Why MailerLite is so bloody fantastic
Email Marketing Software
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Here are 7 reasons why MailerLite is a great option for any small service-based business.
You’ve seen the posts, you’ve had the emails, you’ve watched the videos. You know that email marketing is a fantastic way of reaching potential clients, but which email marketing software (EMS) do you go for?
There are loads, and I mean LOADS out there – Mailchimp, MailerLite; ActiveCampaign; FloDesk, Hubspot; Moosend; ConverterKit; Aweber; Drip, and many, many more.
So how do you sort the wheat from the chaff?
Do you just follow the trend?
It’s not a bad option. Mailchimp has 75% of the email marketing market, which is HUGE. It’s unsurprising as they have been around for donkey’s years (about 21) and are undoubtedly at the forefront of email marketing tech.
But do you need all that?
The first thing you should do is decide what it is you want from the service.
As a small business offering services, a membership, course, eBook, or guide, the chances are you want your EMS to:
- Allow you to collect subscribers and grow your list.
- Send a welcome email or two when they sign up.
- Offer a downloadable freebie.
- Send weekly/fortnightly/monthly campaigns.
- Sell your offer.
- Target segments of your audience for specific products/services.
- Share your knowledge.
- Get to know your prospective clients.
I’m pretty sure you also want it to be easy to use and good value for money, or even better FREE!
That’s why I am a huge fangirl of MailerLite, so much so that I am in the process of becoming a Certified pro – yes I will get a certificate, swish hey?
If you’re looking for a platform that does all of that, I truly believe MailerLite is for you. And here’s why:
1. Great for small businesses & creatives
The free version allows you up to 1000 subscribers. Now if you’re selling 1-2-1 hours, an online course or membership, 1000 subscribers is quite a big large audience.
And if you end up with more, I would say, with MailerLite your budget could stretch to it – it’s currently priced at $15 (£12) per month.
I don’t know about you but if I averaged 1 sale a month from that I would be H A P P Y!
And I don’t want to bad mouth the big guns but when you reach your limit on the free account with Mailchimp (2000) the price jumps to £27.46 per month.
2. Simple & easy to use
You can create campaigns, landing pages and even webpages with their simple drag & drop page builder.
The in built subscribe form is easy to use with all the necessary elements you need to ensure data compliance – there is a blog coming but in the meantime check out my Instagram Post from last week.
They even have a bank of photos & gifs you can drop right into an image box without the faff of finding one elsewhere & uploading it. Although to be fair uploading an image really isn’t too taxing – drag & drop!
3. Excellent deliverability
MailerLite comes out top in the Email Tool Tester bi-annual deliverability test, which basically means, there is a good chance of your emails landing in a subscriber’s inbox.
I would say this is largely due to a robust signup & verification system. Some would look at this as a negative but by safeguarding the platform from being plagued by spammers, emails coming through from MailerLite are seen as more trustworthy by email service providers (gmail, outlook, yahoo, etc.)
4. Unlimited landing pages, forms & workflows
You can create unlimited landing pages and subscribe forms, this is great if you want to group and segment your audience, so you can send different people to different pages. Let’s say you attend an event and you want to make sure that when a subscriber signs up, you know for a FACT that it was from the event – give them a separate link. This could be on a flyer or you can get them to sign up right there and then.
It’s also useful if you plan on creating a lead magnet or two.
Lead magnet? It’s the pdf freebie, the 20-minute free course, or the discount you are offering to get people to subscribe.
For me, the BEST feature in MailerLite is the workflow – not only is it easy to set up, but you can also create unlimited workflows.
What’s a workflow? It’s a sequence of automated emails and steps that allow you to nurture your audience. The most common is a sequence of welcome emails when a subscriber signs up to your list.
5. Solid audience grouping & segmentation options
The grouping (tagging) is really easy to use and when it comes to sending campaigns you can easily send targeted emails to specific groups, you can also exclude groups.
For example, say your new subscriber welcome sequence takes 10 days to complete, and you don’t want to send your regular campaigns to them until they have completed the sequence – easy, one click excludes them from your regular campaign.
Segmentation works slightly differently. Groups are fixed, if someone is in a group, that is where they stay (they can be in multiple groups). Segments are dynamic, they change automatically depending on the conditions you set. This is a great tool and one I use with all my clients.
6. Great support
So far, any issue I’ve come up against, I can either head to their brilliant resource library or ping them an email. They are in the USA so there is a time lag but they are pretty spot on at replying & helping. I’ve only needed to email a couple of times at the set-up stage and have had no trouble with them at all.
7. Free trial of the pro account
When you sign up you automatically get a month’s free trial of the pro account without needing to enter any card details.
This allows you to test the paid for version AND you can access their bank of email templates. My top tip – make a copy of the ones you like & they’re yours for life.
I think I’ve waxed lyrical for long enough about MailerLite and I’m sure you’re wondering…‘but what about the bad points Hannah?’
Now I am all for making life as EASY as possible, for you and for me, that’s kind of my MO. That doesn’t mean I cut corners or only put in half the effort, it basically means that if someone else has written a comparison article on email marketing software, why on earth would I bother?
I’ve linked to two articles below, the negatives they have are listed below, but if you’re unsure, check them out.
- Doesn’t include CRM – you can integrate it with the CRM you use.
- Limited integrations – this is where a tool like Zapier comes in.
- You need to provide a lot of company information to get an account set up – see my point about deliverability
this is a positive in my book.
IF you’ve found yourself stuck wondering which EMS to use, I hope this has given you an insight into the wonders of MailerLite.
This is not an ad, I like it, it’s easy to use and it’s free.
That said…everyone who signs up with MailerLite gets a ‘refer-a-friend’ link, this is not unusual, I get on for my CRM, Dubsado & Canva. Plus it only benefits me if you decide to sign up to a pro account, which, unless you have over 1000 subscribers, I wouldn’t recommend. However, if you use the link, you will get an $18 (£14) credit. So it would be remiss of me not to share it: Refer-a-Friend
If you do have over 1000 subscribers and decide to move to MailerLite, I recommend culling your list first & getting rid of subscribers who haven’t opened your emails recently (say 6 months) – there is no point in paying to send emails that aren’t opened or engaged with.
Check your open rate, if it’s around the 30% mark that means in that thousand, 600 subscribers are not regularly engaging with your content.
What next??
Sitting on the fence & not yet ready to start? Sign up for my emails & follow me on Instagram.
Ready to take the leap but don’t want to set it up? Or maybe you’re already using email for marketing and have some questions – I can help. Email me at hannah@balance-va.co.uk
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity.”
Amelia Earhart
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All prices, offers, facts and figures correct as of 8th June 2022.