Easy way to do a newsletter

Got this from BtoB.com new weekly newsletter on email newsletters:

Low-cost "smart" e-mail services are letting marketers track their messages-and monitor every point and click that occurs within their e-mail-long after those missives leave a company's servers.

For $25 a month, for example, users of the Topica Email Publisher service (http://www.topica.com) are able to track how many e-mails they've sent on any campaign, how many of those e-mails were opened and which links each recipient clicked on while reading the message. The service also generates an easy-to-understand report digesting all these statistics, which downloads with a single click into Microsoft Excel.

Microsoft bCentral's List Builder (http://www.bcentral.com/products/lb) offers a similar service starting at $30 a month, which also tracks opens, link, clicks, bounces and similar activity. The campaign tracking details are stored and retrieved from bCentral's Web site.

Both Topica and List Builder offer a 30-day free trial.

As with all tracking services, attention to the reports is essential. But marketers who take the time to study these reports will know precise details about the people who opened their commercial e-mail. They'll also know what elements of an e-mail should be changed and tested: By analyzing clicks, marketers will be able to see right away the efficacy of a particular phrase, image or pitch.

Moreover, by studying the reports of these services over time, marketers can segment an audience into distinct groups based on behavior. Such insight enables them to avoid one-size-fits-all mailings and instead custom design an e-mail campaign message for each subset of a subscriber base.