The Best Tools to Send Email to Your Community – Ep 94
Do you wonder which are the best tools to use to send your email to your community? This episode covers the good and the bad of our favorite email tools.
Did you know that having the right tool can make email much easier? Email is so important to keep your business running and to connect with your community and customers.
The Best Email Tools to Build Your Tribe
- Despite the changes in technology, email is going to be important for a long time, but you are going to have to fight for the attention of your audience and get around the hurdles of filtered email that cause lower open rates.
- Make a list of the email features you need. What are your goals for your list size and how will you use your list? Knowing this in advance will help you choose the right tool for your needs. You might even want to use different tools for various projects.
BEGINNER TOOLS
MailChimp
Pros:
- Free for up to 2,000 contacts and 10,000 emails per month. MailChimp now calls it your “audience” and that includes your subscribed, unsubscribed and transactional contacts.
- They offer one single-step automation.
- You can create templates to use over and over.
Cons:
- With the May 2019 update, your free 2K contacts will now include un-subscribers too. This requires a lot of maintenance to keep it up.
Mailerlite
Pros:
- Free for up to 1,000 contacts and 12,000 emails per month.
- Mailerlite includes a landing page builder in the free version.
- Allows A/B testing, not offered in MailChimp.
- It’s cheaper than MailChimp and has additional features.
Cons:
- The free version has the Mailerlite logo.
- Mailerlite allows you to segment, but it is a little clunky and hard to figure out.
CloudHQ: MailKing Plugin
Pros:
- MailKing works with Gmail and Chrome and it’s great for smaller lists and less than 200 emails.
- It sends emails from your Gmail account and helps you monitor open rates.
- MailKing is a part of the CloudHQ family, which includes tons of apps that integrate with Gmail and are free to use.
Cons:
- You‘re limited to your usage limits in Gmail, which is about 200 emails per day.
- It only works as a Chrome extension.
ADVANCED TOOLS
ConvertKit (our favorite, affiliate link)
Pros:
- It’s built for people who are trying to build a sales funnel.
- It has a great editor for email sequences.
- It has landing pages and responsive subscription forms.
- You can easily add tags when people click links in your email.
- They offer great training.
Cons:
- It’s not great for CRM and people-managing.
- Managing subscriptions of your subscribers can be automated, but it can be hard to set up the automation.
- It’s more expensive than both MailChimp or Mailerlite, but also offers more features.
Active Campaign
Pros:
- This platform is loved by many social media marketers for its integrations, CRM and Lead Scoring.
- It is great for people focused heavily on sales.
- They have templates for your newsletter.
Cons:
- The cost for Active Campaign starts at $15 a month for 500 contacts and $29 a month for 2,000 contacts and can be more, depending on what features you need.
Obviously, there are MANY other tools out there that people are using to send email. Which are your favorites, and why? Let us know in the comments.
Now that you have the right tools, be sure to click over to get the right strategy from our next episode –
How to Up-Level Your Email Communication – Ep 95
Tools, apps, and links mentioned:
Take Action
Come to the group and share what email automation tool you are using, or which one you are considering. If you love an email tool we didn’t mention, we would love to hear about it. Come join us in our Facebook group to talk about how to make email work for you this year. The Secret Word is “ACTION”
How to reach Kami:
If you’d like to learn more about Kami Huyse, visit her website at www.zoeticamedia.com. You can contact her by email at kami@zoeticamedia.com or tweet to @kamichat.
How to reach Madalyn:
If you’d like to learn more about Madalyn Sklar, visit her website at www.madalynsklar.com. You can contact her by email at madalyn@madalynsklar.com or tweet to @MadalynSklar.
Join Our Community
We have a new community on Facebook. We will extend the conversation from each episode and deliver bonus content. Sign up for our email list at http://bit.ly/CTCVIP to get an invitation to join or just click the “Join Our Free Community” below to head straight to Facebook (shhh. The codeword is ACTION)!
