Best Email Marketing Software (2019 Review!)
– What’s the best emailmarketing software for you?Well, after testing a lotof the best email services,and even running our businesson over five of the leading options,here’s our top recommendationsand what you need to knowwhen deciding which is the bestemail marketing platform for you. Hey, it’s Justin Brownhere from Primal Video,where we help you amplify your businessand brand with video. If you’re new here,make sure you click that subscribe buttonand all the links to everythingwe mention in this videoyou can find linked inthe description box below. So, let’s jump into it. Growing an email listhas had a massive impact on our business. If you’re here,then you likely already knowjust how powerful it can be,but you probably already noticedthat there are a ridiculousamount of options out therewhen it comes to emailmarketing platforms. And it’s not a small decision either. Choosing the wrong one could meanan absolute ton of workmigrating down the road. So we didn’t take our decision lightly,and we spent a ridiculousamount of time tryingand testing all the leading optionsand even running our entire businesson five of our shortlisted optionsbefore deciding on twospecific recommendationsfor different users. So in this video, I’ll be sharing with youwhat we’ve learned from all that research,how we got to our top recommendations,and what you need to knowto choose the right emailmarketing software for you. And on top of that,I’ll also share a link to the recordingof a free workshop that we ran,stepping you through howwe organically convertover 30% of our new YouTube subscribersover to our email listeach and every month,completely automated. It’s super thoroughand it even includes awalkthrough on how to set upeach of our recommended email platforms. So make sure you stickaround for that one. All right, so for the short list,and I’m sure some of theseplatforms you might of heard of,that includes Mailchimp,Activecampaign, Aweber, Drip,Infusionsoft, Convertkit,Getresponse, Constant Contact,and Sendy, which is anAmazon SES platform. Now, we’ve tested most of theseand have even run our businessat various times on several. So cutting to the chase,what are our recommendations and why?Well, our top two recommendationsare Activecampaign and Convertkit. Now here’s a little bit of background. On top of all that testing,we actually ran our business on MailChimp,then we moved to Aweber, CoverKit, Drip,Infusionsoft and ActiveCampaign. From all of that, both of these optionsare the two standoutsfor different reasons. And they’re also the best optionsthat we found for thevast majority of users. And obviously in that short listthere some really other popular options. Drip is a solid platformand seems to really fit somewherebetween CovertKit and ActiveCampaign. It’s got some great automations. it’s got a nice email builder,but where ConvertKit andActiveCampaign stand outin their respective areas,Drip just didn’t stack up for us. And Infusionsoft for a pretty long timehas been the defactostandard for automation. We used it for a whileand we found that evensimple automations requirean absolute complexmess of tags to set up,but then to be able to manageand to change these things later oncan become an absolute nightmare. So as I said out top two recommendationsare ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign. So let’s dive inspecifically why these twoand which one is bestfor specific businessesand which one are we using right now. Both ConverKit and ActiveCampaignare super powerful,and they’ve also have amassive focus on automationswhich is a huge advantage overa lot of the other optionswe had on the short list. And building out automationswith your email listis one of the most powerful thingsyou can do with your online business. They both have really great support,which again is really importantif you’re gonna be buildingyour business here,and if you’ve got an issue,or you need a question answered,or you need help with somethinghaving fast or goodsupport is a huge thing. And they are both based arounda subscriber centric approachmeaning that you are only gonna bepaying for subscriber onceand that subscriber canbe added to as many listsor tags as you like. Some of the platforms charge differentlyand they charge for numbers on lists,so if one person was on multiple liststhen you’re paying for thatone person or that one useror that one email address multiple times. So ConvertKit and ActiveCampaignwill charge you once for a subscriberand then that subscriber can appearon as many lists or tags as you like. Now there are some slight differenceswhen you’re looking at thework flow between the two. ConvertKit is entirely tag-basedwhere as ActiveCampaignincludes both tags and listswhich does add a niceextra layer of optionsfor your subscriber management. So that’s the general stuff. Looking specifically at ConvertKitit’s got a super simplereally clean interfacewhich is really easy to pick up and useversus almost any of theother options out there. So even if you’re totally new to thisand you’ve never usedany of these providersyou’ll be able to get up andrunning fast in ConvertKit. It’s got a really easyto use email editor. This one is less visually appealing,and maybe less controlsand features, and thingsthan some of the others out there,but it’s primarily text based. And they said the reasonthey have gone this wayis because it increases theemail campaign performancebecause the emails looks more personal. So instead of having emailsthat look like they’ve just been bulk sentto thousand of people,the emails that were sent from herelook like they were sent froma personal email account. And with our experience with it,we totally agree. There’s also some really bigupdates that they’ve got. Some really cool stuff in the pipelinefor 2019 on their email editor. So it’s going to be pretty excitingwhen they roll those out. Now, looking at theautomation side of thingsConvertKit has got reallypowerful, intuitive automations. They actually recently introduceda visual automation builderwhich is a huge improvement,and really helps to understandwhat happens as your usersmove through a workflow. It supports a lot of thebasic options most users needand even has built in landing pagesso that you can deploy them fast,but also so that you can keepeverything under the one roofor on the same platform. But on that note and specificallywhen looking in comparison tosomething like ActiveCampaignthere are less features in ConvertKit,but they are reallypurposeful in what the doand there’s really no bloat in there,so it is super intuitive. It’s easy to get up and running,and it’s easier to findthings in there as wellwithout getting overwhelmedin so many options. And I did mention thatthere’s great supporton both ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign,but an honorable mention has to go out toConvertKit as theirteam is so approachable. They’re genuine andthey’re very responsive. Now, ActiveCampaign is great too,but it’s a little more transactional. Somehow with ConvertKityou really feel likeyou’re part of the team. So I just needed to throw that inas a extra little plus in there. So overall we got several clientsand we got tons of studentsthat are currently usingand loving ConvertKit. It’s easy to pick up. It offers some great basic automationsthat you can grow into. And it doesn’t require a techteam to understand it all. So now for ActiveCampaign. It’s also got a really great interface,but it’s a lot morecomplex than ConvertKit. It’s got a built in CRMor customer relationship manager. It’s a really simple oneso don’t expect it to up the sales forceor something like that,but it does let you manage your customers,and track their history and awhole lot of other fun stuff. The email editor in ActiveCampaignis definitely a little bit more clunky,but it does offer more flexibility. There’s a lot more templatesand it supports a lot more visual optionsthan you had in ConvertKit. But a really big featureor a really big plus of ActiveCampaignis the super powerful automations. It supports everythingthat CovertKit can do,but it goes far more complex as well. So back on the ConvertKit side of thingsyour automations arereally built around tags,and applying and removing tags,where as on theActiveCampaign side of thingsyou’re just not limited to tagsthere’s so many morethings that you can doand built out into your automations. And even really advanced things,really cool things for your businesslike adding people to acustom Facebook audienceor even creating a custom webhook that you can throw outat a certain point in yourautomation or in your workflow. So there’s a huge level of depththat you can dive intoon a platform like thisespecially if you’re lookingat these automations. But a platform like thisis also going to be harder to learnthan something like ConvertKit. But it will give youmore options as you growif it’s likely that you wantmore from your automations. But even outside of the automation stuffthere’s just a huge range of featuresand a huge level of customizationthat you can applyinside of ActiveCampaign. So which one is the best and who?Well, ConvertKit is gonnabe the go to recommendationfor anyone that is likelyto get bogged down in tech. They just want something nice, unintrusivethat’s not going to get in their way. So those are our topic picksfor anyone that’s unlikelygonna wanna dive intothose complex automationsor anything outside ofa simple email funneland just want somethingthat will get the job done,something that’s nice, easy and fast. And ActiveCampaign on the other handis a far more customizable platform. There’s a huge rangeof options and featuresoffering incredibleamounts of flexibility. So when you stack upthat against ConvertKitall that flexibility definitelyadds a lot of complexitybut if automations is a big thing for youand it definitely is for usthen you’ll love ActiveCampaign. If in comparing the waythat ActiveCampaignhandles these automationsagainst Infusionsoftwhich has typically beenthe standard for marketing automation,ActiveCampaign just makesthing so much simpler,and so much easier to set up and manage. It really is chalk and cheese,and it’s a standout by a big margin. So for us at Primal videowe definitely don’t shyaway from the tech stuff,and we also have a bigfocus on automations. It’s a big part of what we do. So ActiveCampaign has beenthe perfect solution for us. And a lot of our clients and studentswith a similar focus love it as well. But I do have to say thatprobably more of our studentsand clients have opted forthe simplicity of ConvertKitand they absolutely love it. So overall, if it’s notclear from this overviewwhich one is the standout for you,then I really suggest grabbinga free trial of each of themand diving in and checkingthem out for yourself. Links are in the description below. And as I mentioned atthe start of this videothere’s a link on screen nowfor our free email list workshopwhich includes tutorialson how to set up bothActiveCampaign and ConvertKit,and how to start growingyour email list on autopilot. These are the exact tactics that we usedto grow our email listby 30% of our new YouTube subscriberscompletely organically and on autopiloteach and every month. I’ll see you soon.