Under 100 subscribers? Why are you paying for newsletters?!
January 6, 2009 by Efficient Entrepreneur
Filed under Free, Marketing, News, Non-Profit Resources, Other Resources
Professional Newsletters for the New Business
Everyone needs a break when they’re first starting out. And Mail Chimp wants to give it to you. Mail Chimp is one of the leading email marketing companies on the market. Incredibly user-friendly. Used by big companies like Canon, GM and Make A Wish Foundation. Because the company is doing so well with their big clients, they want to support the “little guy” until your business is thriving!
Unlike most trial programs, Mail Chimp’s free version does not expire. You don’t even need to give them a credit card to sign up. The only restrictions are a maximum list size of 100 and no more than 6 newsletter runs per month! Not bad. Upgrade to a paid version whenever you like with one of two types of plans: monthly or pay-per-use. Both of which are about what you’d pay for any other major newsletter/email marketing service. And if you’re running a non-profit and you upgrade to a paid plan, Mail Chimp offers you a 15% discount on all plans.
Mail Chimp Ranking: Fluff 5%, Meat 70%, Gold 25%
Gold: Many email marketing campaigns rely on you to make sure that newsletters that you send aren’t going to be automatically considered spam. Mail Chimp goes above and beyond to include all the safety measures required by all U.S. laws governing the internet and follows all the rules of the Can-Spam Act, pretty much ensuring that any newsletter sent through Mail Chimp is safe enough to be accepted by any mail program.
Some people like to wear labels. They purposely buy shirts that have “Nike” splattered across the front, back and side. But this is something that has always bothered me. If I am paying for an email service, I think they have no right to use emails I’m sending out as a venue for their advertising. If I’m using a free program…well, that’s understandable. This is one of the best aspects of Mail Chimp. On all paid plans, there is no Mail Chimp logo distracting your readers from what you have to say. Moreover, if you choose to add the Mail Chimp logo to the bottom of your emails, and your readers choose to click on it and sign up…You get paid for it! Essentially, even if you have a paid subscription you could have free email marketing just by getting a couple friends to sign up. Mail Chimp automatically adds email credits to your account for every sign up.
Another amazing feature allows you to segment your list in an unlimited number of ways. Let’s say you have a cooking newsletter, from one easily integrated sign-up box subscribers can be put in a list based on their interests (cooking deserts, eating for 2, quick big family meals), their location, when they signed up etc. In fact, once you start sending out the newsletter, you can even create custom lists based on who clicked on what in your newsletter. This is the best way to send out specific, targeted emails so that more of your emails are read rather than just deleted because of overly generic information. Essentially send completely personalized emails to a mass of people easily and quickly.
Perform Split A/B tests. Every good business owner should always perform split A/B tests of all their big marketing ideas. With Mail Chimp you can test subject lines, email substance and even link color to see which appeals to your list more.
Meat and Potatoes: Mail Chimp gives you the standard array of information that most e-mail marketing companies give: how many people opened the email, how many clicked, how many forwarded, etc. All this information is in an easy to understand interface featuring visual pie charts and graphs. Click around and figure out what your most popular link was, who forwarded the email and how many were even opened. Mail Chimp kicks its tracking up a notch though by sending your campaign info into Google Analytics. Now your Analytics account can keep track of not only visitors to your website, but readers of your newsletter.
P.S. Did I mention that they’re best friends with Survey Monkey. When you’ve got questions for your subscribers, Mail Chimp easily integrates with Survey Monkey (its other half). Survey Monkey is the number one email survey tool available among internet marketers.
Instructional videos like this one provide extensive instructions and walk you through some of the coolest features.
Fluff: Honestly, there’s really not too much Fluff when it comes to Mail Chimp. There’s a large slew of color schemes you can choose for your sign-up page, your unsubscribe page and each newsletter you send out, so that could be a bit of time sink if you’re being picky. And when you’re starting your first list, it does get a little confusing and that may slow you down a bit too. Once everything’s set-up, the interface is very simple and straight-forward. It’s easy to get the information you’re looking for and download it to your computer.
Sign up for a free account to check it out by clicking on the Mail Chimp logo on the right or the links in this article.
