Can anyone recommend an email marketing tool for my requirements?

[hikiwari]

I’ve tried to learn from other posts about email marketing platforms but I’m not getting all the information I need to make a decision. Can anyone help me please?


I want to send emails to my email list of c4,000.

I want the emails to appear as ordinary emails as opposed to looking like a mailshot newsletter. There will be no pictures included except my email footer.

Each email will include one, maybe two, links in the body copy and a link to my LinkedIn profile and a picture link to my website.

I’ve used Neetrix before but there is no reporting from them on opens, clicks or unsubscribes which is very important for me to see.

I now use Transpond and although it is pretty easy to use and the email format is good, the reporting is an issue. It shows me specifically which links in my email have been clicked but I don’t believe the numbers are correct as they seem suspiciously similar. I think Transpond is reporting bot clicks but they are not giving me a full and clear exclamation in my opinion and I'm getting nowhere with them.

Also the only way to talk to their customer services is by email which is rubbish because they only reply next day, so it’s impossible to have a fluid chat with them. A simple question with a follow up question may take four or five days to resolve.

I am paying £25+VAT for unlimited sends up to 5,000 email at a time.


Can anyone recommend another marketing platform that will cover all my requirements? It's important that I can reliably see who's clicking the links in my emails. Cheers

 

[fisicx]

Mailchimp will do the job but will cost more. If you want all the reporting, templates and support then it’s not cheap.

Omnisend also has good reviews but I’ve not used them so can’t tell if their service is good.

Whoever you choose it’s going to be more expensive than your current provider. Do you really need to send to all 4000?

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

If you have a WP website, use Acymail - free level or more features for small annual payment. Connects to several email gateways - I use Amazon SES.

I have used it to send 100k's of email a month with 200k contacts and it cost peanuts.

You can also use something like MailPoet.

If you don't use WP or want a more advanced system, Mautic is self hosted and amazingly powerful.

I want the emails to appear as ordinary emails

This is just design/formatting - all systems should allow this.

 

[fantheflames]

Mailchimp is the obvious choice. But there's others like Sendinblue, GetResponse, and Constant Contact that would meet your requirements. I use Active Campaign and find that it's better than Mailchimp but the interface is quite different so takes some getting used to!

 

[sanderdehoogh]

I have found Hubspot a very powerful platform as it combines website, email/marketing, CRM etc. all in one. We get 5000 emails a month for £42 a month, but they limit the amount of people you can email by forcing you to mark 'Marketing Contacts' and charge for how many of those you have. We have 1000 included in our basic service.

What this platform will do very well is show you exactly who clicked which link etc. As a matter of fact, it'll track every interaction with your contacts in one place, including which pages they view on your website. As a platform to convert contacts into customers the wealth of knowledge is great.

Happy to share more about how we've set ours up, if you're interested

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

£42 for 5000?

I could do 400k to unlimited users for that cost with a WP/acymail setup or with Mautic!

 

[tomshooter]

I've used SendFox for a while now. It's $49 for a lifetime access and 5000 subs or $97 for lifetime access and 10,000 subs. They retain their Sendfox branding but still worthwhile exploring!

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

Rather than start a new thread...............

I've been using Mailchimp for a couple of years but only to send out an occasional newsletter every now and again.

It's been several months since last used and for some reason I'm struggling to create a simple email with a couple of photos attached.

Has something major changed while I was away?

 

[fisicx]

Embed the images. Don’t try to attach them.

 

[Paul FilmMaker]

At your price point, Mailer Lite and Octopus spring to mind.

 

[Martin Patfield]

Sorry to bump an old thread but it had the most up to date information actually in it.

I've taken some time out this morning to take a look through all of the suggestions and recommendations from everyone.
Basically just to look at all the pricings.

We do not have an e-commerce site so there's no emails being sent for items still in baskets and automated things like that.

We just looking to send our own tailored emails advertising product ranges. Reports should show who's received the emails, who's opened emails, clicked on links etc so that we can have some follow this up either with a further email or a phone call.

With approximately 24,000 ish email contacts. Some may be dud, some may be good.

How do we know whether the service sending them is actually any good to get through spam filters and email blocks?

At the moment our UK company is using a company called Lianatech which has been set up by our Finnish head office and is based out of Finland. Does that matter if we are trying to email our database to our UK Market?

 

[NickZ]

How do we know whether the service sending them is actually any good to get through spam filters and email blocks?

By using a service which gives reports.
Most of the companies here mentioned deliver with reports.

What are you after? Informing your clients about newly added activities?
Sell them something?

 

[datagatherer]

We use Brevo (formerly Send in Blue) - which tells you who opened it and when, who unsubscribed (you must remove them from future emails if they do), who clicked from the email to your website etc.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

who unsubscribed (you must remove them from future emails if they do)

It doesn't go that automatically?

 

[datagatherer]

It doesn't go that automatically?

I meant, if you have a database (Excel for example), and someone unsubscribes, you should remove them from that database should you use it with another platform in future.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

What is would do, if using another system after, is used the cleaned db from the mailing system!

 

[datagatherer]

What is would do, if using another system after, is used the cleaned db from the mailing system!

The database we have contains 20+ columns of data and thousands of contacts.

The system won't open the uploaded database, go through them all and edit that for us. Also, to receive a list of unsubscribed contacts that can go back into the database in the correct order, it unfortunately isn't a simply copy and paste job! As unsubscribers are few and bar between, it won't take long to manually do it, and better that than an error which could alter other informatiton.

 

[fisicx]

Writing a script to automate the unsubscribe is about as simple as it gets.

All you need is a DB query. That’s the whole point of a DB, so you can run a query

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

I had a database of over 400k contacts with more than 20 data fields. Use an email system that will allow you create additional fields so you keep the 'master' information in one place.

 

[Jimmy24]

When sending emails the main one i have come across is HubSpot but I'm not completely sure on the ins and outs of the system!

 

[datagatherer]

When using Benchmark to send out our emails, any unsubscribers or bounces are removed from the list we create with Benchmark so the next time you use the same list, it doesn't send them further emails.

Then I copy each email and find it in Excel, and place "unsubscribed" next to it and highlight the row red.

 

[fisicx]

When using Benchmark to send out our emails…

I thought you used Brevo?

 

[datagatherer]

Brevo is/was the main one we use, mainly because when it was Sendinblue, but in the past month or so, we've been using Benchmark which is great option, too.

 

[NickZ]

Text mails have higher chances of being read.
Words have a certain magic, sometimes, like nowadays it black magic:

mailtrap.io/blog/email-spam-words/
240 words better to be avoided.