E-mail Marketing Services

[MetalGear]

Does anyone have a favorite e-mail marketing service?

So far I am looking at using the following:

1. Amazon Simple Email Service
2. Active Campaign
3. AWeber

Thanks,
MG

 

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[Sean Kaye]

I've used Infusionsoft for about four years and three years ago switched to Active Campaign.

I send a daily email to my list that's in the low thousands of people. Over the last 18 months I've sent over 1m emails and have written about 600.

It has a good automation capability, integrates nicely with party tools and is very price competitive.

 

[Sean Kaye]

Just to continue - those three services you listed are entirely different from one another.

AWS SES is an email relay service it doesn't keep your list - you need a third party list management tool to use it.

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing and automation tool. It sends emails, manages your list(s), allows you to tag users and has a lightweight CRM component that is a bit "meh" in my opinion.

Aweber is just a list based email marketing tool. They have implemented some rudimentary tagging and are trying to shoehorn in some very basic automation, but it's a very simplistic platform.

So you're not really comparing apples and apples.

 

[MetalGear]

Just to continue - those three services you listed are entirely different from one another.

AWS SES is an email relay service it doesn't keep your list - you need a third party list management tool to use it.

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing and automation tool. It sends emails, manages your list(s), allows you to tag users and has a lightweight CRM component that is a bit "meh" in my opinion.

Aweber is just a list based email marketing tool. They have implemented some rudimentary tagging and are trying to shoehorn in some very basic automation, but it's a very simplistic platform.

So you're not really comparing apples and apples.

1. Appreciate your input! I am very new to that part of the digital marketing world and did not know the difference.
2. Do you have any other recommendations for a list based e-mail marketing tool like AWeber?
3. I would like to keep and manage my list, at the very least I am keeping it in a spreadsheet since I'm still at the very early stages
4. I don't feel like I need a campaign justttt yet

 

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[GuestUser450]

Drip. It's closer to infusionsoft in capability than MailCheat(Chimp) or aweber and it's not maddening to use.

 

[Sean Kaye]

1. Appreciate your input! I am very new to that part of the digital marketing world and did not know the difference.
2. Do you have any other recommendations for a list based e-mail marketing tool like AWeber?
3. I would like to keep and manage my list, at the very least I am keeping it in a spreadsheet since I'm still at the very early stages
4. I don't feel like I need a campaign justttt yet

I would look at ActiveCampaign - for up to 1000 people on their Lite plan with unlimited mailing it costs $17/mth.

You don't want to keep your email list in a spreadsheet, that's not a good idea. You're better off letting your ESP manage optins and optouts for a whole bunch of reasons from both a risk perspective, but also just from a workflow perspective.

I'd say use ActiveCampaign because you don't need to use the marketing automation features, but you SHOULD learn how to do tagging and such and do that from Day One. I'd also suggest you get to grips with an Email Marketing tool quickly and early on.

My mate Barry Moore has a great Udemy course on ActiveCampaign called, "ActiveCampaign QuickStart - Marketing Automation" - if you click out to the forum's main page, part way down the page is an ad for Udemy, click on that so Udemy know you came from @MJ DeMarco and then search for that course.

If MJ or the mods are happy with it, I'll ask Barry for a coupon code (nothing in it for me, it's just a good course) to get a discount and post it.

Like I said, I'd start with your email marketing properly, learn how to make those systems work because changing down the track is a bit painful.

 

[johnp]

I work for a company that sends billions of emails per month, so for what it's worth, here's my opinion.

It's less about the service and more about the type of mail you send and deliverability.

My favorite email services are the ones that can get mail delivered to the inbox as consistently as possible, although a lot of that depends on the type of mail that you are sending and your whole opt-in process.

Sometimes, using a SMTP Relay Service isn't such as bad idea.

Why?

Because Relay Services tend to send a lot of really good mail that do not get high complaint rates or caught up in spam traps like password resets, order confirmations, etc...

The problem is that most relay services like AWS don't have good marketing tools, like Sean mentioned. If you can find one, then I highly suggest looking into the service because being in a good mail stream can make a difference, especially if you send shit mail at the beginning.

Another thing that you'll want to think about is how the email services shape traffic to the major email clients. Also, do they have their own MTAS, etc... You'd be surprised, many email services are just white-labeling the deliverability, with a relay engine behind them. I'm pretty sure that ActiveCampaign has their own servers - I asked them.

From a feature perspective, I want to say that all you really need is a way to type an email, save a list, and send - but times are changing. I'd say go with something that allows you to tag and split out automation sequences based on engagment.

In the industry, we're seeing a major shift towards engagement based spam filters. Gmail for example, will now look at the same piece of mail that you send in different ways, right down to the recipient level. Therefore, it does make sense to email based on engagement now - you don't have to, but it does help.

Knowing that, there aren't many email services that I would recommend. So here's my recommendation:

I would definitely take a look at ActiveCampaign. I use them for ecommece and I was using them for daily email for awhile, which I have to get back to. Their reporting kind of sucks, but aside from that they make it really easy to send mail based on engagement levels. They have just about everything you need, plus a lot of stuff you don't need but may find useful. I also think that they are a little more restrictive about the type of mail that flows through their network, and that's a good thing. Finally, their support is great and it's easy to speak to someone on the deliverability team, which is huge.

Also - If any service out their helps monitor your sender reputation as you send email, then that's also a good thing to have. I know of two, but I can't mention them or use them myself.

 

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[Andy Black]

I would look at ActiveCampaign - for up to 1000 people on their Lite plan with unlimited mailing it costs $17/mth.

You don't want to keep your email list in a spreadsheet, that's not a good idea. You're better off letting your ESP manage optins and optouts for a whole bunch of reasons from both a risk perspective, but also just from a workflow perspective.

I'd say use ActiveCampaign because you don't need to use the marketing automation features, but you SHOULD learn how to do tagging and such and do that from Day One. I'd also suggest you get to grips with an Email Marketing tool quickly and early on.

My mate Barry Moore has a great Udemy course on ActiveCampaign called, "ActiveCampaign QuickStart - Marketing Automation" - if you click out to the forum's main page, part way down the page is an ad for Udemy, click on that so Udemy know you came from @MJ DeMarco and then search for that course.

If MJ or the mods are happy with it, I'll ask Barry for a coupon code (nothing in it for me, it's just a good course) to get a discount and post it.

Like I said, I'd start with your email marketing properly, learn how to make those systems work because changing down the track is a bit painful.

Sure, please post a discount code @Sean Kaye. I'm paying for ActiveCampaign myself but haven't got round to using it...

 

[Napoolion]

Today it is really easy to create your own email marketing service, I have one running. Let me know if you have some specific needs, might be able to help you.

 

[Sean Kaye]

Also - If any service out their helps monitor your sender reputation as you send email, then that's also a good thing to have. I know of two, but I can't mention them or use them myself.

That's a good point - I used Send Forensics for monitoring my reputation and I also use Google Postmaster Tools to see what they think of what I send to Gmail. Every couple of months, I run my entire list through BriteVerify to make sure that I don't have any known honeypots or anything on my list.

 

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[cherrynoob]

My favorite one by far is atomic mail sender. It has everything I need for my email campaings.

 

[Napoolion]

atomic mail sender

Hmm, that is interesting, do you use any SMTP servers?
How much of your emails land into spam?

Thanks!

 

[cherrynoob]

Hmm, that is interesting, do you use any SMTP servers?
How much of your emails land into spam?

Thanks!

Hello!
This soft has it's own SMTP server (so I use it) and works with any other. The number of emails that go to spam depends on how large your base is.

 

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