Building a list is probably the most important thing if you want to make money online. The email list is your cash-cow. It’s the most important channel because data has power and if you have your followers, readers, customers emails – you got yourself a business.
Do you even need E-mail Marketing?
If you have a website that has daily visitors, then you definitely need e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing will provide you with the option to connect with your visitors who have already left your website or even haven’t visit for day, weeks and months.
So what are the benefits if doing e-mail marketing?
- Most of your website visitors that will abandon your website will never, ever return. When you’ll start a website, you’ll need to make a connection with your visitors, so they provide you with their email address and you’ll be able to send them valuable content.
- Keep in mind loyal followers are more likely to convert into customers, compared to first-time visitors. Statistics show that it usually takes 3-4 visits before the customers even consider doing business with you.
- E-mail marketing 9 out of 10 times outperform organic search, social media marketing, referral etc. So if you’re looking to make sales, then start creating your e-mail marketing strategy. E-mail marketing will increase your sales dramatically. If you do it right.
Which one to go with? MailChimp or Aweber?
There are a lot of email marketing platforms out there, but these ones would be the ones I would recommend the most. Especially for small businesses that are just getting started. They are the easiest to manage. Just pick up…and start sending emails.
Pricing is always important so it’s also important to know the price of all email providers out there, to choose the most suitable one, of course, that’s not the most important factor, but it’s definitely a factor for each advertiser.
If you’re just starting out, MailChimp offers you a free plan with a lot of benefits up to 2 000 subscribers with 12 000 emails per month. That’s more than enough for someone who’s just getting started and is on a tight budget. There’s no expiring time for this Free plan. You don’t need to enter any credit card details or anything what so ever. If you’re going to use a free plan, there’s as you already might have guessed – some limitations. Your emails will contain MailChimp advertisement and your segmentation will be very limited, no timezone delivery and no customer support. All things considered, it’s a great offer.
MailChimp offers you the pricing calculator for your email list, just enter your subscriber count and it will give you the estimate costs in return.
You can try out Aweber for Free only for the first 30-days trial. After the 30-day period, your beginner plan 0-500 subscribers will cost you $19 per month with unlimited emails. It might seem that for beginners on a tight budget that are just starting out MailChimp is be the best option. Aweber includes customer supports in their plans and many other features which you won’t get on MailChimp Free Plan such as:
segmentation, time zone delivery, stock photos, unlimited emails, 700+ email templates and much more.
Through AWeber, sending emails up to 500 subscribers will cost you $19 per month and $29 per month for up t 2,500 subscribers versus MailChimp’s $10. But those 6,000+ stock photos and 700+ templates is definitely a nice feature that can make your life much easier and make your campaigns much more creative.
The world is though and you can manage by yourself, but it’s a lot easier if you have a customer support team that’s always ready to give you a hand. Yes, even e-mail marketers do need help. They can help you with anything, initial setup of your account or emails, give you a brief explanation on how thing work, help you with errors, basically, they are here to help. They are interested that your business is working and you’re happy with your email provider.
Only their paid plan includes customer support. When you’ll become their Paid User you’ll have 24/7 email support and from Monday-Friday you will be able to contact MailChimp chat support. They also give you access the self-service knowledge base. It’s not every day that you’ll need customer support and even if you’re a freelancer that works on the weekend, I guess you can wait till Monday, right?
They like to take care of their customers – AWeber provides support via telephone, email, and even web chat every day of the week. They have an award-winning support team that works 24-hours a day and 7 days a week. That’s how you show your customers that they matter, right?
Both email providers have their own library of resources. You can read and even watch some tutorials for both – the technical stuff and tactical sides of email marketing. So you can create a better email strategy. They both have great resources where you can get ideas and find inspiration, their blog will keep you up with the latest email marketing trends. If you’ve used other email provider before, they have guides on how to switch to their service from their competitors. Full package.
Both, MailChimp and Aweber offer Email templates and signup forms. Both of the providers have built an excellent design service. It’s very practical and simple to use for both platforms it’s also optimized for mobile devices, no need to worry about the technical aspect, so don’t bother your IT person.
I personally believe that the interface needs to be simple and clean. If you can’t find something important with a couple of clicks than the UX person hasn’t done a very good job.
Also, it takes time to get used to a new interface. So be patient.
Comparing MailChimp Interface versus Awebers Interface.
With Aweber, all the important features and options are easily located from the moment you have logged in. After you have logged in you will see a simple navigation bar containing the key options such as – messages, subscribers, signup forms and reports. Most of these key options have dropdowns that let you view secondary options. Simple, clean and easy to navigate.
Mailchimp’s interface isn’t that different from Aweber’s. In my option, it’s quite similar. The same minimalistic interface with a different design. Its navigation bar is a bit smaller with fewer options and without a drop down, making it a little bit more difficult to navigate around the site.
Definitely a win for Awebers on this one.
A/B or split Testing
A/B Testing, Split Testing or Multivariate Testing, call it whatever you like, but we can all agree that it’s an important feature.
Split testing or whatever you call it, allows to to try out multiple subject headers and multiple content ideas and see which one works the best. E.g you can send out two versions of your newesletter to 20%/30%/50% etc. subscribers. Analyse the results and send out the best performing version to the rest of your audience to get the best possible results.
Split teesting can lead to significant result improvements. Don’t miss out on this.
Both Aweber and MailChimp offers Split Testing. Make sure you try it out and make the best out of it.
Aweber and MailChimp has a large-scale of tracking capabilities. Both of the platforms allows you to get to know your customers, who they are, which country they are coming from, what device they are using etc.
If you’re have an e-commerce store it’s also possible to track sale with both platforms. You’ll be able to see which campaign and which click lead to a sale. The analytics dashboard gives you a clear overview of opens and clicks per email via graph format.
Both ESP(Email Service Providers) offers a variety of integrations with your favorite platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Exit Intent Popups, Hello Bars, HubSpot CRM, Facebook, Google Analytics and so many more.
I’m sure whichever ESP you’re using right now is already delivering results, but you should consider improving your results. You can optimize your email marketing by integrating it with your other business systems.
By integrating it with other services and systems you will be able to segment your audiences into smaller and more precise groups based on buying behavior and how they respond to your emails offers, when you send emails offering iPhone Cases to Andriod users the conversion won’t be that great. With correct segmentation, you will be able to send iPhone cases to iPhone users and Samsung cases to Samsung users.
Keep your customer’s data updated at all times, with real-time accuracy. Data will be sent back to MailChimp or Aweber.
Develop a reporting dashboard, that will let you dig deeper, learn more about your customers, what they like and what they don’t like.
The point is: don’t miss out on sales. Integrate your ESP with your e-commerce store or CRM system and don’t miss out on sales.
Which one to pick? Final Decision!
So which one is it? MailChimp or is it Aweber? This post is not really about which email marketing provider is better, but mostly about which is the most suitable for your current situation.
You need to think about your business in the future. Right now you might only have a few subscribers and you might get away with using the free and basic MailChimp service, but you need to think about the future and if you’re going to be happy with their service when your customer’s list grows and when your price for the service grows.
You can always change your email providers later down the road, that’s not impossible, but I would encourage you to think about your needs before committing to one of the ESP.