Introduction Resultsmail
If I asked you to name an email Marketing tool, what could you say? Resultsmail
MailChimp? Aweber? ActiveCampaign?
Like most online industries now, email advertising has been Dominated by the identical big players for the previous decade. Which means that they get encouraged very deeply and accomplish a lot of mindshare.
Now and then, however, an Underdog disrupts the marketplace, inducing long-time customers to question their loyalties.
MailerLite has done precisely that.
So today, in this review, I’ll be ripping MailerLite from limb To limb to find out if it stands its own ground against the big boys…
…and, more importantly, whether youshould consider making the change.
MailerLite Gains
– Uses tag-based system (called Groups)
– Powerful Segmentation using principles
– Custom Fields for advanced email personalization
– Advanced Campaign types (auto-resend, A/B, etc.)
– Simple to Utilize email builder/template editor
– Practical Email components such as countdowns and merchandise boxes
– Intuitive Type, popup and landing page builder
– Supports Automations using visual workflows
– Offers Both digestible and comprehensive reporting
– A Fraction of the price compared to most other solutions
Click here to begin your free account of Mailerlite.
MailerLite Disadvantages
– Strict Approval process
– Few email Templates accessible
– Very few Form templates accessible
– Can’t Create emails without leaving the visual workflow builder
– No Support for site tracking Resultsmail
Sign-up Procedure
Like most email marketing providers these days, you will need to Go through a review process before being able to properly use the program.
When you first sign up, you’ll be asked to finish your profile.
This includes information like your company name, site, Industry, address, company size, list size and even the type of content you plan to send.
Then, you need to verify your Site (or domain name).
This remains part of the approval process, and MailerLite will Simply ask which email is related to that domain so they could email you a confirmation link.
Once you’ve completed these Steps, you’ll need to wait it out.
The MailerLite team will review your application, assess your Site, and ascertain whether you are a fantastic fit for their service.
(In other words, they’re making sure you are not a spammer/scammer)
As revealed above, you’ll nevertheless be Able to use the software to make campaigns and play with the attributes, but you won’t have the ability to send anything before accepted.
I had been”partially” approved within a few hours, which gave me a Temporary limit of 500 subscribers.
Here Is What the email said:
Annoying, certain.
But while these measures are not ideal for getting started, it Does help stop malicious users from damaging everyone else’s deliverability.
Campaigning
If you are anything like me, you’ll rely on automations to handle Nearly all your email advertising.
(We will get to automations soon, don’t worry.)
But if it is a brand new blog post, podcast, or timely Announcement, there’s always a reason to send a more immediate email.
That is where’Campaigns’ come in.
Clicking the new’Produce Campaign’ will give you several options.
– Regular effort: A Conventional broadcast email.
– A/B split campaign: Multiple email Versions, such as subject line, from title and, yes, even content. (Woop!)
– Auto resend: Resend to subscribers who Do not open your broadcast email, with the choice of altering the subject line and email content.
– RSS effort: Produce a recurring campaign That sends fresh content to readers using your site’s RSS feed.
Aside from a few added options, most of these will follow Exactly the same step-by-step procedure of a standard campaign.
So let us walk you through it.
Once you click on to create your campaign, you’ll be asked to Select a preferred editor, whether that’s the dragn’ drop, rich text or HTML.
You can switch to the Templates tab and choose from one of their pre-designed email templates — which will move you to the dragn’ drop editor by default.
In the time of writing, you’ll find 21 email templates to choose From which is somewhat on the low side, but the layouts are super contemporary.
And, of course, if you would just Like to reuse a previous email, you can click on the’Recent Emails’ tab.
For this example, I’ll choose the first template from the library.
The editor is easy to use, Making customizing these templates a 5-minute job.
You can also use the blocks in the sidebar to include distinct Kinds of content to your email, including videos, merchandise columns, and societal connections.
After making your changes, just click’Done Editing’ and you will Be taken to the recipients’ choices where you are able to select your groups or segments.
The tab also allows one To develop segment-like rules , in case your targeting is not quite perfect.
Finally, before sending, you’ll get to the’Program’ screen.
This is where you control if your broadcast email should go Out, whether that is immediately, at a set time/date, or in accordance with your readers time zones.
Impressive, right? Resultsmail
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Managing Your Subscribers
Possessing granular control over your readers is arguably one of The most essential facets of any email advertising program now.
Why?
Because highly personalized campaigns are necessary if You’re looking to increase clicks, opens, and, most importantly, your conversions.
And while most providers allow you to”tag” subscribers in order To target them effectively, MailerLite uses a slightly different approach.
When you open up your subscriber dashboard, you’ll notice two Choices; Segments and Groups.
Segments are essentially principles.
Your readers belong to a section only when they meet the Specified rules, and are automatically added or eliminated so.
Here is what establishing a rule looks like:
Notice how you can also combine Rules, as well as another rule if the first doesn’t exist.
Pretty smart, eh?
The following tab is for groups, and despite the difference in name, These act much like your usual”tagging” system.
(MailerLite even debated Changing the name to’Tags’, but finally decided against it)
Unlike Segments, Groups are upgraded manually or via an Automation principle — which we will get to in a moment — and they don’t have any value besides what you call them.
As you Begin to use this platform, you’ll begin to understand At which Segments and Groups are generally used, however, MailerLite offers a hand in case you’re uncertain:
Basically, groups are much more of a Deliberate action on a per-subscriber foundation, whereas Segments permit you to lump multiple contributors collectively according to a frequent denominator.
A tad confusing, I will admit… but I feel it’s a fair trade-off For the additional flexibility. Besides, they’re optional.
Finally, the’Fields’ tab is used to customize your email copy.
You will notice that MailerLite has Already populated this area with their particular areas, such as title, business, and country.
If you want to create your own custom fields, you can do this by Clicking on the’Add new field’ button.
So how do they actually work?
You can either upload a CSV record of your subscribers together with Your custom field data in distinct columns… or can easily add these fields to a types which will only apply to future subscribers.
Here’s a screenshot of a test field I made and added to a form:
I won’t go too much to the form Things here because I have a whole section on this below, but this is the approach I’d recommend if you wanted to use this attribute.
Again, once you’ve collected your custom field information from fresh Readers, you are able to pull them into your email content and subject line.
Just click on the’Personalization’ drop down and choose your Customized field.
I’m barely scraping the surface Of what is possible with custom fields, but it’s important to understand this is a feature you may use.
Overall, it’s reasonable to say MailerLite has their contributor Direction and personalization features on point. Resultsmail
Landing pages.
If you’re not impressed by what you have seen so far, then maybe The webpage builder will tickle your fancy.
After selecting’Landing Pages’ from the forms page, you’ll be Able to select from 8 pre-designed templates.
Again, while the template choice Isn’t winning any awards, it does offer a great base to work from if, for example most people, you don’t have that natural eye for layout.
I went ahead and chosen the’Lead Generation’ template, however They finally do the identical job; collect an email address.
This time, the editor will Provide you 17 building blocks to Further construct or change your landing page.
Now, I have used my fair share of Visual page builders, and it is already better than some dedicated solutions *cough* WPBakery.
Along with the fundamental building blocks, you can use elements like Hero segments, popup buttons, reviews and countdown timers.
It won’t be replacing landing Page builders such as Thrive Architect or LeadPagesanytime shortly, but credit where credit due, this item over-delivers on all 3 kind types.
Form Builder Tool
Unlike some email marketing tools, MailerLite actually offers a Decent 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 here.
Let us begin with your Bog-standard embedded type.
These forms are first created inside MailerLite so as to get An embed code, which you can then place on your site to show it on specific pages.
Despite starting off super fundamental, the form designer allows you To customize everything from the kind style, subjects, background, title, enter fields and, of course, the button.
Form text may also be edited directly, which gives you a chance To visualize your copy in real time.
It would have been nice to have Some templates, but as you know, there is more to a form than simply its appearance.
Clicking the’Settings’ tab will Make It Possible for you to configure the way the Form works, such as adding extra fields and setting a custom success page.
(There’s a GDPR compliance option. Sweet.)
And speaking of the success page…
…MailerLite also lets you customize the default message, That will replace the embedded form also prevents users from redirecting.
Last but surely not least, you Can assess the way your form displays on mobile by shifting the toggle to responsive mode.
You won’t be able to make any design changes , but it makes Sense to test, nevertheless.
So that is an Summary of the Embedded form but like I said before, you may even create popup forms in MailerLite.
While the Vast Majority of the installation process is identical, you will find Still a few differences I’d love 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 provide a good base to work from and the editor is at least as easy to use with this form type.
Clicking the’E-commerce’ template takes me into a preview Before moving to the editor.
Here, you’ll notice there are some new choices under form types This time around:
Contemplating paid tools such as Thrive Leads exist for ribbons and slide-in forms, it is pretty impressive to observe this amount of control over popup types.
And, as before, you can perform the styling options to get it Matched with your own branding.
Finally, you can choose the close Behavior of your form under the’Settings’ tab.
The default option is the X icon, but you can swap out this for A”No thanks” text option, or have both.
That is really where most email Marketing platforms will leave you, but MailerLite has one more trick up its sleeve.
Click here to begin your free account of Mailerlite.
Reporting & Analytics
Like many tools, you’ll find a summary of your effort Statistics in the main dashboard.
Here you’ll see everything from campaign open and click info, Subscriber growth, automation analytics, and form signups.
Clicking into any effort will Give you specific coverage for that effort.
This is where you’ll find a few statistics such as Unsubscribes, spam complaints, bounces, reading surroundings, email client and much more.
This should be plenty of Information for the ordinary user…
…but in Case You really want To dig into the numbers, you can click into individual areas of this report to get a more comprehensive breakdown.
You can find some real gems under These reports.
For example, the’View Mail’ tab also displays a click map, so You can see precisely how your subscribers interacted with your mails in relation to one another.
Reports for automations will also be Available under the’Automations’ tab, even though I found to be less enlightening than effort reports.
Here’s a Fast example:
Overall, MailerLite does a Stellar job with their reporting port, and most will find the available statistics more than enough to fulfill their needs.
Email Automation
What’s email advertising without a dashboard of automation?
For many reading this, MailerLite’s automation capabilities Could easily make or break this particular review.
The great news? If you have ever used a visual workflow builder, You will immediately feel at home here…
Much like the rest of MailerLite, That the automations interface is simple, clean and simple to navigate — something that certainly can’t be said for every email marketing software.
After establishing your trigger, you can Start adding measures to your workflow.
These steps could be anything from sending an email, adding a Postpone, a bubble break, or an action, such as transferring a subscriber or upgrading their records.
Here’s a straightforward workflow I set together, where subscribers Are unsubscribed if they don’t open my email within seven days.
There are countless Possibilities when it comes to workflow automations similar to this, and MailerLite should not have any trouble with the vast majority of use cases.
Granted, it is not quite as Feature-rich as something such as ActiveCampaign because it lacks some of the conditional components. (Split, Go To, Goal, etc.. )
For Instance, there’s currently no automation for moving Subscribers directly into another automation.
That being said, most of these actions can still be achieved by moving Subscribers into various groups that activate new automation workflows. It’s simply not as efficient…. yet.
Another matter 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 which appears on the block itself.
From there, clicking on the’Design email’ button will fire up the Editor:
Now, you’ll be briefly Redirected to the standard campaign creation wizard, which I covered previously in the critique.
This time, however, once you’ve established your email, clicking on the ‘Done editing’ button will guide you straight back to the automations workflow rather than the usual sending alternatives.
Finally, your email will probably be Loaded into your automation.
A nice touch here is having a thumbnail preview of your Email inside your automation block, so it’s possible to find an concept about what it contains at a glimpse.
While this procedure may seem like A grind on newspaper, it’s actually much faster than what I’m utilized to with other email marketing tools — ActiveCampaign being a great example.
On the other hand, if you’ve come over from something such as ConvertKit where The editor is loaded inside the automations builder, so you will likely find this a downgrade in performance.
It’s quick enough for me, Personally, but I guess it’s all relative.
Before I wrap up this segment, there is 1 type of automation You will not find in MailerLite, also I think it’s very important to highlight.
Site tracking.
The ability to activate an automation (or measure ) based on the way Readers interact with the pages on your site.
This kind of behavioral targeting just is not accessible MailerLite right now, so if it’s something you use or intend to utilize, you may want to skip this one. Resultsmail
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Click here to begin your free account of Mailerlite.
Pricing
The Price of MailerLite is one of those tools largest Selling things, and let us face it, most of us love a good 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 mails using this program, it is still an wonderful option for anyone starting out.
And what about the premium plans?
It turns out, at around half of the Cost of this competition generally, MailerLite is undoubtedly one of the cheapest options available on the market. Plus, if you’re willing to pay annually, you can also get a much greater discount.
In fact, I haven’t been able to find anything that does exactly the Exact Same job, cheaper.
Summary
MailerLite is among the few marketing tools to interrupt The (very crowded) industry in the last couple of years, which is no simple 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 just about anything you can throw at it.
All in all, I find MailerLite strikes the perfect balance Between flexibility, simplicity and speed, and at a price point you will seriously struggle to beat.
Thinking about giving it a spin? Let us know how it works for you From the comments. Resultsmail
Click here to begin your free account of Mailerlite.