Episode – 006- How to Pick the Right Newsletter Platform for You: MailerLite VS Active Campaign
In this episode, I’m going to tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly about two of my absolute favourite newsletter platforms out there: Active Campaign VS MailerLite. They are both excellent but different, so how do you pick one or the other? That’s what I’m sharing today.
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Full transcription
Hello and welcome to episode 6 of the Online Business Tech Hub. This is Alessia, your host, tech expert for online coaches, and consultants on a mission to rescue my clients from tech disasters. In this episode, I want to tell you about how to pick the right provider for your newsletter platform, according to your goals, according to your needs, and according to your skills and competencies. Because, as we know, technology is not everyone’s best friend.
In my experience, I shortlisted two platforms to providers that, in my opinion, are among the best you can use to get started with e-mail marketing.
OK, now. The thing is it’s really easy if you are starting out, if you don’t have an email list, if you just came up with a lead magnet, with a free resource, you want to share in exchange for the email address of your subscribers, of your followers, then the best platform you can use is MailerLite. OK, MailerLite is free for up to 1000 subscribers. It already has the automation features included. So keep in mind that MailChimp is free, yes, up to what, 3,200 subscribers, however, you can have only one list and you need to deal with the subscribers with tags, which can be quite confusing when you’re starting out and the automation feature, the customer journey isn’t included, which is a big pity in a way, because it’s actually a rather basic feature nowadays.
With MailerLite when you sign up for the free plan, the automations are included. You can have as many automations as you want. They are very easy to set up. And generally speaking, it has a very nice-looking structure. It’s cleaner. It’s actually quite easy to deal with. It’s very manageable. I have a lot of clients who are using MailerLite coming from MailChimp and they are relieved at how easy MailerLite is compared to MailChimp. It never stops. Amazingly really.
If you come from MailChimp, if you have an idea about how MailChimp works, it’s actually close in the structure and the way things work within MailerLite. But it’s not so messy and clunky. It’s very simple to use. It has a basic structure, but it’s very effective and solid. One of the wonderful things about MailerLite is that even with the free plan, you already have several templates for landing pages and forms that you can use within the free plan.
And they are all good-looking. They are all very nice. They are very simple to customize. And what I really appreciate about MailerLite is that the landing page structure isn’t as recognizable, that it belongs to Mailer Lite as it is with MailChimp. I don’t know if you ever noticed that when you make a landing page with MailChimp, it’s always so incredibly easy to recognize that it has been built in MailChimp because it has a very basic structure that makes it recognizable.
This doesn’t happen with MailerLite you really manage to customize it according to your own brand. This is really important and it comes already with a free plan, which is great.
The other thing I really appreciate about MailerLite is that when you go above the 1000 subscribers, it’s very affordable because the paid plan is $10 per month and it covers you until 2,500 subscribers if I remember correctly. And not only that but if you upgrade to that plan, you can start to sell digital products and even email paid email courses via MailerLite using Stripe so you can take payments for your digital products or email courses via MailerLite.
It’s absolutely a wonderful feature, and I’m really happy they added it to the paid plan, which is really affordable. So absolutely go for MailerLite if you’re starting out or even if you already have a MailChimp account, you have some people on your list. But if you want to do more with email marketing and still keep the simplicity of use, then definitely go for MailerLite.
Whereas if you have been in business for a while, you already have a list and maybe you’re with MailChimp or with any other platform, but you want to upgrade them.
Let’s say that you have a lot of lead magnets. You have many different welcome sequences. Maybe you already have digital products. You have courses that you sell, you have PDFs that you sell and you feel like the platform you are using is a bit too tight for you. It doesn’t offer you the flexibility that you need from it. Then the other platform I recommend using is Active Campaign. It has a lot of advanced features. However, the price you pay to access these advanced features is very tiny compared to other platforms out there.
Like, for example, ConvertKit…Active campaign is a reliable, solid platform. It offers you advanced automations that are already ready to use. So there are a lot of templates for advanced automation, for example, re-engagement campaigns. So whenever you have a lot of cold subscribers that haven’t been interacting with your newsletters, for example, for six months, you can automate a series of emails that are being triggered to reengage the subscriber. And these are all templates that come with the basic Active Campaign plan, very affordable price for all these advanced features.
One thing I really love about Active Campaign is that it makes list cleaning very, very easy. So when you have lists it’s always a good idea to do a spring cleaning at least twice a year.
So make sure that, for example, you get rid of the bounced email subscribers of the unconfirmed and all the people that haven’t been engaging with your newsletters for, I don’t know, for example, six months. Active Campaign makes this really, really easy. With one click, you can clean your list and make sure that your newsletters are delivered successfully. Now before you make a choice the advice I give my clients is that you need to keep in mind who is going to handle this platform.
I know that even when you’re starting out or that if you have been, for example, with MailChimp for some time, you might be tempted to take a bigger step and go to that next level. So maybe, for example, you might want to consider Active Campaign. However, if technology isn’t really your forte, then are you sure it’s wise to take this bigger step? You need to keep in mind who is going to handle this platform.
Are you going to create all the opt-ins, all the funnels, the email automations? How do you get along with technology? Is it your VA that is maybe more skilled than you are with technology? And therefore, if she’s knowledgeable about Active Campaign, you may want to consider it regardless.
You always should be able to make changes. At least have a basic understanding of the platform you pick, even if you have a VA or some other team members handling that platform.
OK, so don’t just pick a provider because it seems cool because, you know, it offers some extra features you are interested in because if you’re not able to handle the platform, you will need to find someone that can. You will need to hire someone who is knowledgeable about it. But then it means that you will need to depend on someone else. So regardless of the platform you choose, whether you choose, I don’t know, Get Response or whatever, if you don’t follow my recommendation, it doesn’t matter. As long as you find a platform that works for you, even if you have a team member that handles that platform. It’s always, always, always a good idea to have a basic understanding of how the platform works, because if you want to make some changes, you need to be able to use the platform independently. You don’t want to depend on someone else.
So in this episode, I mentioned two different platforms, two different email marketing providers, MailerLite and Active Campaign, talking a bit about the differences between the two of them, which, in my opinion, 2 are the best out there.
One is free or it starts with a free plan, so MailerLite and the other one have only paid plans depending on where you are in business, depending on what your plan is for the future. Do you plan to offer a lot of other lead magnets and have funnels and plan to start selling digital products or online courses? Maybe Active Campaign might be the best solution for you if you are starting out. If you’re not really technology’s best friend, maybe MailerLite is the best option for you.
OK, so as I said, depending on where you are in business, you can pick one or the other. Just make sure that before you commit to any platform give it a try. Sign up for the trial, play around with it, and see how it feels. At the end of the day, you’re the one who is going to use those platforms. So you need to have a good feeling about them.
Before I bid you bye-bye. Just don’t forget to hit the subscribe button to listen to the latest episodes as soon as they are published. And don’t forget to sign up for Kick Start Your Email Marketing, which is my free 5-day email course where I cover step-by-step, everything you need to do to get started with email marketing. And I talk in-depth about both Active Campaign and MailerLite.
So if you are interested in one of these two platforms, make sure you take a look at the show notes to sign up for the free course. All right.
That’s it for today. I will talk to you next week.
Bye-bye.