Today’s post is to provide with an overview of 3 different autoresponders and how to choose the best autoresponder for your online business.
First off, what is an autoresponder and why do you need one? If you’re new to the online marketing world you may not be familiar with the term autoresponder. To explain, it’s an automated email service. So when you sign up for someone’s newsletter or freebie (checklist, ebook, audio, video series, etc) your email address is entered into a program so that you can receive an email series that goes out automatically about the topic you’re interested in and that is related to the newsletter owner’s website or the freebie you downloaded.
You need an autoresponder for your website because, once someone visits your website, they could very easily click off and you will never see them again. By offering a freebie that’s linked to an autoresponder, you can continue to communicate with them and build that know, like & trust factor to make sales.
Now that we have that out of the way, I’m going to provide an overview of 3 popular autoresponders and the one I recommend most.
- The first one is Mailchimp. What’s great about Mailchimp is that you can get started using it for free. With a free mailchimp account you can have up to 2000 subscribers and send up to 12000 emails per month so that’s essentially 6 emails per month to your subscribers which is pretty good for a new business. You can even set up automated emails using the free plan. It’s a great way to get started and I have set up Mailchimp before for clients but my understanding with Mailchimp is that as your business grows, your frustrations with Mailchimp will too. But it’s a great place to get started.
- So that brings me to my second overview ConvertKit. ConvertKit is a newer autoresponder. I believe it came on the market about 2-3 years ago and I’ve heard nothing but good things about. I’ve also watched demo/training videos on how to use it and it offers so many useful features with the best being that it offers subscriber segmentation. Once your business grows this is a great option because you will likely want to offer different programs that will each require a different email list and automated email series. When that happens you can often have the same person on multiple lists and with ConvertKit, you only pay for that subscriber only once unlike many other services out there. The price of ConvertKit is a little higher however @ $29 per month for up to 1000 subscribers and $49 for 1000-3000 subscribers.
- My favourite autoresponder is Aweber. I have been using Aweber for years and over time, they have upgraded their features enough that I’ve never seen a reason to leave. Their email deliveries have always been reliable, their support team is great and their service is easy to use. Pricing for Aweber is $19 per mo for up to 500 subscribers and $29 per month for up to 2500 subscribers so it’s cheaper than ConvertKit without taking into account the savings you get from ConvertKit with their pay per subscriber feature. Because my experience is primarily with Aweber and I’m very satisfied with it, it’s the autoresponder I recommend most.
Of course there are other autoresponder services available on the market and you need to choose one that best suits your needs based on your budget and the features offered. Make sure you select one that offers list segmentation, email automation and integration with different programs such as Leadpages, facebook, paypal, etc. so that you can link up other services with your autoresponder. So what I mean by that is my leadpages (which is a program that helps you create newsletter optin forms) links up with my Aweber account so that when someone enters their name and email address in to receive one of my freebies, their email address is automatically added to the appropriate Aweber email list.
So although I am a fan of Aweber and most frequently recommend it to clients for their autoresponder service, at the end of the day, you need to choose the one that best fits your budget, offers the features you need and suits the specific stage of your business.
I hope you found this information helpful, don’t forget to download your free copy of DIY Websites Content Creation Workbook so that you can build out content that sells for your website.
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