At Avnet we’ve always believed in having a forum that could be used to send company news to our customers. With the low-cost and easy distribution of an email newsletter, it seemed a good fit.

We used to fax information to our VARs. What we have found, though, is that the fax machine has become antiquated. People aren’t paying as much attention to the information that piles up next to the fax machine. The information we sent in the morning would either get lost or it wouldn’t be distributed.

That’s right. We would only send one fax to a company and, we found, that single fax would end up one one person’s desk rather than get distributed to everyone we believed should see it. With email newsletters, we can send information to everyone we believe should get it and it arrives in their inbox. From our perspective, it made a lot of sense to move to this system.

One of the main factors was the ability to detect HTML servers. I tried to do this himself but found it too difficult and time consuming. This was the feature that really grabbed me. I also like the free 30 day trial and the fact that I wouldn’t have to commit to the service until I knew whether it was right for me. The ability to spit out a newsletter in a few hours, was also a key selling point. The system is very user-friendly,

They gave great customer service. I was impressed by the fact that, as soon as I signed up, there was an immediate phone call to see if I had any questions. They were very quick to provide answers and gave great support.

Internal feedback was positive right away. It took about three issues until customers provided feedback and it has been positive. We put ours out twice a month and feel that it has definitely increased mindshare among prospects and clients.

Putting our subscription box on our website has definitely helped increase our numbers. Our subscriber list continues to grow and, in fact, people who aren’t our VARs are subscribing to our newsletter. Obviously, this is something we are very pleased about.