Background Email Marketing Trends 2014
If I asked you to name an email Marketing tool, what could you say? Email Marketing Trends 2014
MailChimp? Aweber? ActiveCampaign?
Like many online industries now, email marketing has been Dominated by the identical large players for the previous ten years. Which means they get promoted very heavily and accomplish a lot of mindshare.
Now and then, however, an Underdog disrupts the market, causing long-time users to question their loyalties.
MailerLite has done exactly that.
So now, in this short article, I will be ripping MailerLite from limb To limb to find out if it stands its own ground against the big boys…
…and, what’s more, whether youshould consider making the change.
MailerLite Pros
– Uses tag-based system (called Groups)
– Powerful Segmentation using principles
– Custom Fields for advanced email personalization
– Advanced Campaign types (auto-resend, A/B, etc.. )
– Easy to Utilize email builder/template editor
– Practical Email elements for example countdowns and product boxes
– Intuitive Form, popup and landing page builder
– Supports Automations using visual workflows
– Offers Both readable and comprehensive reporting
– A Fraction of the price compared to most other solutions
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MailerLite Drawbacks
– Strict Approval procedure
– Few email Templates available
– Very few Form templates accessible
– Can’t Create mails without leaving the visual workflow builder
– No Support for site tracking Email Marketing Trends 2014
Sign-up Procedure
Like most email advertising providers these days, You’ll Need to Go through a review process before being able to correctly use the software.
When you first sign up, you’ll be asked to complete your profile.
This includes information such as your company name, site, Industry, address, business size, record size and even the type of content you intend to send.
Then, you need to verify your Website (or domain ).
This remains part of this approval process, and MailerLite will Simply inquire which email is related to that domain in order that they can email you a confirmation link.
As Soon as You’ve completed these Measures, you’ll need to wait it out.
The MailerLite team will review your application, check your Website, and ascertain whether you are a fantastic match for their service.
(Quite simply, they’re making sure you are not a spammer/scammer)
As shown above, you’ll still be Able to use the software to create campaigns and perform with the features, but you will not have the ability to send anything until accepted.
I was”partially” approved within a few hours, which gave me a Temporary limit of 500 subscribers.
Here Is What the email said:
Annoying, sure.
However, while these measures are not ideal for getting started, it Does help stop unscrupulous users from damaging everybody’s deliverability.
Campaigning
If you are anything like me, you’ll rely on automations to handle Nearly all your email marketing.
(We will get to automations shortly, don’t worry.)
But if it’s a brand new blog article, podcast, or timely Announcement, there’s always a reason to send a more immediate email.
That’s where’Campaigns’ come in.
Clicking the brand new’Create Campaign’ will provide you several choices.
– Regular campaign: A traditional broadcast email.
– A/B split campaign: Multiple email Variations, such as subject line, from name and, yes, even content. (Woop!)
– Auto resend: Resend to readers who Do not open your broadcast email, together with the option of changing the subject line and email articles.
– RSS effort: Create a recurring campaign That sends new content to subscribers using your website’s RSS feed.
Apart from a few added options, most of these will follow Exactly the same step-by-step process of a normal campaign.
So let’s walk you through it.
Once you click on to create your effort, you’ll be asked to Pick a favorite editor, whether that be the dragn’ drop, rich text or HTML.
Otherwise, you can change to the Templates tab and choose from among the pre-designed email templates — that will move you into the dragn’ drop editor .
In the time of writing, there are 21 email templates to select From which is somewhat on the low side, but the layouts are super modern.
And, of course, if you would just Prefer to reuse a previous email, you can click on the’Recent Emails’ tab.
For this instance, I’ll select the first template in the library.
The editor is easy to use, Making viewing these templates a 5-minute job.
You can also use the blocks in the sidebar to add distinct Kinds of articles to your email, such as videos, merchandise columns, and social connections.
After making your changes, simply click’Done Editing’ and you will Be taken to the recipients’ choices where you can select your groups or sections.
The tab also allows you To develop segment-like rules , in case your targeting isn’t quite perfect.
Finally, right before sending, you’ll get to the’Schedule’ screen.
This is where you control when your broadcast email should go Out, whether that’s immediately, at a set time/date, or according to your readers time zones.
Impressive, right? Email Marketing Trends 2014
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Managing Your Subscribers
Possessing granular control over your readers is arguably one of The most essential aspects of any email marketing program now.
Why?
Because highly personalized efforts are necessary if You’re looking to increase clicks, opens, and, most importantly, your conversions.
And while many providers allow you to”label” readers in order To target them more effectively, MailerLite utilizes a slightly different strategy.
When you start up your subscriber dash, you’ll see two Choices; Segments and Groups.
Segments are essentially rules.
Your subscribers belong to a section only when they fulfill the Specified principles, and are automatically added or eliminated accordingly.
Here is what setting up a rule looks like:
Notice the way you can even combine Principles, in addition to an alternate rule when the first does not exist.
Pretty smart, eh?
The next tab is for groups, and also the difference in title, These behave much like your normal”tagging” system.
(MailerLite even debated Changing the name to’Tags’, but ultimately decided against it)
Unlike Segments, Groups are upgraded manually or through an Automation rule — that we’ll get to in a moment — and they have no value aside from what you actually call them.
As you start to use this stage, you’ll Start to understand Where Segments and Groups are typically used, however, MailerLite offers a hand in case you’re unsure:
Fundamentally, groups are much more of a Deliberate action on a per-subscriber basis, whereas Segments permit you to bulge multiple subscribers together based on a frequent denominator.
Somewhat confusing, I’ll admit… but I believe it is a fair trade-off For the additional flexibility. In any case, they’re optional.
Last, the’Fields’ tab is used to customize your email copy.
You’ll notice that MailerLite has Already populated this area with their particular fields, such as title, business, and nation.
If You Would like to create your own custom fields, you can do this by Clicking the’Add new field’ button.
So how do they really work?
You can either upload a CSV file of your readers together with Your custom field information in separate columns… or may easily add these fields to a forms which will only apply to prospective readers.
Here’s a screenshot of a test field I created and added to a form:
I won’t go too much to the shape Stuff here since I have a whole section on that below, but this is the strategy I would recommend if you wished to use this attribute.
Again, once you’ve collected your custom field information from fresh Readers, you can pull them into your email content and subject line.
Just click the’Personalization’ drop down and choose your Customized field.
I am barely scratching the surface Of what’s possible with custom fields, but it is important that you know that this is a feature you may use.
Overall, it’s reasonable to state MailerLite has their subscriber Direction and personalization features on stage. Email Marketing Trends 2014
Landing pages.
If you are not impressed by what you’ve seen up to Now, then perhaps The page builder will tickle your fancy.
After choosing’Landing Pages’ in the forms page, you’ll be Able to pick from 8 pre-designed templates.
Again, while the template choice Is not winning any awards, but it does offer a great base to work from if, like most of us, you do not have that natural eye for layout.
I went ahead and selected the’Lead Generation’ template, though They all ultimately do the identical job; collect an email address.
This time, the editor will give you 17 building blocks to Further build or alter your landing page.
Now, I have used my fair share of Visual page builders, and it is already better than some dedicated solutions *Infection * WPBakery.
Together with the basic building blocks, you can use elements like Hero sections, popup buttons, testimonials and countdown timers.
It won’t be replacing landing Page builders like Thrive Architect or even LeadPagesanytime soon, but credit where credit due, this thing over-delivers on all three kind types.
Form Builder Tool
Unlike some email marketing tools, MailerLite actually offers a Adequate pair of form building tools.
Not only that, but you can also create popups and landing pages Through this same interface, so there’s a whole lot to cover .
Let us start with your Bog-standard embedded form.
These forms are first created inside MailerLite so as to get An embed code, which you can then put on your site to show it on specific pages.
Despite starting off super basic, the form designer lets you To customize everything from the kind style, fields, background, title, enter fields and, of course, the button.
Form text can also be edited directly, which Provides you a Opportunity To envision your own backup in real-time.
It would’ve been nice to have Some templates, but as you know, there is more to some form than just its appearance.
Clicking on the’Settings’ tab will Make It Possible for you to configure how the Form functions, such as adding extra fields and establishing a custom success page.
(There is even a GDPR compliance alternative. Sweet.)
And talking of the success webpage…
…MailerLite also lets you customize the default message, That can replace the embedded form and prevents users .
Last but surely not least, you Can assess how your form screens on cellular by shifting the toggle to reactive mode.
You won’t Have the Ability to make any layout changes here, but it makes Sense to check, nevertheless.
So that is an overview of this Embedded form but as I said before, you may also create popup forms in MailerLite.
While the majority of the setup Procedure is identical, you will find A few differences I’d like to point out.
Unlike embedded forms, you can choose between a set of Templates:
While this isn’t the most In depth selection, they do offer a good foundation to work from and the editor is at least as simple to use for this form kind.
Clicking the’E-commerce’ template requires me into a preview Before moving to the editor.
Here, you’ll notice there are a few new choices under form types This time around:
Contemplating paid tools like Thrive Leads exist for both ribbons and slide-in forms, it is pretty impressive to see this level of control over popup types.
And, like before, you can perform the styling options to get it Matched up with your own branding.
Last, you can choose the near Behavior of your type under the’Settings’ tab.
The default option is that the X icon, but you can swap out this for A”No thanks” text option, or have .
That is where most email Marketing platforms would leave you, but MailerLite has yet another trick up its sleeve.
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Reporting & Analytics
Like many tools, you’ll find a summary of your campaign Data in the main dashboard.
Here you’ll see everything from effort open and click data, Subscriber development, automation analytics, and form signups.
Clicking into any effort will Give you specific reporting for that effort.
This is where you’ll find a few statistics such as Unsubscribes, spam complaints, bounces, studying environment, email client and much more.
This should be plenty of Information for the average consumer…
…but if you really want To dig into the numbers, you can click into different areas of the report to get a more comprehensive breakdown.
You can find some real gems under These reports.
For example, the’View Mail’ tab also shows a click map, so It’s possible to see exactly how your subscribers interacted with your mails compared to one another.
Reports for automations are Accessible under the’Automations’ tab, though I found these to be less enlightening than effort reports.
Here’s a Fast example:
Overall, MailerLite does a Stellar job with their reporting port, and many will get the available statistics more than enough to fulfill their demands.
Email Automation
What’s email marketing without a dash of automation?
For many reading this, MailerLite’s automation capabilities Could simply make or break this review.
The great news? If you have ever used a visual workflow builder, then You’ll instantly feel at home here…
Much like the rest of MailerLite, That the automations interface is simple, clean and simple to navigate — something which certainly can not be said for every email marketing software.
After setting your trigger, you can Start adding measures to your workflow.
These measures can be anything from sending an email, adding a Postpone, a conditional split, or an action, such as transferring a contributor or upgrading their records.
Here’s a simple workflow I put together, where readers Are unsubscribed when they do not open my email within seven days.
There are countless Possibilities when it comes to workflow automations like this, and MailerLite ought to not have any trouble with the huge majority of use cases.
Granted, it’s not quite as Feature-rich as something like ActiveCampaign because it lacks some of the conditional elements. (Split, Go To, Goal, etc.. )
For example, there’s now no automation for moving Subscribers directly into another automation.
That being said, the Majority of these actions can still be achieved by moving Subscribers into different classes that trigger new automation workflows. It’s just much less effective…. yet.
Another question of efficiency here is when generating new mails In the automation workflow builder.
After adding an email cube to The workflow, you’ll be asked to add your topic line that then appears on the block itself.
From there, clicking the’Design email’ button will automatically fire up the Editor:
Now, you’ll be briefly Redirected to the typical campaign creation wizard, which I covered earlier in the critique.
This time, however, once you’ve established your email, clicking the ‘Done editing’ button will direct you back to the automations workflow instead of the usual sending options.
Ultimately, your email address will be Loaded into your own automation.
A Wonderful touch here is having a thumbnail preview of your Email inside your automation block, which means it’s possible to find an idea about what it contains at a glance.
While this procedure may seem like A grind on newspaper, it is really much quicker than what I am utilized to with other email advertising tools — ActiveCampaign being a fantastic example.
On the other hand, if you’ve come over from something such as ConvertKit where The editor is loaded within the automations builder, you’ll likely find that this downgrade in functionality.
It is quick enough for me, Personally, however I guess it’s all relative.
Before I wrap up this segment, there is one type of automation You will not find in MailerLite, and that I think it’s very important to highlight.
Website tracking.
The ability to activate an automation (or step) based on how Readers interact with the pages on your site.
This Sort of behavioral targeting just is not accessible MailerLite right now, so if it’s something you use or plan to utilize, you might want to skip this one. Email Marketing Trends 2014
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Pricing
The Price of MailerLite is one of the tools largest Selling things, and let us face it, we all love a fantastic deal.
For starters, they offer an unlimited free plan that includes All features (including premium) for as many as 1,000 subscribers.
While There’s some subtle Branding in your emails using this program, it’s still an amazing alternative for anyone starting out.
And what about the top plans?
It turns out, at approximately half of the Price of the rivalry on average, MailerLite is undoubtedly one of the least expensive options available on the industry. Additionally, if you are ready to pay yearly, you can also get an even greater discount.
In fact, I have not been able to find anything that does exactly the Exact Same job, cheaper.
Summary
MailerLite is among the very few advertising tools to disrupt The (very crowded) sector in recent years, and that’s no easy feat.
While it is not as quickly as ConvertKit, or as feature-rich As ActiveCampaign, or as template-heavy as MailChimp, it performs exceptionally well at virtually anything you can throw at it.
All in all, I find MailerLite strikes the best balance Between flexibility, speed and simplicity, and all at a price point you will seriously struggle to conquer.
Thinking about giving it a twist? Let us know how it works for you From the remarks. Email Marketing Trends 2014
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