What's the best email marketing software?
What are people's experiences with Constant Contact, iContact, MailChimp, etc?
I have a great experience with mailchimp but if you have a huge list of emails and wanna automation for them i have prefer you http://www.activecampaign.com/
I think it's important to be clear about two things -
1 - which service, e.g. Constant Contact or MailChimp and
2 - THE CONTENT you need beyond the service.
The service is nothing more than an empty bucket. To expect Constant Contact or MailChimp to do anything beyond deliver content to an email address is beyond the scope of the service.
It's all on YOUR CONTENT.
So... Q: the best email marketing is?
A: Your camera and your writing app. YOUR CONTENT will make the worst service look good. People don't read the service. They READ YOUR CONTENT and LOOK AT YOUR IMAGES. Be interesting and engaging. Be persuasive. Write in an active present tense.
The best service is you. The tech stuff is JUST A TACTIC. YOU ARE THE STRATEGIC service. You own your online presence, the service is just a bunch of 25 year old SMTP scripts.
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We used to recommend MailChimp to clients pretty much exclusively. Not as many features as (for example) Constant Contact or Aweber, but the ease-of-use and pricing model is very attractive.
Recently we've been using Get Response (getresponse.com) over MailChimp, as MailChimp recently changed the way they deal with bounced emails (users now have to re-subscribe using MailChimp's 2 step process). It's still early days, but Get Response seems to be pretty interesting. Worth checking out IMO.
I agreed with what most people here said. It all depends on what you're trying to do, to get and to share.
I would also add, based on my experiences and the lots of tools I use on different websites, to get a clear plan first, then study a couple of providers to see what they could give you closer to what you need, your budget and, even, actual technical skill and support. There are lots of tools and businesses around this online marketing arena looking to get your business as well. That's nice. When we are starting in any business, getting expenses controlled and to a minimum is critical - taking this into account, it is easy to decide one needs initially. That may happen to you too. When you feel confident enough on what you want to achieve, to measure and target, then things may get trickier. Remember this, you can also have different providers, different tools in place at once in where they all compliment each other and to the overall plan. The idea is to find a tool that ease, or give you better ways to do, a specific job. Don't get overwhelmed at installing lots of things you don't be using yet.
All those companies mentioned in this thread are just great providers, yes. Just get familiar with a couple of them, use their free trial, and stay with the one that best translate your business needs as you grow, or as simply as you stay in business.
Success to you.
Constant Contact is simple but limited in my experieence, same with iContact. I've had the most luck and success with MailChimp. It can turn into a simple nurture program, automating your nurture campaigns.
With the remote workers and digital nomads, ConvertKit has becoming more popular, where they are migrating from InfusionSoft or Aweber
So check out ConverKit
https://convertkit.com/
Also here is my Trello Board for "Tools for Entrepreneurs", it summarizes and narrows down to only the essential tools to start with, not by any means finished, but an ongoing process, but the point is to help you start and also save you TIME, in doing so much research
https://trello.com/b/sYxiES2F/tools-for-entrepreneurs
Mailchimp is probably the most efficient. I have used each of the others, but for ease of use, reporting, templates etc, mailchimp makes it pretty easy. They also have a mobile app that I feel is more efficient than the others. You can now send out emails from the app and it tracks everything for you so you don't have to receive tons of emails. After using all three to send tons of mass emails, i feel that Mailchimp has a slight edge on the others for sure.
I think constant contact is the best software to use. With all of the new services and tools they know provide, small businesses are utilizing these to leverage with their competition.
I use Campaign Monitor http://www.campaignmonitor.com/ They're product is easy to use to setup an Email campaign. And, they don't require that you display their name in the Email campaign like some providers do. The reporting that shows deliveries, open rates, etc. is excellent.
I would suggest you make sure you're clear about your requirements. If you just want to send out a newsletter to a list, then something like MailChimp is great. However, if you want a sort of CRM + marketing automation; lead scoring, drip campaigns, segmented campaigns, etc. you need to take time to review the options; might be something like HubSpot or one of their competitors.
I've used MailChimp and also OneShoppingCart. MailChimp is nice because it's free. It's fairly versatile, though a bit heavy in the dashboard to create newsletters. OneShoppingCart integrates my mailing list with my product sales, meaning, if someone buys something, they are automatically added to my mailing list, without having to guide them to another step to sign up. Makes it much easier on me. However, of course, that ends up being a bit more expensive. Also, the options for newsletters and such are not nearly as versatile, etc than some of the others you mention. I have not had problems with Spam, but did hear that Constant Contact has one of the best Spam protectors out there.
Hope that helps!