10 Tools to Build an Email Marketing List Fast

STEP TWO, CREATE AN ACCOUNT WITH AN EMAIL PROVIDER.

After you’ve captured someone’s email address, your subscriber’s information is stored with your email provider so that you can send emails to your list.

You use an email provider because they ensure delivery of your emails, they help you with support, and they keep you compliant with spam laws. Using an email provider takes a lot less time than sending emails from your personal inbox, especially when you find a provider that offers amazing features.

There are a million different email providers out there and the best opt-in form tools integrate with many of them, so how do you decide? I’ve tested out many different email service providers, here are my recommendations:

3. MailChimp

MailChimp’s Email Designer

MailChimp is great for beginning email marketers because it’s feature rich and affordably priced. I started my email marketing journey with MailChimp because they have a starter account for those that are new to sending business emails.

If you have less than 2,000 subscribers, you can send 12,000 emails per month, absolutely free. Once you grow past the 2,000 subscriber mark, MailChimp charges a sliding scale to send unlimited emails, or you have the option to pay per email sent.

It’s difficult to say no to building a list and communicating with your first subscribers for free, which is really nice if you’re a bootstrapping business owner. However, you’ll realize fairly quickly that you’ll want to use some of the premium features, that require a monthly subscription. Here are some important features you’ll use regularly with MailChimp and whether it’s a free or paid option:

EMAIL DESIGNER AND EMAIL TEMPLATES (FREE)

When it comes down to it, you really want to pick an email provider that makes it easy for you to build great emails. With MailChimp’s email designer you’ll be sending professional emails to your audience within minutes. To add content to your emails, you drag and drop to reorder sections of your email. You can add text, images, social follow buttons, and more very quickly.

MailChimp also offers a ton of editable email templates. You can select one of the pre-designed templates then edit the text, adjust the colors, and add images. It’s also really easy to adjust templates and make it your own. If you’re a coder, you can build custom HTML templates, which MailChimp walks you through in their Email Template Reference guide.

SEGMENTATION (FREE)

Segmenting your email subscribers is a valuable feature that allows you to send targeted messages to groups of your audience. You can either choose to place certain people into segments of your list based on internal data, or you can have your subscribers choose the segment they’re placed into. When you segment your subscribers, you ensure they always receive content they’re most interested in.

AUTOMATION (PAID)

MailChimp’s Automation Page

If there’s one feature you switch from a free account to a paid account for, it’ll be Automation. You’ll use Automation to build autoresponder series (also known as a drip campaign) where emails are sent automatically to your list at predefined times or whenever they take certain actions. Automation saves you time by automatically sending emails for you and helps you engage with your audience frequently.

Autoresponder series are different from the standard “blast emails” where you send an email to your whole list at once. Without a MailChimp paid membership, you have to manually send every email to your audience. If you send daily emails, this can become a hassle, but it’s not impossible. If you’re just starting out and you need to save money, do it. Many successful email marketers have started by sending out “blast emails” and transitioned to email automation once they’ve built a profitable list.

REPORTS (FREE)

MailChimp’s reporting features help you craft better emails for your audience. It’s important to monitor the results of your email campaigns so that you can improve your message. By checking the reports frequently, you’ll know how many people in your list are opening your emails, what the click through rate to your website is, and how many people purchased a product or service from you as a result of your email content. With this information you can edit or remove emails in your drip campaign that aren’t meeting expectations and craft new content that your audience resonates with based on previous success.

A/B TESTING

MailChimp’s A/B testing (also known as split or bucket tests) lets you build up to three variations of your emails to see which one performs best. As marketers, you never really know how your audience is going to react to one of your emails until you test it. That’s why it’s important to test different headlines, body text, and calls to action in your emails. MailChimp sends variations of your email to a portion of your list, determines which one meets your goals best, and then sends the most successful one to your other subscribers. After a successful A/B test, you’ll know what works best for your subscribers and you can use the information you’ve learned for future email series.

Overall MailChimp comes with some wonderful features that improve your chance of success as an email marketer. Start with the free account until you get a hang of email marketing, then upgrade once you’re ready for the paid features or you outgrow your free subscription. Here’s the pricing information:

MailChimp’s free account lets you send 12,000 emails per month to 0 – 2,000 email subscribers. A paid subscription costs $10 per month if you have 0 – 500 subscribers, and allows you to send unlimited emails. For every additional 500 subscribers, you’ll pay $5 more a month. There’s also a MailChimp Pro with advanced features for people looking to get more out of their email marketing for an additional $199 per month. Overall, MailChimp is the most affordable way to send emails to a small list.

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