What is the best email marketing software?

[Ben Astell]

Hi everyone, as a social media & digital marketing apprentice i have been using mail-chimp for the past 10 months however i now feel that there are much better options available for email marketing. Would anybody be able to recommend a program that is great for customisation. Thankyou

 

[justinaldridge]

What's wrong with mailchimp? It's a very good platform. I use it a lot.

I used to use Aweber and that is also very good.

What exactly are you trying to do that you can't seem to do with mailchimp?

 

[Gregory007]

There a loads..so best to write out what you want from an email marketing system then find the one that fits your requirements.

For many: costs & usabllity determine their options

 

[Ben Astell]

Hi, sorry i should have put more detail. Dont get me wrong i love mailchimp, I have been using It for a while and still currently am but I find that mailchimp is pretty basic when it comes to custom templates. It Is very limited on where you can put content unless your a html coder.I like to customise everything in great detail. I would also like to use our own font which i'm not sure if other programs can do this as i know it has to be html friendly. I have Also used aweber but find lots of email clients and security tools will block emails from aweber as it is known for people spamming.

 

[Minal Patel]

Hi Ben, firstly, in interests of full disclosure, I work for Constant Contact. I would love for you to try us. Our new editor lets you build the email you want without knowing how to use HTML. Re the fonts - it's best to stick to the common fonts that are supported as anything out of the ordinary may not display well.

If you do decide to give us whirl, you can have a free 60-day trial. Just head over to our website to do this.

If you're interested in email marketing best practices, we have plenty on our blog.

I don't have enough credits to be able to give you the links, so send me a message if you'd like these.

Minal

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

Try to Getresponse - it's easy, intuitive with multiple well designed functionalities. Ready landing pages included in subscription price.

 

[woodss]

Drip is very, very good.

www.getdrip.com

(Not affiliated, just a very happy user).

 

[Henry Simons]

Have you looked into Pure360? Have used that platform before and it's highly customisable, it wasn't always the most intuitive when I used it but that was a couple of years ago so I'm sure it's improved since then. Or another platform I've used is Instiller which might be worth looking into. Although I'll be honest I've gone back to MailChimp!

 

[Alan]

It Is very limited on where you can put content unless your a html coder.I like to customise everything in great detail. I would also like to use our own font which i'm not sure if other programs can do this as i know it has to be html friendly.

Really it is better to keep it simple (and responsive) as you don't know what size device your email is going to be.

Also, as mentioned, don't get fancy with fonts, as again you don't know the capabilities of the email client programs.

 

[beasty]

Mailchimp, someone on here pitched me something else (Which i was interested in and this annoyed me greatly, he did not even follow up to get the deal) he did once, i was busy and i never heard from him. As someone who loves sales, i could not believe this, he simply needed to call me and we would have done a deal.

Not really used other mass mailers, Awebber a time ago, I think the problem you might find with recommendations is that not many people have used 10 different systems for any significant time so its quite hard to know which one is going to work for you.

My view is, keep it simple, mailchimp offers plenty of options, no reason to change now and if that guy calls me, he missed the boat.

 

[beasty]

Mailchimp, someone on here pitched me something else (Which i was interested in and this annoyed me greatly, he did not even follow up to get the deal) he did once, i was busy and i never heard from him. As someone who loves sales, i could not believe this, he simply needed to call me and we would have done a deal.

Not really used other mass mailers, Awebber a time ago, I think the problem you might find with recommendations is that not many people have used 10 different systems for any significant time so its quite hard to know which one is going to work for you.

My view is, keep it simple, mailchimp offers plenty of options, no reason to change now and if that guy calls me, he missed the boat.

 

[Sally Beers]

It depends on what you are looking for in an email marketing platform. I work for Benchmark Email and we were recently voted no.1 for customer service by PC Mag and best overall by Business News Daily.
Our responsive drag and drop editor is extremely user-friendly and you'll also have your own contact who will happily advise and support you with your campaigns from the very beginning. There are free live webinars and other educational materials available too.
You can sign up to our free account and access most features (signup forms, surveys, polls, list segmentation and support etc. included) forever with no credit card required and no strings attached.
Then, as your company and contact lists grow, you can think about upgrading to one of our plans with unlimited sending. They start from $11.95/month and come with a extra features like advanced A/B testing tools, targeted emailing, master and subaccount management, security PIN and no Benchmark advertising.
I recommend that you head over to our website and ask to speak to Sally on our 24/7 live chat. I'll be more than happy to offer more info and a free live demo.
I hope this helps!

 

[makeusvisible]

I honestly don't think you will find a better product than MailChimp....it is the industry leader and the number of new innovations we see with it....almost weekly is incredible.

It sounds like the issue is that you have hit the ceiling of what you can do without delving into the more complex areas of template editing. In terms of how templates look visually, there is no limit with Mailchimp..... except for the limits of what can, and cannot be done within an email.

Have you considered having a template designed for your business, and then get someone to code it?

 

[Joshua Daniels]

Mailchimp is great but it doesn't have intelligence behind it.

For example, if you run an e-commerce store and you set up a "drip campaign" to nurse visitors into customers over a period of time, Mailchimp will not realise when to stop the workflow.

If you're looking for intelligence then I would suggest you take a look at Infusionsoft, it's pretty damn amazing.

We use it for some of our e-commerce clients and it has proven to increase conversion rates somewhat!

 

[Watson91]

I'd recommend looking into any platform that allows you to use marketing automation, such as Infusionsoft. Email is more effective when you can create detailed segments within your audience based on their interests, behaviours or interactions.

For example, people who click specific links in an email broadcast can be automatically placed into a drip marketing campaign which sends them further content based on their interest or can even trigger administrative tasks such as schedules a phonecall.

 

[Joshua Daniels]

I'd recommend looking into any platform that allows you to use marketing automation, such as Infusionsoft. Email is more effective when you can create detailed segments within your audience based on their interests, behaviours or interactions.

For example, people who click specific links in an email broadcast can be automatically placed into a drip marketing campaign which sends them further content based on their interest or can even trigger administrative tasks such as schedules a phonecall.

Completely agree with this. Infusionsoft not only has automation but it has intelligence that no other email service provides.

 

[emmabjones]

We use Мailchimp and it works for us.

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

Sorry for the thread hijack but is Hootsuite simply another version of Mailchimp type email marketing products?

I'm not using anything at the moment but these two have been mentioned.

 

[Mike Wilford]

Mailchimp is market leading and rightly so!

 

[CoolsMediaJohn]

Mailchimp has a free service - I think up to 1000 subscribers. So this is a solid place to start, for me personally though I did not like it and we use Aweber.

You can transfer lists from one to the other if you change so why not start collecting leads using the free Mailchimp package and then if you don't like it move them to another. Your leads do not have to opt in again....

 

[Nick James Lomax]

Hi Ben,

I guess it depends on the size of your mailing list and/or if you are carrying out campaigns on behalf of clients - it also depends on what you want out of the system and there are a lot out there...

InfusionSoft is a great bit of kit - intelligent and great for segmenting, automation and all sorts - can be pricey though...

Leadsius is something I tried last year briefly after a client mentioned it so helped them with a few of the basics - it seemed OK....

I've used Mailchimp myself - simple, reliable and as some of the other posters have said - best not to overcomplicate something that works but for 2000 subscribers you get to use the tool for free so can't really be negative about it!

Have been looking into Amazon SES recently for bulk mailing along with something called Sendy - not sure if I'm going to be using yet but the chap who has pitched it to me seems quite positive about it....

Best of luck in your search and let us know what you go for!

Nick

 

[PipeTen-Carl]

https://sendy.co/ is gaining traction in this area (self hosted front-end, using AWS SES as the sending engine).

 

[Global Igloo]

Hi.

For customisation I'd use MailChimp. Don't use a standard template - even with a little customisation it will still end up looking generic. Get someone to design you a template to fit your brand first.

 

[Richard Ashton]

getting a template designed that fits your brand is defiantly a good idea!

 

[Benjamin Sherwin]

I agree with the majority. Mailchimp is simply brilliant and works for the majority.

I would recommend MadMimi and Get Response too.

 

[TimS]

Ontraport is a great system, it has very good intelligence and is easier to use that Infusionsoft. I've used both!

 

[ValQ]

Hi,

We run interent number of internet businesses like esquoia.com & daylui.com and we use this great email marketing platform which is called, mailerlite.com. It's free up to 1,000 newsletters & once you pass that, there are only small increasses in prices. Check it out yourself!

 

[Matthew Stibbe]

I've used Mailchimp a lot and it works very well. It's easy to use to and there is some good information on their blog. I've heard good things about dotMailer and most of our clients and our own agency use HubSpot, which does good email and a ton of other things besides.

 

[varshakhemka44]

Top email marketing software:

1. Campaign Monitor

2. Constant Contact

3. SendinBlue

4. GetResponse

5. Zoho Campaigns

6. Infusionsoft

7. Campaigner

8. MailChimp

Source: toolsinsight.com

 

[Website Design Ltd]

I agree with the OP in the fact that MailChimp's simplicity can render it lacking.

Yes, it is user-friendly, but in my opinion, it is user-over-friendly in that it feels more aimed at users without any marketing/technical experience at all in the same way that a Wix website is good, but not for a marketing/design professional, as the OP is.

Of course, the ideal solution is using custom coded email templates, but that goes in completely the opposite direction and becomes over complicated, and requires a lot of technical know-how.

If you are looking for a happy medium, one that gives you enough flexibility to build and design emails as you see fit without the tight constraints of MailChimp, but without having to entirely custom code them, then a good option is MailJet (not affiliated, just a customer). It has a user-friendly drag-and-drop style editor for ease of use, but that editor allows you to easily edit settings such as paddings and alignments without having to touch the code.

 

[Dave Sutton]

Think I commented on a similar post recently...
I used to use iContact as I found it masked my sending email address well. When it landed in user's inboxes the spam filter was more likely to trust the source. I found Mail Chimp sent the email from a different gobeldygook email address each time I did a mailout. So every time it hit my recipients inbox, they either had to add that specific address to safe list to view the images or it would be spammed altogether and they would never see the email.

Not sure if there is a more clever way of getting Mail Chimp to send email, but that's what I found. Haven't used iContact in a while as I've had no need for email marketing, but will do again very soon, so I'd welcome any suggestions too.

 

[alex3215]

Maybe you should use their premium packages for needed features.
Other alternatives I know are:
iContact - Very much templates.
Emma, AWeber