How to discover the perfect email system for you and your business

Your Dream Business

English - June 28, 2021 00:00 - 22 minutes - 20.9 MB - ★★★★★ - 34 ratings
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Previous Episode: The secrets of selling with confidence with Shayla Boyd-Gill

Next Episode: How podcast interviews can grow your business with Victoria Bennion

In today’s episode of the podcast, I talk you through some of the different email systems out there. I tell you all about the ones I have had experience with and some pros and cons of each.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

There are so many email systems out there – it can be hard to find one that suits you!Email systems allow you to send a large number of emails to your target customers.You shouldn’t be sending marketing campaigns via email from your own email address – there should be an ‘unsubscribe’ button.You may need a different email system at different stages of your business.Mailchimp has been around a long time – it hasn’t moved fast enough compared to some of the newer systems.Mailerlite is a great alternative to Mailchimp – it allows you to create landing pages and automations easily. Plans start at $10.Drip starts at $19 per month and is owned by LeadPages.ConvertKit charges extra for automation.ActiveCampaign have a light version that is $9 per month but you don’t get landing pages with this.Flodesk is lovely and has beautiful email templates – get a free 30 day trial without putting your card details in – it is only $38 per month and never goes up.Infusion soft is great but very techy!Kajabi lets you do everything – you can build a website, courses, products etc as well as email marketing, landing pages and automations. Price starts from $149 per month.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

If you are just starting out MailerLite is perfect – if you want to do a bit more Active Campaign or Convert Kit – if you want to go all in Kajabi is for you!

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

What is an email system? 03:27Low cost email systems 06:02Next level email systems 11:58What email system I use 17:40

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Follow me along course – Build My List – Starts on the 6th July!

Infusion Soft (Now Keap)

Kajabi

Transcript Below

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. As ever I am your host Teresa Heath-Wareing. How are you doing? I hope you have had a nice weekend if you're listening to this on Monday or next week or Wednesday or just generally having a nice life. So this week, what am I going to tell you about before I get started?

Tomorrow on Tuesday, the, I'm gonna check on my diary now, excuse me, a second. Let's go to the day on Tuesday, the 29th of June, which by the way, happens to be my wedding anniversary. I am opening the cart to Build My List. So I want to just briefly tell you about Build My List. And then actually today, this is all about email systems and things.

So telling you how you know whether you're on the right one, or if you're picking one, I can tell you which one might be good for you. So Build My List is a follow me along course. It's changed its format slightly. Uh, whereas before I used to teach the lesson live and then do the Q and A straight afterwards, and I used to do it in 10 days, I've tweaked...

In today’s episode of the podcast, I talk you through some of the different email systems out there. I tell you all about the ones I have had experience with and some pros and cons of each.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

If you are just starting out MailerLite is perfect – if you want to do a bit more Active Campaign or Convert Kit – if you want to go all in Kajabi is for you!

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

What is an email system? 03:27Low cost email systems 06:02Next level email systems 11:58What email system I use 17:40

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Follow me along course – Build My List – Starts on the 6th July!

Infusion Soft (Now Keap)

Kajabi

Transcript Below

When you do things real, you realize. Yeah, that's cool. But actually I think maybe we need to make some tweaks. It's now actually over a three week period rather than 10 days, because it's quite intense. And therefore, I think giving you a bit of breathing space between is great. So every Tuesday and every Thursday for three weeks, you'll get a lesson sent you in the morning.

And then in the afternoon you get on a live call with me. I walked through the steps. I help you out. I answer your questions. I'm generally help you get to that step. So that's happening and it starts next. Um, I'm going to say next week. Yeah, it is next week when you're listening to this, uh, the first lesson starts on Tuesday, the 6th of July.

So if you want to join me for Build My List, go to teresaheathwareing.com/buildmylist. Like I said, it's a three week course. And then after those three weeks, you'll have your emails built. Hooraay! Amazing. Um, and I go on and on and on all the time, by the way, you should have an email list and I won't bore you again.

So go check that out. If you want to join me otherwise, I don't know what I'm opening it again, because I have got to redo my second half of the year planning, which I'll be doing soon. So, okay. Let's talk about today's episode. Today's episode I'm going to talk you through some of the different email systems that are out there because you know what systems are hard, right?

It's like when someone says, you know, who's got a scheduler they can use or, you know, what's a good scheduler. There are so many systems out there. And I think it comes down to a lot of preference in terms of what you like and what you don't like. Some things I've started off thinking, I don't know if I'm going to get used to this and then I've really loved it.

And I've been glad that I use it. But other things I've tried and I thought, Nope, not for me. So first off thing you'd need to know is there's millions of them out there. And want talk about my email system, I'm going to go right back to basics just for a moment.

What is an email system?

When you're sending emails to your customers, you can't send them from your normal email. So if you have a Gmail account, even if you have an email that has your domain name like mine, [email protected] I can't send bulk emails. And when I say bulk, I don't mean hundreds of thousands. You know, regularly a large number or a fat number of people. I mean, even if I was still in 20 people, I still wouldn't.

And in fact, you still shouldn't use that because you should always have an unsubscribe button on a marketing email. So if you're currently sending your emails from a Gmail account or an outlook or something like that to your customers as a marketing campaign thing, then you definitely gonna want to listen up because you really do need to send it from a system and need to send it from one of these systems.

Because like I said, it has the unsubscribe. But also the reason you have a system is so it does things automatically. So for instance, you can have a form on your website that someone fills in the minute they filled it in, they get added to your system and then they get automatically sent the email. So you really, really, really need one.

So today I'm going to talk through the ones that I teach and the ones that I have experienced with. Now, I've already said there are a million of them out there and you'll probably you know, you might be sat here listening to this thinking, oh, what about such and such? You didn't say about that one. The ones I'm talking about, the ones that I've had some experience with the ones that I like.

You know, if you use something different and you're loving it, then don't feel the need to move. It's just a few, I just want to go through it and give you a different idea of the things that I suggest, but also what I suggest to each stage. Because I have used many different email systems and moving from one to another to another is a nightmare once you have a lot of stuff set up. So that's why I want to talk you through it. Okay. So we're going to start right at kind of like the bottom as it were. So you either have a small email list or you have no email list and you're starting right from scratch. And what often is key at this point is not spending money because at this point, because your list isn't very big, your business, probably isn't very big potentially, and you might not have the money. If you have, I've got some great options for you, but you might want to start on a low budget one to begin with. Now, it doesn't mean there terrible. Now one of them is terrible, but it doesn't mean there terrible. It just means the functionality is a little bit different or it doesn't do quite as much as some of the others do. And some people stay on, on some of the, what I'm classing as lower cost ones forever and are very happy with them.

Low cost email systems

But again, I'll talk you through kind of why and where you would move up. So the first I'm going to talk about our MailerLite and MailChimp. Let's start with our friend MailChimp, now, most people know MailChimp, lots of people use MailChimp. MailChimp has been around for a long, long time. And they were like one of the first email systems I remember using, I think, what was that one called? Can't remember. Anyway, there was nothing use of it, really old. So MailChimp has been around ages. Now when MailChimp started, it was just a place to send out emails and it made them look nice. And it had a nice builder. When I say builder, I mean, you know, put your pictures in and put your texts in and it was fairly easy to use.

But the problem with MailChimp is that. Well, the problem I find with MailChimp is that it hasn't moved fast enough. So whereas some other email systems that come in that can do super cool stuff, MailChimp is like, it's like having a small house and then trying to add on an extension, add on another extension, adds on another extension and the flow just isn't quite right.

So I know lots of you are going to be listened to this. They can live use MailChimp for years, and I love MailChimp and that's cool. But when I was teaching, Build My List for the first time and I had to go and teach myself to do the whole onboarding process for each of these email systems. I promise you, I know this stuff like the back of my hands, give me a system and I can pretty much find how to connect it all up and do that sort of thing for creating an email list.

And I went into MailChimp and I literally didn't know what on earth I was doing or where to do it or how to find it. It was not intuitive in a slightest. It had some really funny quirks that actually were just, so for instance, one of the quirks that had, and there is a work around, but it's a hard work around.

If you put, let's say you create a landing page and I'll talk about what that is. If you're not sure in a sec, but let's say you create a page where someone goes to get on your email list. If they're already on your email list and you think, well, why would they go and try and get back on my email list?

Well, it might be because you're offering them a lead magnet. It might be because you're offering them a good freebie. And even though they're on your list, you still want them to get it if they want it. Whereas MailChimp, wouldn't send that to someone who's already on your list. I just couldn't understand it.

So I spoke to someone who was a MailChimp expert and said, please tell me I'm doing something wrong and I just have not hooked it up right. And they're like, "No, that's correct." And I said, "Is this because I'm using the free version?" They went, "No, no, it still does in late versions." And I was just like, well, why would you do that?

So my first kind of like email bin, dungeon and whatever I want to call it is MailChimp. I'm so sorry, but it's a really, it's really not up for the job. If you're wanting to send emails where someone goes to a page puts in their details and it all happens automatically. My opinion is it's not as good as some, as some of the others. Now a really good alternative to MailChimp is MailerLite.

I went into MailerLite. I find it easy to navigate. All of these systems, by the way, I've got their quirks. None of them are perfect by any stretch of imagination. But I really did like MailerLite, I liked their support I got on their chat talking to them about something. I find it fairly okay to do everything I needed to do. It all work.

You could connect it up. Um, it was pretty good to be honest. So I was looking at the pricing. So MailerLite starts. Oh, hang on. I've got it on my screen over here. I should've had it written down. So MailerLite starts at free. So zero cost for up to a thousand subscribers. So that's a thousand different people on your list.

That's a good size list, right? That's going to take you some time to do potentially. I dunno, you might just suddenly whip up a landing page and boom, everyone's opt in it. But yeah, a thousand people, that's quite a lot of people and you can send up to 12,000 emails a month, which again is a lot. Now the only thing about the free version is when it comes to all the stuff you need to do the automation bit. And the stuff you need is a landing page, which is a page that isn't normally held on your website. You can also embed a form on your website and MailerLite hooks up with WordPress and all that sort of good stuff. So you want a form or sorry, a landing page where you can direct someone to, to say, go here to get this free thing and then get on my email list.

So you can have button MailerLite and then it'll do the automation. So when I talk automation, I'm not talking to any crazy funnels. I'm literally talking. I put in my details, I press submit that automatically then sends me an email and can start a sequence. I have more than one email in a sequence. So MailerLite can do that perfectly.

And you get all those options for free. The only thing is with the landing pages on the free plan, you only get, I think it's four. Is it four or five? Five free landing pages? Yeah, that's it. So you get five free landing pages for the free version. Or you can pay 10 pounds a month, sorry, not pounds, dollars, which right now is about seven pounds and you get unlimited landing pages.

Otherwise they do everything else really, really well for literally $10 a month. And I found it really intuitive. I liked it. You don't get the live chat support. That's not included in the free plan and you don't get, you can't remove the MailerLite logo either. Um, and there premium plan starts at, I think the premium plans start at the $10.

And, um, when you get into the big numbers, they're still really cheap. Say MailerLite really good, really like them. I would definitely consider looking at them if you're with MailChimp, because MailChimp really isn't up to the job. Okay. Let's say you've got quite a few people on your list and you want to be, you know, doing a few more automations and you want a few things and maybe you've got an online product that you want to connect to or a cart.

Next level email systems

Then the next sort of level up are things like ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign and Drip. I should imagine you've heard of ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign. Drip you might not have heard of. The reason I know Drip is because lead pages who used to be a client a while back. And I spoke with her event and used to use lead pages.

A lovely pages. They create landing pages, they own Drip, so it's part of their system. Now Drip doesn't do landing pages, obviously because lead pages do it. So that means you'd have to have two systems. But drip is very good at the automation and the very clever tech stuff. So it's a really nice one. I wrote down the price of Drip, didn't I? What did I write.

So it starts at $19 a month for up to 500 contacts. There's a 14 day free trial though that you can use. And then. When you hit sort of 2000 contacts, it's up to $29 um sorry, 500 to 2000 it's $29. Um, Also the thing with Drip if you're in the States you can also send text messages. There is an extra cost for that, but it's US only US numbers only, which obviously is a bit of a bit of a pain if you're not in the States. But Drips really cool.

If you're a bit more techy, if you're a bit more savvy with that sort of thing, then you can do some super cool stuff. So ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign, these two tends to be really, really popular. They're a fairly good price and they do a bit more than MailerLite. So they're a bit more serious if you like.

Well, I recommended like to give them a run for their money. So ConvertKit up to the first thousand or free, however, and this is what you've got to watch when you look at these things. It doesn't include automation. Now you need the automation to be able to send things. Like without you having to do anything.

So if you do want the automation, then it's $29 a month up to a thousand people. So that's ConvertKit. I think they have a free trial. I think most of these have free trial. ActiveCampaign, they have a light version, which is only $9 a month for up to 500 contacts. But again, you have to read all the stuff that you get.

You don't get landing pages. So if you want the landing pages, then you're looking at $49 a month. So, like I said, MalierLite you can have landing pages and the automation and all of that stuff for nothing. Uh, but you're limited to how many landing pages you can have. It's only five. And then once you've used the five, then you'll need to pay, but it's only $10 a month.

So those, when I look at all four of them, Five of them. Sorry, MailChimp, MailerLite, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, and Drip. I'm still really leaning to MailerLite like, especially if you're just starting off. Now, I want to mention one more before I tell you what I use and talk about that. And then I want to sell you one.

Is also great, but very expensive. So there's one called Flodesk. Right? Flodesk is lovely. It makes the most beautiful emails. So if you are all about look, now I am, but my emails go out as text only because I like that personal nature of it. But Flodesk do really, really beautiful emails. The other thing that's interesting about Flodesk is you can get a free 30 day trial without putting your credit card in which is always useful.

And then if you do join, it's only $38 a month, flat rate never goes up, which is really good. If your, if that look is really important to you. Now from a kind of user point of view, it does do automation and you can create a landing page. But it's not, it's nowhere near like the likes of MailerLite and ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign in my experience.

It's definitely one, if you just want something to look really beautiful, cause it does. The other one that some people might know is Infusionsoft. Now I used Infusionsoft for some time before I moved over to Kajabi. And Infusionsoft is insane. Like the stuff it can do is immense. It's so smart, but it's also so confusing.

And there was a whole thing that people nicknamed it Confusionsoft. If you are super techy and you want to do some...