Things to Consider When Choosing an Email Platform

Choosing an email platform is one of the many overwhelming things new writers have to deal with. While you could collect the emails via a Google form and send messages from your personal email account, it’s far, far easier to use an email/marketing platform.

[bctt tweet=”Thou must build thy email list…somehow” username=”@jamifairleigh”]

Five Things to Consider When Choosing an Email Platform

1. Cost. Most of us don’t start a website or blog with a lot of followers. We may start with a few friends and one or two family members that we’ve bamboozled into subscribing (Hi Mom!) so when we’re told that we should pick an email/marketing platform we do a little investigating.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Bam! Sticker shock hits fast. While many of the email platform sites have a free trial, the costs grow quickly thereafter.

Initially, “they” recommended I use either MailChimp or AWeber. I looked at both, but of the two, MailChimp provided a free account for up to two thousand users. Side note: the pricing for larger lists seemed a little steep for me. I shrugged—something to worry about later. The AWeber account had a free trial period for 30 days and then charges (as of today) $19/month for up to 500 subscribers. Free versus $19/month? MailChimp it is.

Learning the Email Platform

2. User Interface. I grew up using technology, so I’m comfortable learning new software. Which, with MailChimp, proved to be a handy thing… because I found the interface extremely clunky.

I couldn’t figure out how to save my preferred colors or fonts, so I started over with each email. As a regular do-it-yourself(er), I’m used to searching through help documents, but I found MailChimp’s documentation lacking. I rarely found what I was looking for and found it was more effective to Google how to do something and then read the blog posts that came up from other MailChimp users. Case in point, I searched Google to find MailChimp’s support page… because I couldn’t find it on their site!

3. Support. All of us can use support from time to time (wink). I rarely need to contact a software’s support team but I enjoy having it available in case I need it. Luckily the MailChimp support staff were prompt and extremely helpful. Both times I contacted them, they pointed me in the right direction. But… should I even have needed to contact them?

So why do I bring up support as a consideration? Because with the free MailChimp account, you get free support for 30 days.

That’s it.

After 30 days, you’re on your own or you’re upgrading to a paid plan. If you’re pretty techy, that 30 days of support may be enough to get you scampering on your way. If not… um…

Using the Email Platform

4. Site integration. I built JamiFairleigh.com using WordPress, and was thrilled to see how many MailChimp plugins were available. Some seemed to do the same thing, and others were minor variations. I accidentally installed and configured three of the wrong plugins before I found the right one (see #2 above). Once I found the right plugin, the integration was smooth.

Well, kind of smooth.

I got everything hooked up right (I think) but when I looked at my site, the aesthetic did not impress me. Back I went to Google to find out how to change the look of the MailChimp contact forms. I ended up playing with learning the basics of HTML and CSS and kind of got it to work. In a galumphing kind of way. Ok, fine, it’s gonna be clunky. But at least I’ll be able to grow and own my email list. It will work… right?

5. Performance. As a newly-minted-list-building-website-developing-plugin-hooking-up-sage, I had proudly accomplished three things with my MailChimp account.

• I added subscriber buttons to my website.
• I crafted my welcome emails so that new users (after opting-in, twice) would have a welcoming warm and fuzzy email from me. One where I could warn new subscribers about my occasional missteps. **Important!**
• I built an RSS feed so MailChimp could deliver new blog content automatically to my subscribers.

There, Done

I was feeling pretty good about what I’d accomplished. Well, except for how clumsy my buttons looked (Bullet 1). And that my campaign to welcome new subscribers kept turning off on its own, hourly (Bullet 2). And the oops I made when my RSS feed fired, but instead of sending my blog content to my subscription list, sent the demo content from the theme I had picked to my subscription list (Bullet 3).

With help from their support staff, I fixed Bullet 2 and sent out a test email (to myself only) with my actual blog content. And then I noticed that there was a lot of MailChimp(y) stuff in the email. Yuck. They drop their mandatory Chimp Rewards badges with the paid accounts, but again, with the free account, you essentially get to use their service in return for advertising for them.

Changing Your Email Platform Is Possible

So here I am, five days in, pretty sure that it’s all working right, and I decide to scrap the whole thing and move to another service.

“Whaat?” you may exclaim as your eyebrows mingle with your hairline, “Why on earth would you change it after all of that work?”

Great question! Because of reasons 2, 3, 4, and 5 above. And because I was so underwhelmed by the look and feel of the content I’d spent five days pounding out. And because I subscribed to someone else’s blog… and the opt-in page was serenely devoid of marketing.

That author’s site impressed me. The opt-in page included a link to a company called MailerLite, so I followed it. I found out that MailerLite is also an email platform. And they also provided a free account for up to 1,000 users. The first paid level was up to 2,500 users for $10/month.

Starting Over

“Huh,” I thought. “But how easy is it to use?”

To test MailerLite’s interface, I created a free account. I figured I could build out the same content I had on MailChimp, but not hook it up to my site. Then, at the end of my experiment, if I liked MailerLite better, I could switch.

If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing twice. —Margaret Mahy

I had my content built in three hours. Three. Hours. Not days. Not many days. The user documentation was helpful and Support was easy to find, if you needed them.

I didn’t.

I could also create an email and save it as a theme, to save the color scheme and fonts for other forms and/or emails.

Some Email Platforms are EASY to use!

MailerLite has a neat feature which allows you design the look and feel of your Subscribe button. You can play with content, sizing, and colors and the resulting HTML will import right into your site. No need to learn how to modify your WordPress theme in order to change the button size, color, or font. I used the WordPress Custom HTML widget to import my new forms.

So the biggie. I sent myself a test email with my RSS feed. The email came as expected… but the image that the feed picked up was not my featured image. Fail.

After a little Googling, I found I could use a plugin called ‘Featured Images in RSS Feeds’ that would fix that issue. Sold.

MailerLite has a nice big button that helpfully says “Add Subscribers”. I pushed it, and guess what? They provide four options there, Import from CSV/TXT, Copy/Paste from Excel, Add single subscriber and, and, wait for it… Import from MailChimp.

Done and Done. The import went smoothly and since no one unsubscribed, I believe the switch was super-stealthy.

MailerLite for the Win!

So far, the emails are going out as expected when users subscribe and hopefully (fingers crossed!) the RSS feed is up and running.

Many people use (and love) MailChimp. MailChimp certainly has a lot of software, widgets, and integrations available via WordPress, and it’s recommended to a lot of new users. Heck, they recommended it to me! But it didn’t work for me.

The experience taught me several things. First, I got to send apologies to my subscribers for the weird email that MailChimp sent out. And I individually wrote all of them- I wouldn’t chance sending some weird mass email out with my heartfelt apology! Second, I got to try out two different platforms and make an informed decision. Last, since I created my content twice, I got to take a hard look at my messaging.

If you’d like to try MailerLite, please consider using my affiliate link and you’ll receive a $20 credit! If you end up upgrading to a paid account, I’ll receive a credit too.

What email/marketing platform do you use? Are you still using the same one you started with?