Email List Development for a Restaurant – Aweber or Constant Contact?

Email list development for a restaurant or local venue has something going for it – face to face contact with customers, and the ability to ask for email addresses on a placard or other physical sign-up form.

But here’s the rub. I tried importing the email addresses into an Aweber email list, and, because the opt-in requires confirmation, only about half of the emails were confirmed. This is likely due to the fact that the verification email arrives in a customer’s inbox hours (or days) after the signup, and the time delay causes a disconnect or possible confusion about the nature of the confirmation request.

Constant Contact, on the other hand, allows unverified email address additions to its email list. This was a boon to the restaurant, because the size of the email list data base ended up being about double the Aweber contact base.

By this measure (which is not the only one of course), Constant Contact seems to be the preferred service.

Does anyone have other experience collecting emails from customers using placards or other physical signup forms, and ways that the data were incorporated into a list data base, including the use of other email list management services?