We all know that email marketing can be an effective marketing strategy to include in any marketing plan, but which email program should you use?  Well, that depends on how many contacts you have and how technical you are planning on getting with your email marketing.  I am going to give you a brief overview of 3 popular email programs that are available on the web today MailChimp, Aweber and Active Campaign.  

 

 

 

 

MailChimp – Free and Paid Versions

 

I am sure you all have heard of MailChimp, right?

MailChimp has a Forever Free version that supports up to 2000 subscribers making it perfect for a new business just starting out with a minimal budget and no need for automation.  If you are going to do only basic email marketing and have less than 2000 subscribers MailChimp’s Free version is a great deal and a good way to ease into email marketing.   They of course also have paid versions which include more bells and whistles like automation (auto responders), e-commerce features, targeting features and more.

MailChimp is a fairly easy email marketing program to pick up and start using compared to the bigger ones like infusion soft. Don’t let MailChimp’s simplicity fool you though you can get technical with their segments and groups along with other features.

A couple of things that MailChimp could improve on though is allowing you can not send to more than one email list at a time like you can with other email programs.  They also do not have phone or email customer service; they only offer their database of help topics.

 

Aweber – Offer a Free Trial

 

Aweber costs a little more money from the start than MailChimp.  They do however offer a 30-day free trial so you can test out their program.  With Aweber you don’t pay for the features you pay for the number of subscribers you have.

• $20 for 500 subscribers
• $29 for 501-2500 Subscribers
• $49 for 2501-5000 Subscribers

Aweber is a pretty solid email program.  They have numerous templates to use, automation, lots of integration possibilities, and more.  Aweber may take a little longer to learn than MailChimp  but if you get stuck they offer live chat and phone support during business hours and email after business hours along with their tutorial databases.  They also have a design team that can help you design a template for specific for your business and they include over 3,000 stock photos that you can use.

Some of the cons I have with  Aweber is their Automation is a little behind times compared to a program like Active Campaign.   They do not integrate with Google Analytics.  I also think that MailChimp has made it easier to learn their program and make a really good looking email than Aweber does.

 

Active Campaign – Free Trial

 

Active Campaign allows you to try their program out for free for 14 days for 100 subscribers and 100 emails.  From there the price you will pay depends on how many contacts you have, whether you want customer support and what features you want.

The thing that Active Campaign has over MailChimp and Aweber is flexibility.  There are more ways to segment, tag and group your contacts so that you can send specific automation to contacts depending on the actions they have taken.  If you are using sales funnels to trying to sell your programs, Active Campaign makes it really easy to set up and have your sales funnels automated for you.

Before picking an email program, sit down and think about how you are going to use it and what features you think you are going to need.  If you are a blogger who is not going to be selling any programs and have fewer than 2000 contact MailChimp’s free version would a good choice.  If you have are selling webinars and ebooks and would like to have sales funnels set for these products a program like Active Campaign may be a better choice.

Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to be putting together some basic training videos to show you how to get started in each of these programs.

Remember if you don’t have the time or feel overwhelmed by email marketing, think about hiring a Virtual Assistant to do it for you.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.  I would love to hear from you.