Are you building an email list? If you’re not, you should be! Email marketing is the best way to grow your audience.
Many companies got on the social media band wagon years ago. Building a social media audience is great, but you’re building your house on a borrowed lot. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest–and they could be gone tomorrow.
An email list is something you get to take and keep with you, no matter what service you use. And email isn’t going away tomorrow. 😉
[Tweet “Email is not going away–social media does.”]
I put these in order of affordability. I say something is affordable when you can get the most for the least amount of money, but also when you can get best quality. It really depends on what you’re doing and whether you are a non-profit or not.
MailChimp
(The link above is a referral link so I will get MailChimp credit when you click it and if you open a paid account, but you like me, don’t you?)
Pro: Free tier for up to 2,000 subscribers, non-profit discount (15%) is offered for churches/ministries, and MailChimp integrates easily with multiple platforms. I currently use MailChimp for all of these reasons.
Con: Kind’ve expensive after 2,000. For example: 2,500 subscribers will run about $40/month (unlimited emails). But it is cheaper than many other options discussed. Also MailChimp isn’t a complete CRM so tracking your customers with it might be more difficult than it would be in InfusionSoft.
MailerLite
(The link above is an affiliate link.)
Pro: 1000 email subscribers/unlimited email for FREE; 10,000 subscribers for $20/month; drag and drop editor, A/B testing, and email autoresponders free as well
Con: Smaller free tier, but not many cons here. Take a look at the full comparison here. No non-profit discount that I could find.
Get Response
(The link above is an affiliate link meaning I will get commission if you click it and buy it, but you won’t be charged anything additional. It’s just a nice way for me to make money by helping you. Plus, I saved you all this time comparing all these! Win/Win.)
Pro: HUGE non-profit discount (50%)! This is great for ministries, ministers, and churches. Also very reasonable pricing, even if they don’t have a free tier. For example: 2,500 subscribers (unlimited email) is only $25/month. If you were a non-profit that makes this only $12.50/month!
Additionally, they offer really terrific forms and landing pages, which most of these service do not.
Con: No free tier, but with such great pricing it’s hard to argue that. This isn’t a CRM so if you need to track your sales funnel than that might be hard, but if you’re looking to email more than 2,500 people on the regular for cheap–this is it.
Send in Blue
Pro: Free tier for 300 emails/day, 9,000 emails per month. After the free tier, $39/month for 60,000 emails is a great price and includes unlimited subscribers. Here’s a comparison of Send in Blue vs Mailchimp.
Con: Pricing per email is a bit tricky for most people cause lots of time you’re sending emails out to all of your subscribers. There’s no obvious non-profit discount.
Campaign Monitor
Pro: $29/month for 2,500 subscribers (12,500 emails/month) sounds reasonable. Their forms are much nicer than MailChimp’s. Also they have a non-profit discount (look in the fine print on the bottom of page) if you contact their sales team.
Con: $59/month for unlimited email ($19 higher than MailChimp’s)
Constant Contact
Pro: Easy to use, many marketers are familiar with, non-profit discount (20% monthly or 30% for annual)
Con: No free tier, a list of 2,500 with unlimited email will be $55/month ($15 more than MailChimp), not a CRM
Active Campaign
Pro: 20% discount for non-profits, a CRM solution
Con: 2,500 subscribers for $73/month? Yeesh. For a complete CRM solution, it’ll be $173/month, which is cheaper than InfusionSoft.
InfusionSoft
Pro: A complete CRM solution for serious marketing, offers a shopping cart and detailed montoring
Con: No free tier, no obvious non-profit discount, and 2,500 subscribers is $199/month (12,500 emails a month).
Fresh Mail
Pro: Free tier up to 500 subscribers (2,000 emails). $27/month for 2,500 subscribers is great. It jumps up to $50 after that. They also have a great 50% discount for non-profits.
They were so close to GetResponse in their offerings, but they got a lower rating because they didn’t offer landing pages or forms from what I could see.
Con: Not as many features or integrations yet.
Drip
(The link above is an affiliate link.)
Pro: Easily send drip campaigns (Why should non-profits consider a drip campaign?) , create triggers on page to sign up
Con: Pricey from $49/month for up to 2,500 subscribers and 20,000 sent emails; no non-profit discount
Tiny Letter
Pro: TinyLetter is great and free for personal newsletters; FREE; Made by MailChimp
Con: No drip campaigns, automation, have to build your newsletter and import in, no way of creating RSS feed updates
Some other notables: Ontraport
Conclusion
This is not an all inclusive list. I may have missed one!
Send me your deals and email marketing tools in the comments below and I’ll add them to the list.
