

Is there no end to the brilliance of this service? Listwire – what are you waiting for? Try it out now!