Writers sometimes don’t like to deal with technology and can be slow to change the way they operate. But if you’re a writer or author with serious aspirations of sharing your work with a lot of people through a mailing list, then you really have to change at least one thing: Get a professional email marketing system.

Before your eyes glaze over, let me just tell you that getting a good email marketing  system is critical. You can’t continue to send out your newsletters and email blasts from your own email account. You need a system that helps you efficiently and effectively manage your email marketing, so you can become more productive. Systems include MailChimp, GetResponse, Campaign Monitor, iContact, Constant Contact, AWeber, and others.

Here are 19 reasons to sign up for an email marketing system today

If you are using your email account to send out newsletters and messages to your mailing list, then this is what you are missing:

1. List management is nearly impossible as your numbers grow. Database management requires software. Sure, you have 50 newsletter subscribers today. But what about when you have 5,000? A good email marketing system is built to handle your growth.

2. You don’t get feedback without an email marketing system. Getting feedback on who’s clicking which link in your newsletter would also not be possible without analytics. Measuring effectiveness on various parameters is crucial.

3. Your emails won’t go through. Sending out emails in the thousands would be impossible as your Internet service provider would block you.

4. You miss the chance to get subscribers. Capturing potential subscribers would not be possible without widgets that can be embedded in websites.

5. You are chained to a schedule. Outbound emails can be scheduled and sent automatically. That way you can write your newsletter in advance and schedule it to go out when you want. Sweet!

6. You can’t schedule follow-up emails. Higher end email marketing services provide drip campaign capabilities. That means you can schedule a series of email messages to go out in a particular order over a specific period of time.

7. You aren’t able to focus on giving readers what they want. Segmentation allows you to set certain parameters for people receiving your emails. This is helpful if you want to divide your mailing list into different groups or segments — so that each group receives just the kind of information they want. Segmentation can only be done via software, since there are too many parameters and data to handle manually.

8. Your messages bounce. Email marketing services have inbox inspectors that make sure your email has a high chance of deliverability.

9. You can’t get on the VIP list. Okay, maybe it’s not a VIP list, but email marketing services have whitelisting tie-ups. Benefits include faster delivery and a reduced likelihood of triggering spam filters.

10. You are stuck sending something that doesn’t work. Email marketing services provide tried and tested templates that reduce bounces.

11. You have to handle spam and subscription requests one by one. Email marketing systems let you get subscribers, handle spam complaints, and manage unsubscribes — all automatically.

12. You don’t get good autoresponders. Autoresponders. Can one do without them? Autoresponders let you send messages automatically when someone emails you at a particular email address.

13. You don’t get geographic info. You can geo-segment your list, which is great for local campaigns. Not sure how useful that would be? Well, imagine having a book signing in a particular city; geo-segmentation would allow you to send out emails to only those in that area.

14. You have to do way too much work. Some people prefer to get news via email instead of checking blogs or using an RSS reader. With RSS-to-email, you can publish your content once and send it to your email subscribers without even thinking about it.

15. You’re way too limited. Your sign-up form can be used by people around the world who don’t know English, thanks to a neat feature called auto-translate. Thinking big?

16. You can’t test your marketing. Split testing is a key marketing tool that most email marketing companies now provide.You can test your headlines, messages, and lots of other details.

17. You won’t get extra detailed info. Some allow Google Analytics integration, which supercharges your measurement of how well your campaign is doing and why.

18. You don’t know anything about security online. Data security is handled by experts; we don’t know the first thing about it when we send stuff out on the Internet. But you want somebody to have your back when it comes to security, right?

19. Social integration takes too much work. Many email marketing companies now provide social sharing tools, making it easy for readers to connect with you on various platforms.

What other benefits have you found when using email marketing systems?