Writing emails might be considered a forgotten art by people in general but most businesses from the B2B and B2C industries still consider it as one of the most powerful marketing tactics to engage with their end audience and to drive sales and business growth.
An email is the first step towards building an (hopefully) everlasting relationship with a prospect or a happy customer/client. It may seem overrated and you may feel that people don’t read emails anymore, but such is not the case.
Email is expected to reach 90.9% of those who are online in 2019 and we are already in 2017! This shows that emails are going to penetrate the world in a much more expansive way than imagined despite the digital noise that social media has managed to create in the last 7-10 years!
Moreover, emails are considered the most effective channel for generating the highest ROI for marketers across B2B and B2C industries. But if you are not using the right email marketing services that offers ease of use, then there’s a high chance of your emails getting lost in the inbox of your subscribers or target audience.
And even if your target audience does read your email but doesn’t give you a response on it, then it is again a sign for a complete email marketing overhaul! Writing email content is different and has its own importance but marketing it in the right way at the right time just cannot be ignored.
Are you a business owner who has been neglecting your email list management marketing efforts for a considerably long period of time? If the answer is “yes”, now is the time to get back on track. Let us discuss and draw a comparison between the two most popular email software existing in the market that is suitable for both large and small businesses:
Let’s get the basics out of the way first. These are super important, especially if you haven’t used either platform before. There’s a HUGE difference between these platforms even with MailChimp’s recent “pivot.”
What is MailChimp?
MailChimp is an email marketing platform founded in 2001. They’re basically the New England Patriots and New York Yankees of email marketing: storied, successful, LOVED by so many, yet hated by so many more. But just like those franchises, MailChimp keeps winning and keeps getting bigger, stronger, and richer.
Love them or hate them, their email marketing platform has helped pretty much every digital business grow fast—including my own. Pretty much every digital entrepreneur has used their “Freemium” plan to get their feet wet in email marketing.
Until recently, I’d have recommended this for EVERYONE (more on that later).
MailChimp features:
Import an email list
Email and newsletter templates
Marketing automation tools
Email analytics- open-rate, click-throughs, forwards, etc.
Branding design tools
Social media marketing features
MailChimp has pivoted recently and tried to expand on features. Think of it like your favorite team tying to switch sports. It’s caused a lot of loyal fans to question their fandom. The email marketing service is still great though.
MailChimp Pros
1. Easy sign up process
Anyone can create a free account for an unlimited period of time as MailChimp offers free plan and this is great for small businesses. No credit card details are required at this stage. All you need is an email address; create your username and you are go to go! The whole process is a no-brainer and easy to use.
2. Clean interface
Once you arrive at the Dashboard after logging in, you will find a list of actions which are self-explanatory and easy to use. You can create marketing campaigns, upload a list of contacts, invite your colleagues, etc. Navigation is simple and it wouldn’t take you much time to master the “here’s and how’s” of the tool.
3. Campaign types
You can create four types of marketing campaigns on MailChimp. Please note that the campaigns are quite basic in nature. They are:
Regular campaign – where you can design and customize the template and content. This is the most commonly used option for list management.
Plain text campaign – which is, as the name suggests, allows the user to send plain text emails. Again – very simple but since MailChimp offers a template for every industry and purpose, plain text campaigns don’t appeal much.
A/B testing campaign – well, this has answered your query, isn’t it? MailChimp does have this common functionality!
RSS campaign – where you can combine the content from your RSS feed with MailChimp templates.
4. A/B testing
A/B testing feature is such a common component of email marketing that it is almost impossible to imagine a software that offers ease of use and not having split testing option! In MailChimp, you can create a variety of split testing – on the basis of subject lines, “from name”, content and send time. Have a look:
Subject line: you can choose up to 3 subject lines that you would like to test in your campaign.
From name: you can choose up to 3 from names you would like to test. It can be a person’s name, your brand name or your registered company’s name.
Content: you can create three different kinds of email texts to test which one is more engaging – this is quite obvious!
Send time: you can choose up to 3 days of the week or 3 times a day you would like to test.
MailChimp offers a variety of flexible options to ensure the best results from the split testing. After all, none of your marketing efforts or valuable time should go waste, right?
5. Sending messages
The whole process is quite simple and easy to use. All you have to do is either choose from a plethora of email templates offered to you or code your own. A quick fix is to drag-and-drop editor elements and play with colours to come up with an engaging email – both in terms of design and content.
You can schedule the email or use a paid feature called “Timewarp” which will ensure your subscribers receive your email at the decided time (eg. 10am) but in their time zones. This means a subscriber from the US will receive the email at 10am, just like his or her fellow subscriber in India.
MailChimp can also calculate the best time to send emails for better results and to save your email from getting lost under the pile of other emails in the subscriber’s inbox. Unfortunately, that’s again a paid feature!
6. Built-in forms Yes, you can create built-in forms. It’s quite simple thanks to the drag-and-drop email editor feature that dominates the tool. Moreover, having built-in forms within the email text makes it easier for the reader to just sign up or fill in his or her details. 7. Contact management
The free version allows you to add up to 2000 unique contacts which is great for small business owners. You can create as many lists as you want as well as do the list management with ease. You can even create multiple groups depending upon the interests and preferences of subscribers.
You can also create segments on the tool called “segment” which is a collection of subscribers that is based on shared qualities, like engagement activity and group choices. In short, you can easily do the list management on the Contact lists page.
A fantastic feature of MailChimp is that you can add subscribers from sign up forms on the web, Facebook page, etc. So this email marketing software not only helps in engaging customers but also acquiring new ones from anywhere on the internet rather easily.
8. Automation – the most important feature
Creating automated emails is again a paid feature on MailChimp but it is a rather interesting one. Just like in other marketing software, it is possible to create workflows here in MailChimp. You can easily create a targeted series of emails that get triggered by your subscriber’s activity or on a specific date or event.
It comes in handy to connect with consumers who have abandoned their shopping carts and need to be reminded of the products lying unattended. It is also possible to create a series of customary emails to introduce the products or the online store.
9. Integration In this area, MailChimp is the undefeated champ. It is a leader and no other software comes close to this when it comes to integration with social media channels. MailChimp can be integrated with a variety of tools and social media platforms such as WordPress, Eventbrite, Salesforce, Facebook, Freshbooks, Hootsuite, Flickr, Joomla, Google Analytics, and more.
As you can see – it reaches out to a variety of brands belonging to different backgrounds due to its ease of use.
10. API MailChimp templates has a very complex yet flexible API documentation. It allows you to quickly adapt your email marketing to fit the workflow that you have created without breaking any sweat. Moreover, this feature enables you to create visual workflows in the email marketing tool.
MailChimp Cons
1. Can’t send multiple lists
Even though you can create various different lists, you can’t send the same email to more than one list at a time. If you want to be able to do that, then you will have to clone the campaign and use the other list size and type. Due to this, the whole process becomes tedious and takes longer than usual to send new email.
2. Limited clientele
MailChimp offers a wonderful tool and as far as its reach goes, everyone wants to use it first especially when they are new to the world of email marketing. A lot of eCommerce stores use MailChimp and due to the ease of use of this email marketing platform to its full potential. However, you will notice that the tool hasn’t really grabbed the attention of other industries, most particularly B2B.
Now the reasons for the same can be many because both B2B and B2C industries seem to apply the email marketing tactic to ultimately drive business growth. If it suits your kind of business, then MailChimp is apt for you; otherwise, it’s best to choose something that can satiate all your email marketing platform needs.
3. No visual automation
One drawback of the automation feature is that you can’t create visual workflows, like other tools like GetResponse email where you can see which response will trigger when. For an extensive tool like MailChimp, having a visual workflow is a little too overwhelming. Moreover, it’s like playing a gamble.
First, you can’t access the marketing and email automation feature in the paid version and when you can, you can’t create visual workflows – which is a downer, no doubt – and restricts your flexibility in terms of marketing automation.
4. Support system
If you are using the trial version, then you will not get any kind of customer support. This is the biggest drawback of using MailChimp.
5. Mailchimp Pricing plans
As mentioned earlier, MailChimp is perhaps the only email marketing software that allows the user to use the free version for an unlimited period of time. But in this version, you can only add up to 2000 contacts and send not more than 12,000 emails. If you are using any paid plan then you can access their customer support for assistance.
The next pricing plan is of a “prepay” where in the user can pay first and then make use of the Mailchimp features – both free and paid – of MailChimp. This is perfect for those brands and individuals who don’t need to send emails on a daily basis or so frequently.
The last option is to pay on a per month basis wherein the user will receive all the features and support. You can have a look at the various pricing Mailchimp packages here:
Also, did you know that there are no discounts at MailChimp pricing and you have to pay the full price? That’s where it lacks.
MailChimp Update: GDPR and CCPA compliance is a must for everyone who is using or processing the data of EU citizens. With MailChimp, you can create GDPR and CCPA compliant forms and that can be used for hosted, pop-up, embedded or landing page signup forms and then enabled with MailChimp’s API.
What is GetResponse?
Get Response is a full marketing platform used by over 350,000 customers in 183 countries to unleash their marketing through email automation, landing pages, and sales funnel building.
Basically, SHE’S A BEAST!
The main difference between MailChimp and GetResponse is that MailChimp is an email marketing platform/service masquerading as a full-service marketing platform.
GetResponse is the opposite: a full-service tool for growing your audience, promoting services, and selling products that happens to include an email marketing tool.
The GetResponse suite of tools includes:
Responsive email templates
Campaign funnel templates
High-converting landing pages
eCommerce store creation
Social marketing tools to drive more traffic
Webinars
Theoretically, you can build a store, market to an email list, create landing pages, and drive traffic to those pages all through one dashboard.
GetResponse Pros
1. Email design types
You will not believe the number of options GetResponse offers in terms of designs and email templates. You can choose from over 500+ pre-designed email templates and 1000 free iStock images. It doesn’t matter which industry you belong to or what the actual purpose of all your email marketing efforts is, GetResponse will keep you covered and best suited for small businesses.
From sports and travel to retail and health to eCommerce and media – there are way too many template options to choose from. You can pick any one of them that suits your brand’s image and voice.
Just like MailChimp, this tool also has drag-and-drop email editor and HTML code editors. So if you want to use any of the templates and add your own elements, you can do that too. Otherwise a coder in your team can easily create an email for you from scratch.
2. Responsiveness
How would you feel if you are unable to read an email on your mobile phone or tablet? Irritated, right? You have to understand – with the advent of so many devices, people are not necessarily going to check their emails on the desktop.
They are going to read emails on the phone or tablet too. So if your template is not responsive, you are going to lose out on a large group of potential clients or customers. So to engage them, the first step is to make sure your template is responsive.
Thankfully, GetResponse has an in-built feature – a mobile email preview – that will allow you to see how your emails look on a phone from the dashboard itself. It’s free of cost and is a great feature if your studies show most of your subscribers open emails while on-the-go.
3. Advanced segmentation
See – no two customers are alike. They are bound to respond to the same email in a different way. In this time and age, engaging them with personalized communication has become quite important. Every business has to tailor their emails to serve the right people and if that doesn’t happen, those people won’t choose to communicate with your brand in the future.
Thanks to GetResponse, segmenting similar clients or customers has never been easier! With the help of this tool, it is easy to create multiple campaigns for multiple groups of people. You can use different images and CTAs to spread the information to the right set of people.
You can even send emails demographically. You can also generate unique promotional codes to boost conversions because receiving a response on your emails is also important! So yes – as the name suggests, GetResponse offers a very advanced form of advanced segmentation and this feature will help you drive business growth.
4. A/B testing
Honestly speaking, it is quite simple to create split testing on GetResponse as this feature is integrated into the Settings section by default. You can use A/B testing feature for an email campaign with up to 50% of the subscribers with the help of a handy slider. The whole split testing process is quite simple and hardly takes a couple of minutes to set up.
5. Email marketing automation
Unlike MailChimp, you can create a visual flowchart of your automated emails quite easily. It makes executing drip email campaigns a fun activity. All you need to do is create a flowchart of responses you want to email to your subscribers – responses that are triggered at a specific date, event or due to an action.
In GetResponse, you can create hundreds of scenarios and keep a response ready for every action of the subscriber. eCommerce businesses can make good use of this feature, especially to re-engage people who have abandoned their shopping carts. Want to know more about marketing automation?
6. Email deliverability rate
Just sending emails to the right set of people is not enough. It is also important to make sure your emails are reaching their inbox and not the spam folder. GetResponse has taken this into account and hence, has set up an anti-spam support team that monitors all accounts on the tool and even sends warnings to them if it senses a suspicious activity.
7. Perfectly-timed delivery of emails
How is that possible? GetResponse offers a life-changing marketing automation feature that allows the tool to predict the most optimal delivery hour in a day to send emails. With this feature, you can be assured of the fact that your emails will always land at the top of the subscriber’s inbox!
GetResponse selects a time slot in which the subscriber is most likely to read emails. The prediction is made with the use of old behavioural data of the subscribers. This feature will boost your click-through rates.
8. Advanced analytics
GetResponse also offers real-time tracking analytics. This feature will allow you to see when your subscribers receive, open, and click your messages and from which location. You won’t have to wait for a day or a couple of hours to see how your emails fared amongst your subscribers.
It also tracks a range of metrics such as open click rate, subscriber’s activity patterns, device used to open and read your emails, social media data (such as likes, shares, comments, RTs, etc.), and many more. You can also locate your social media subscribers across the globe using the feature called “Global View” – all in real-time which is a big thing!
9. Integration
GetResponse integrates with a variety of CRM and CMS systems along with social media tools. Some of them are Amazon Payments, Salesforce, Bing Ads, Evernote, Eventbrite, Facebook, Slack, Vine, Member Mouse, VWO, ClickDesk, Zendesk and Freshbooks and other social media platforms. Additionally, Getreposne Mailchimp integration can be done within 30 seconds!
10. Landing pages
If you are looking to create high-converting emails, then GetResponse can make that happen for you rather easily. You can design landing pages from scratch by choosing from a pool of 1,000 iStock photos. The feature has the drag-and-drop email editor option which makes it easy to create a landing page quickly.
Users can create personalized, responsive, and conversion-optimized post-click landing page using GetResponse. Mailchimp’s landing pages are an effective way to boost list signups and deliver the exact message about your company.
You can also choose any GetResponse subdomain for free and access flexible publishing options. Just like emails, you can conduct split tests on your landing pages just to compare which web design did better.
11. Webinar solutions
Webinars are in! Almost every B2B business is venturing into webinar marketing because it has made it easier to engage with the target audience. Using GetResponse, you can create a webinar, customize the URL, use advanced date-and-time picker and schedule it accordingly.
You also have the option to choose to keep the webinar private or open for all. As far as security is concerned, the webinar is secured with SSL-encrypted URLs. Since this involves videos, it is important to construct a secured online environment.
GetResponse Update: To abide by the GDPR and CCPA guidelines GetResponse has introduced several checks to ensure the full proof GDPR and CCPA adherence. They have organized an audit of their data processing schemes, appointed a data protection officer and an email address dedicated to manage the GDPR and CCPA and data protection queries.
GetResponse Cons
1. Default campaign
Even though the signup process is easy to use on GetResponse, it is not so. The tool automatically creates a default campaign, which is actually a list, as soon as you sign up. It uses those details that you inserted while signing up, but those details might not necessarily reflect your preferences.
The worst part is that you can’t change any of the information. You will have to create a new campaign with the right preferences and then make that your default campaign. The whole process gets a bit tedious for the users.
2. User interface
Navigating through the software can be a little confusing for the first couple of weeks, and a lot has got to do with the terminology used. For example: A list is called a campaign. A subscriber is called a contact. Once you get a hang of itS user interface, you are fine but you have to grasp everything quickly.
Moreover, once you start using the different features of the tool, you will realize there is no natural flow to how the various elements stack up on the web page. The navigation is a downer.
3. Pricing
The best thing about GetResponse is that you can use its free plan for 30 days without giving any credit card details! Once the trial period is over, you can choose from any one of the four options available on the website. Basic plan at $65 per month for unlimited messages to up to 1,000 subscribers., Plus plan at $95 per month, professional plan at $165 per month, enterprise plan at $1,999 per month.
Key differences between the plans
As discussed above, the most significant thing to keep an eye out for with the Mailchimp plans is completely specced autoresponder feature — you get this on the ‘Standard’ plan or higher.
Other key contrasts between Mailchimp plans to know about incorporate the ability to code your layouts, send time optimization and comparative reporting — features that are just accessible on the more costly ‘Standard’ plan or higher.
The critical difference between the Getresponse levels includes admittance to webinar feature and marketing automation — seemingly the two key highlights of the platform. You get this on the ‘In addition to’ plan or higher.
Zooming in: the Getresponse “Basic” plan Vs Mailchimp “Essential” plan
Several readers of this blog post will be keen on looking at the Mailchimp “Essential” plan against the Getresponse “Basic” plan. These are the least expensive paid-for offerings from the two organizations.
Since the pricing bands for the two products are not the equivalent, you’ll see that relying upon your list size, some of the time Getresponse turns out to be less expensive, some of the time Mailchimp does.
For instance, facilitating 25k records on Getresponse ‘Basic’ costs $145 every month; on Mailchimp ‘Essential,’ it’s $189. Yet, promoting a 30k list on Mailchimp Essentials is less expensive — it’s $219 to Getresponse’s $250.
Moreover, if your list is under 500 records in size, Mailchimp will let you get into email promoting all the more economically — its least expensive plan, which permits you to have up to 500 records, is $9.99 per month.
Mailchimp uses tricky way to deal with ascertaining list size. By including unsubscribed contacts on it — implies that we are to a degree contrasting one type with a different kind here: as your list develops, and individuals unsubscribe from it, your expenses can develop extensively by utilizing Mailchimp.
Besides, if you are thinking to pay instantly for your Getresponse account, there are some sizeable limits accessible which make Getresponse a significantly less expensive alternative for you. Paying immediately for a year qualifies you for an 18% discount; paying instantly for a long time brings about a 30% rebate.
No such discounts are accessible for Mailchimp. Lastly, some genuinely significant features are accessible on the Getresponse ‘Basic’ plan that you won’t find on the Mailchimp ‘Essential’ plan:
Multi-step autoresponders
The choice to code your formats
Split testing
100% Responsive Landing Page Templates
Send time optimization
So given this, it’s hard not to mention that Getresponse offers much more value for the money when you analyze its entrance level plan against Mailchimp’s. Pricing isn’t the main factor you should base a Mailchimp versus Getresponse choice on.
GetResponse vs MailChimp: The Verdict
GetResponse is stronger, faster, and has a better, more transparent pricing structure. That, and I’m angry at MailChimp for changing their pricing plans and how they measure subscribers.
With GetResponse, you can build landing pages, automate marketing more easily, create stunning emails, and use sales funnel templates to bring in more qualified leads with next to 0 effort. And all at what I think is a much fairer pricing structure.
MailChimp is fine for small businesses and solopreneurs with small email lists. You can use their solid email editor for free until you break the 500-subscriber threshold. For anything else, I highly recommend signing up for GetResponse and going through their library of tutorials. It has worked miracles for my business.
TL;DR: GetResponse is better (by far) and the only choice if you want to get serious and scale. You’ll run into too many unfixable issues with MailChimp. If you’re just starting and have no budget, MailChimp is fine. For anything else, GetResponse.
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