Starting out on the email newsletter journey can seem a little daunting at first. Most businesses will already be using email to keep in touch with clients, and might even use it for prospects within the boundaries of the law. But it will usually be an ad hoc arrangement – one client, one email – and nothing like setting up a mailing list and scheduling emails to groups of clients.
But there’s no need to feel overwhelmed, as there are some platforms that allow very easy entry, often for free, and also let you do some basic analysis on emails’ performance. And as you grow, so will they, in terms of both capacity (which you’ll usually need to pay for) and the depth of analytics and stratification you can go into. Here, we’re going to have a look at some basic email platforms to help you get started.
Contact Form 7 (WordPress)
If you have a WordPress website, one of the easiest ways to set up an email mailing list is to simply install a plugin that repurposes the email list you might already have (from blog responders, email signups etc.) and turns it into a simple but really useful email newsletter suite.
There are plenty of them out there, but one that’s used by 5 million websites, and for good reason, is Contact Form 7. It’s free, very easy to set up and gives you all the basic features you need to keep an email newsletter going. All you have to do is come up with the great content.
Mailchimp
This platform has dominated the email space for 20 years now. If you look through your own email inbox, it’s probably fair to say that a minimum of 20% of them will have been sent through Mailchimp. You can get started for free with up to 2,000 contacts, but for about $11–20 a month you can get more features that let you fine tune the audiences you’re aiming for.
There’s tons of support out there from the millions of users on forums and FAQs, so it’s pretty easy to pick up before you decide whether to go premium.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue has actually been around for 15 years, but it has grown in stature recently and is now many businesses’ favourite solution.
The free version gives you unlimited contacts and the ability to mail 300 people a day, and once your list grows, you can enter a sliding scale of payment options depending on the numbers and complexity you need. It also has CRM and social advertising platforms built in, for extra focus and reach.
HubSpot
We’re big fans of HubSpot, which is essentially a CRM, email platform and even a CMS all in one. You could in theory set up a small online business using nothing but HubSpot for your website and marketing, and yes, it’s very easy to get started with. There is a very basic free version, but you’ll probably find you need to start paying for services pretty early on.
MailerLite
As the name suggests, MailerLite is a basic email marketing platform that lets you easily design your emails using drag and drop, send them out and perform all the useful analytics you need to do. It’s free for the first 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails, but the paid options are very reasonable too for such a powerful tool.
Gooey can make the difference
Once you’ve decided on a platform, you need emails that look and perform brilliantly, regardless of the client, operating system and device they are being displayed on. That’s why you need to partner with Gooey – we can create fantastic, on-brand HTML email templates that will really land with your customers.
