What the tech? Take control of your marketing

by Sara Crawford, Digital Content Strategist, WT Digital Agency

to reach customers. However, to reach your audience, you rely on the various platforms. When Facebook changes their algorithm, for example, you may find that suddenly you aren’t reaching all your audience.

One of the best tools that you have absolute control over is your email list. If you haven’t started email marketing, now is the time to give it a try. But when you are exploring email marketing, you’ll have many different choices in email marketing services. Each service has its own set of features and its own pros and cons. Here is a countdown of my five favorites:

ConvertKit is an email marketing service that is geared towards publishers and bloggers, but it can still be used by businesses. It’s very intuitive and easy to use. It’s also easy to create landing pages or opt in boxes, track clicks, and tag users.

There is a plan for $29 a month for 0 – 1000 subscribers, a plan for $49 a month for 1000 – 3000 subscribers, and a plan for $79 per month for 3000 – 5000 subscribers.

Unlike some other email marketing services on this list, there is no free level. Another negative is that it can also be difficult to create aesthetically pleasing emails.

Mailchimp is very easy to use, especially with other apps and services. You can connect it to over 1,500 apps like Hubspot, Gmail, Google Forms, Salesforce, Paypal, and Airtable. You can use landing pages and forms to gather new subscribers easily. They also feature an easy-touse drag-and-drop email designer, and there are easy apps for Android and iOS that allow you to send emails, manage lists, and track stats from your phone. Mailchimp also offers advanced analytics for your lists as well as individual open data for each subscriber.

They offer a free plan, a $9.99/month plan, a $14.99/month plan, and a $299/month plan. Each plan offers different features. Unfortunately, it can get expensive quickly if you have a lot of subscribers. However, the positives outweigh the negatives, and this is a popular choice for many businesses when it comes to email marketing services.

Sendinblue is a great service for email marketing beginners. One of the best things about Sendinblue is its simplicity.

Sendinblue is different from the other email marketing services on this list because they offer unlimited contacts and charge based on the amount of emails you send. They offer a free plan for up to 300 emails per day, a $25/month plan for 40,000 emails per month with no daily limit, a $39/month plan for 60,000 emails per month and the ability to remove the Sendinblue logo from emails, a $66/month plan for 120,000 emails per month, and an enterprise plan. With the enterprise plan, the price varies and includes a dedicated account manager, all premium features, priority support, and more.

The only real downsides to Sendinblue are that setting up your account can be a bit confusing and the templates are limited. Other than these two cons, Sendinblue is an excellent choice for email marketing.

When it comes to lead generation services for small businesses, AWeber is an excellent choice. It features helpful tools that will assist you in building your email list. They also feature a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to easily

design email newsletters, and you’re able to automate email sequences and create mobileresponsive signup forms that will look great on any device. It’s easy to integrate AWeber with your WordPress website as well.

They don’t offer a free plan, but they do offer a free 30-day trial. All plans include unlimited emails as well as all features and only differ in the number of subscribers. For 0 – 500 subscribers, it’s $19/month; for 501 – 2500 subscribers, it’s $29/month; for 2501 – 5000 subscribers; for 5001 – 10,000 subscribers, it’s $69/month; and for 10,001 – 25,000 subscribers, it’s $149/month.

They also offer excellent education tools and superior customer support.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy to use AWeber as some of the others on the list, and it’s also frustrating that unsubscribed email addresses count towards your monthly quota. However, this is still a great choice for email marketing.

The most popular email marketing service is Constant Contact. It offers tons of customizable email templates and provides you with customized promotion ideas and content depending on your industry and previous experience with email marketing.

Constant Contact is also very easy to use, and it’s simple to build signup forms. It’s easy to send automations as well.

They offer a free 60-day trial that gives you access to all their features. Their plans are based on how many subscribers you have. For 0 – 500 subscribers, it costs $20 per month; for 501 – 2500 subscribers, it costs $45 per month; for 2501 – 5000, it costs $65 per month; and for 5001 – 10,000 subscribers, it costs $95 per month.

The negatives of this software are that it doesn’t recognize duplicate individuals, and it only allows you to embed videos that are on YouTube. However, the many positives of this email marketing service outweigh the negatives. If you are considering starting an email list or increasing your email marketing efforts, you may want to try a new email marketing service. These five are excellent choices for any business. You may have to play around with more than one so that you can see which one is right for you before you decide.

E: sara@wtmarketing.com P: (404) 348-4921 ext. 112 About the author

Sara Crawford is an author and Digital Content Strategist for WT Digital Agency. In love with the written word, she strives to provide quality content for all of her clients.