← The Email Sound Booth with Liz Wilcox
The Email Sound Booth with Liz Wilcox
Episode 62: Deciding on an Email Service Provider
00:18:21
Unsure how to pick your email service provider? This episode breaks down the contributing factors that go into the decision, what mistakes to avoid, and when is the right time to spend money on an ESP. Liz also gives you the top 8 ESPs out there with...
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:01]
A
What's up? Liz Wilcox here with another episode of the email sound booth podcast. Really excited. Episode 62, picking your email service provider. So I've had, I don't know, something like it's like 600 new members inside email marketing membership as passholders in the last few weeks. Right. And so inside the email sound booth Facebook group. If you're not in there, I'll put it in the show notes. Everybody seems to be asking, like, hey, I'm just starting out, but I'm not sure what email service provider to pick or it's nearing the end of the year or whatever. And you want to switch from X to Y now. Right. So this really is kind of our number one question. I don't know why it wasn't the first podcast episode. We're 62 episodes in. I'm finally getting to this. Thank you for your patience. Anyway, if you're not watching the YouTube, my hair just went wild. If you're not watching the YouTube, you're missing out on really awkward videos. So if that's your thing, you can go to watchliz.com and subscribe to my YouTube channel. All the links in all the show notes. Okay, so picking an email service provider sucks about as much as my hair right now. There's lots of providers to pick from. It's hard to know which tools are right for you and which tools are right for when I make it big versus right now. Right. So today, what I want to do is help you determine your email marketing goals and needs. Yes, this is applicable to picking the email service provider. And then I'm going to link you to a blog post I have that has my top eight ESPs. And after you listen to this episode, what I want you to do, you can check out that article. If you need to know my recommended ESPs, I'll probably mention them in here. What am I talking about? But I want you to go to YouTube, set a timer for 20 minutes, pick two platforms that interest you, and then just watch some tutorials. Okay. And pick the one that meets, you know, the needs of your brain and your budget. So first, let's define our email marketing goals, because this is really what is going to determine, you know, other than our budget, like what we should be doing. There's no one size fits all platform. Getting clear on your brand or your business's individual needs is numero uno. Okay, so let's take a look at some of the factors that go into choosing your email service provider. All right, so why do you want to start Email marketing in the first place? Are you trying to increase engagement between launches? Are you trying to build your brand awareness and authority? Do you just want more or sales at all? Are you trying to build an asset for sponsor attention? Right. If you're a content creator, or are you just trying to create some product awareness when you have a long customer journey? I was thinking about a long customer journey today. I'm a big runner and there's a guy named Run Bum, and he. I've been following this dude since, like, I don't know, 2010, 2011, and I'm just now going to purchase from him, like, go to one of his races. So that's a. That's like 14 years. That's a long customer journey. But guess what? I've been on his email email list. He emails mostly regularly. You know, at least once a month with a newsletter and then a few times a month with, like, updates about races and things like that. And it's taken me 14 years. So don't give up on your people. Side note, I've been seeing a lot of people say, oh, well, do I just delete? People have been on my list forever. Never bought. No, don't delete them anyway. That's a whole nother podcast. So if increasing your engagement is most important, a simple email service provider may work for you. One where you're just sending out those weekly or monthly newsletters. For example, I just talked about runbomb. He probably has a simple service provider I could actually look, right. He's not doing long funnels. He's, you know, he's just updating people and trying to keep them engaged so they buy one day. Right? You might even be able to get away, if you're like him, to get away with some of the freemium offers out there. You know, it's not my favorite option for you, but I don't know your budget. Right? I totally get it if you need freemium. In fact, when I first started, I started with a free plugin for WordPress, and that's how I was collecting emails. And I was just sending out mass emails that didn't have a welcome sequence. None of that. But Once I hit 100 subscribers, I moved onto ConvertKit, now called Kit, and at the time, they didn't have a freemium offer, so I had to start paying $29 a month. But, y'all listen up. My dearest friend, if you're going to take this email marketing seriously, spending money on an email service provider is what I call a business expense. Right there Are some business investments, like even my $9 a month membership, that's an investment, right? You're learning. You go there to learn, you go there to save time and money, right? That's an investment. You don't absolutely have to have that to succeed. But I find you do need a proper email service provider to succeed. That's why it's just like at a business expense, just a cost of running business, right? Like if you want an online business, you have to have some sort of laptop, right? That's an expense. All right, there's my soapbox. So now if your number one goal with email marketing, like maybe you're making sales and you want to make more sales, you need a more feature friendly email service provider, right? One that can segment, one that can run automation simultaneously. For example, like and I don't think my system is all too complicated, right? But I've got a welcome sequence running. I need tags, I don't use segments. I'll link to the episode about segments in the show notes. But I do like to segment people who are affiliates that don't want my newsletter. I like to segment out people who are still in the welcome sequence, things like that. More feature friendly, you know, service providers can do all that for you. So what features do you need? Like this can feel worse than someone trying to pick from the Cheesecake Factory menu, right? If you've ever been to Cheesecake Factory, you know what I'm talking about. It's like 20 pages long. So each email service provider seemingly has better features than the next. So what the heck do you even need and which ones are important? So I'm going to keep it high level for you right now. If you're a beginner to email marketing, you need to have. There are a few must haves in my humble fresh princess opinion. So number one, you want an email provider that can accommodate the volume of emails you plan on delivering. Like, you know, likely that won't be a lot and most of them will get you there, right? There's only been a few that I've heard of that said, oh, I'm only allowed to send a hundred emails a month or something. Like don't ever pick anything that limits the amount of emails you can send, right? Okay. Number two is list management. And it might be tempting. This is where I see a lot of people going wrong. It might be tempting to go cheap or skip on this features, but an email provider that offers automation segmentation capabilities is best even I think, I think it's mailchimp where there are like different lists instead of segments. So if that makes sense for your brain, cool. If it doesn't make sense for your brain, remember, think about, like, how do they set up your list for you? How do they allow you to, you know, segment and automate, manage? Right? I love Kit because, you know, it's just one big list. I can put tags, I can make segments. It even tells me who you know. It will arrange it according to who's a cold subscriber, right? Somebody who hasn't opened in a while. It'll tell me, you know, who's unsubscribed, who, who's complained, who's, you know, who didn't confirm. Right. It manages those lists for me, and it makes it really simple to look at that data. So the biggest mistake I see people making is going cheap with limited features. And then this is a mistake because then they think email is too hard. It's not too hard. You just have the wrong software, my love. All right? And then number three, you got to know how your emails are performing. So find an ESP and email service provider that shows you analytics like opens, click throughs, who's opening and who's not. I just saw in our email Facebook group, oh, my gosh. There was somebody that said, and luckily it wasn't them, it was their client. And their client was using some kind of ESP where they couldn't even see the entire list all at once. They could only see ten at a time. That's insanity. And the way that they. They were confused about it, or it was, it was making it difficult because they were trying to look at people who hadn't opened. So there was no way to sort who was opening and who wasn't. So they had to go through that one by one. Now, if you've got five people on your list, fine. If you've got 500, that's gonna be a big deal. So don't go cheap and go with something that has a decent dashboard. It doesn't have to be crazy. Crazy. Actually, something. So ConvertKit moved into kit, right? And something I'm nervous about them is they seem really excited about all this new data they're gonna be able to create and show you. But I'm nervous because most creators don't need that much data anyway. Pick an email service provider where the dashboard makes sense for your brain. Okay? That's where at the top of this episode, I said, go to YouTube and look at over the shoulder, like reviews and stuff. That's where watching those is going to Help you now. We need to set a budget for email marketing, right? Yes. I'm going to encourage you to spend some money on email marketing, but you don't have to spend all your money, right? There are certain ESPs that are all in one CRMs, customer response management, or whatever the heck that stands for. You likely don't need something like that unless you have an agency. You're booking a lot of calls, this, that and the other. You really just need a basic email service provider. But again, I started off with a free plugin and then I moved with Con with Kit when I got 100 subscribers. So again, make like, figure out how much money you can spend and then go out and spend that. In my mind, when I was moving away from the free plugin, it was like, okay, I know email marketing. I'm convinced email marketing is actually a thing that can make me money. So it's going to be a business expense once I get to 100 people. That's when I know, like, okay, I'm onto something. I'm going to switch into this paid email service provider. And I picked ConvertKit because a lot of people raved about it and because $29 a month. Like, yeah, it was like, you know, my then husband was like, what the heck? Why do you need to spend 39? You know, we're divorced now. Shocker of a lifetime. But hang on, let me laugh at that. Laugh through my pain. Laugh through my pain. No, actually, divorce was good for both of us. Anyway, back to email service providers. Back to picking it. Figure out what is right for your budget, but really do make a budget for it. If you've got a cut. Coffee for a few months. I think it's worth it. All right, so the last thing I want to say is don't get distracted by the bells and whistles. When it comes to making business decisions, it can be really easy to get distracted by shiny objects. Especially when we look at all these sales pages and we read all these emails. These are written by amazing copywriters that are versed in conversions. Right? So there. These ESPs are great marketers. So to be honest with you, it can really be expensive and time consuming to try out and to look at every different ESP out there. That's why I recommend just picking two. That kind of sound good for your brain, your budget, watching them on YouTube and then just picking one. So I'm going to go through eight different options here and I'll also link to this blog post. If reading is better for you, of course I Use kit. I've used kit since 2016, y'all. I'm the kind of gal that just makes a decision and I don't look back. I love kit, you know, and it can't. You can start out for free and then upgrade quickly after that. Also activecampaign. Activecampaign is more complicated. Robust kind of features, is for people who probably are already making money. Some kind of big service provider going into email. I think ActiveCampaign has raised its prices a lot in 2023 and 2024, so they're likely not targeting solopreneurs, quote unquote anymore. So you might want to look in that for yourself. Flow desk. Flow Desk is fine. Uh, it's for all my visual kind of girlies, guys and pals. Uh, it's great for service providers or brands that have a beautiful aesthetic. Um, yeah. And Flodesk is relatively inexpensive. It's a fine option. Mailchimp. I. I've only known one or two people out of the thousands that I've talked to that like Mailchimp, but you might be the third person. So you could check out Mailchimp. Again. I think Mailchimp is kind of like ActiveCampaign, where they're trying to move away from the micro lists and move into small businesses. By small business, I mean half a million to $10 million. Constant contact is great for beginners. It's got all the right features to create effective email campaigns. I can't really say anything negative about it. Mailer light. I saw somebody in my Facebook group. Well, our Facebook group email sound booth. If you're not in there, get in there. Said that Mailerlite was like the dollar tree of ESPs. So if you need the dollar tree of ESPs, I don't not recommend Mailerlite. Mailerlite is fine. It's got a decent dashboard. It's relatively inexpensive. Let me look. I think I put in this blog post. 0 to 21 bucks a month. Now, if you're an e commerce brand. I have no idea how to pronounce this next one. Clavio. Clavia. Something like that. This one is the ace of spades, baby. The queen of hearts for e commerce brands. Recommend checking that one out and then little O. Aweber. Aweber has been around since 1998. They are the OGs. I actually am on Aweber's email list. They write great emails. They're super helpful. Their customer service is great. They have an intuitive user interface. I would recommend aweber. But anyway, those are some of the eight most used that I've seen. I've also heard in the Facebook group send owl. I don't know some other ones. I think Stan has now come out with an esp. Kajabi is an all in one. You know, what works for your brain, what works for your budget? What are your email marketing goals? That is how you pick your esp, your email service provider. Yeah, I hope this is helpful. Last note here and I said it at the top. I'm going to say it again. Don't spend more than 20 minutes. I mean, I've already talked to you for almost 20 minutes about this. So, you know, pick out a couple. Check out the blog post in the show notes, go to YouTube, you know, spend 20 minutes and then just pick what works for your brain and your budget. All right, awesome. That's the end of this episode. If you need more email marketing content writing help, once you get that esp, you get your ball rolling. I'd love for you to join email marketing membership $9 a month, where I basically write your emails for you. The link is going to be in the show notes there as always. I'm Liz Wilcox. You are amazing and I'll see you on the next episode of the Email Sound Booth, a podcast.