My friend is building a startup on helping teachers and schools to grow edible garden and I’m tasked to choose the right email marketing software for her. I am beginner at “Job To be Done” framework but I think it’s a worthwhile exercise to look at these SaaS services I want to hire for the following “Jobs”:
- When moving lists of prospects (educators in our case) to another provider I want to do its as seamlessly as possible so I can communicate with my new list without additional hassles such as opt-in
- When delivering a series of emails in a span of couple of days I want to use automation (aka Autoresponder or drip emails) so I can send emails in a specific time frame with out the need to set it up manually.
- When launching my products with help of my partners I want to use Affiliate link so I can track number of users from my partner’s list who bought my product and to pay a commission to my affiliates
- When creating landing pages for my list I want to integrate with external tools that build landing pages (such as Lead Pages, Optimize Press etc) so I can create a solution for capturing email addresses and provide information about my product without a need to code.
- Finally monthly price of the SaaS is another important factor in my comparison
We currently have our lists hosted in MailChimp and we’re considering other providers:
Note 1: In this comparison I really wanted to consider ConvertKit (given that I’m a Nathan’s fan and heard good thing about the product) but they didn’t offer any type of trial account to even dabble with. What a bummer 🙁 No matter how good you say your product is, if I can’t test it myself I wont use this.
Note 2: I had a hard time differentiating between an Affiliate links vs Affiliate Program. In my mind the first one is a link with special id embedded in URL to track all the potential buys coming through a partner on your landing page. The second one is Affiliate Program is the similar concept only that you’re the partner sending traffic to the email marketing provider.
Anyway lets jump in:
| Mail Chimp | Aweber | Get Response | Convert Kit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trial Version | yes – Everyone can stay with a ‘Free’ plan until they hit 2,000+ subscribers. Has limited feature-set | yes- 30 day full version trial | yes- 30 day full version trial | No- booo! |
| Drip email | yes- But can’t test until I have paid account 🙁 | yes- it’s a bit complicated | yes- it seems relatively straight forward | yes- but I can’t test it |
| Affiliate Links | Monkey Rewards (which deducts $$ from your monthly fee) Allows embedding affiliate links in emails | 30% commission through partner program Allows embedding affiliate links in emails | pays 33% commission through partner program Allows embedding affiliate links in emails | Pays 30% ongoing commission through partner program |
| integration with Landing Pages (LeadPages specifically) | yes | yes | yes | no? |
| Other features | Lots and lots of template for landing pages in addition to email templates | |||
| Monthly Price | FREE for 0-2,000 users $30-$150 for 2,000 to 20,000 (roughly $5/m increase per 500 users) | $19 for 0-500 users $29 for 500-2,500 $49 for 2,500-5,000 $69 for 5,000-10,000 | $15 for 0-1000 users $49 for 1,000-5,000 $165 for 5,000-10,000 | $29 for 0-1,000 users $49 for 1,000-3,000 $79 for 3,000-5,000 $119 for 5,000-10,000 |
Honestly for me MailChimp comes as the winner with GetResponse being the runner up. Any feedback you have that help us is greatly appreciated 🙂
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