Over the past years, I have set up and maintained over four dozen email marketing lists for myself and my customers. I have used almost every Opt-in Email Marketing Service available and my hands down favorite is GetResponse.
You can test out GetResponse for 30 days FREE without having to register your credit card. Spin and kick all the tires and you will see exactly why I love this service.
All three of the top three email service providers (GetResponse, Aweber and MailChimp) offer similar features, but GetResponse goes over and above the rest with their excellent customer service, their extensive training courses, a free landing page with your regular subscription and a totally integrated (including AB testing) unlimited landing page add-on package for an extremely low price.
Here are a few of the features offered in their basic packages:
- Automatically mobile optimized
- Send as many emails per month as you would like
- Schedule Emails
- Import contacts
- Autoresponder series (unlimited)
- Create landing pages (one landing page free as part of your package)
- RSS to Email
- Email Statistics including opens and clicks
- Google Analytic integration
- Easy to customize newsletter templates
- Social media integration
- Segmented lists
- Basic marketing automation
- Fantastic support
If you upgrade to their Pro packages you also get:
- Webinar integration
- Advanced landing page integration
- Advanced marketing automation
- Team access
- AND MORE
Sign Up Forms and Email Templates:
Drag and Drop technology lets you build dozens of different kinds of signup forms in minutes. GetResponse has 500 dynamite templates that are easy to customize and match up to your blog or other marketing materials. There are industry specific, holiday and event templates and hundreds of others. ALL of them are responsive and mobile friendly.
Landing Pages:
I use AB testing extensively to test landing pages for newsletter signup and for various sales pages. You can use the GetResponse website to host your landing pages, or integrate them on your own website.
Newsletter Scheduling on Steroids
There are three ways to schedule your newsletter. The first is in real time … just click on publish and in less than two minutes your newsletter is being delivered. You can also schedule your newsletter ahead of time, for a specific date and time. OR you can make your newsletter part of an evergreen AutoResponder series … which means that your newsletters are delivered a specific number of days after a subscriber signs up.
There are TWO other nifty scheduling choices:
The first is Perfect Timing. Your messages will be delivered when your subscriber is most active, and therefore likely to open and engage with your message.
The second is the Time Travel feature which delivers your message at the designated time for each time zone around the world. So for example, if you want your newsletter to be delivered at 3:00 PM Jan 1st … it will be delivered at 3:00 PM Jan 1st whether your subscriber lives in North Carolina or Australia. If you live in North America … you have to remember that “most” of the world is up to a day ahead … so make sure you load your newsletter into the scheduler at least one full day in advance. For example, if you want everyone to get your newsletter at 3:00 PM Jan 1st … you need to load and schedule early on Dec 31st, better yet on Dec 30th.
Cool Toy:
When you click on publish, you can watch a map of the world in REAL TIME as subscribers open your newsletter. When I first did this it was amazing … I watched as in MINUTES people were opening the newsletter … in North America and then Europe, South Africa, Korea and Australia.
You not only see people pop up on the map, but also see a running account of the percentage of opens and percentage of clicks.
It really is a lot of fun, especially if you want to avoid doing any work. LOL!
Pricing:
GetResponse has extremely competitive prices starting at $15 per month for up to 1000 subscribers ($12.50/month if paid by the year).
MONEY SAVING TIP: Be sure to “clean” you list of any unresponsive subscribers before your list gets to 1000. You will probably delete 50 – 100 subscribers who never open your emails and save yourself some money.
Though I highly recommend taking time to customize your subscriber intake process, it is possible to get started and send out your first Email newsletter in a few hours. Here’s how:
- Sign up for a Free GetResponse account
- Add contacts: You can add contacts from an Email contact list (ie Google mail), or you can import a list or copy/paste a list of your friends and acquaintances. DO NOT add anyone you don’t personally know.
- Choose a template, create your first Email newsletter and send it to your friends.
Hey, this is awesome, thanks for the review. You may be interested that GetResponse recently introduces a new dashboard and CRM. I will be more than happy to send you more information. Cheers!
Hi Jakub … YES I am aware of the new updates and am working to find the time to update THIS blog post. GetResponse is even better than ever and I have been testing some of the new (to me) add-ons. I appreciate the fact that GetResponse keeps up to date at all times! ~Melanie