MailerLite has a similar background story as Sendinblue. It started in 2005 as a web design agency. In the course of their work, they learned about email marketing and what it can do. So, in 2010, the email marketing service MailerLite was launched to help small and mid-sized businesses take full advantage of email marketing.
MailerLite is based in the UK and has offices around the globe. As a reflection of this, you can set the language of its interface to English, Lithuanian, Russian, Ukrainian, or Spanish. It boasts a robust and powerful service that is easy to use and comes with all the bells and whistles an email marketing pro needs.
Pros and cons of MailerLite
MailerLite’s a subscription-based email marketing software that is accessed via the browser. It’s simple and straightforward drag-and-drop editor helps you to design and create emails that look good on all kinds of devices from mobiles to desktops.
Pros
- Ease of use in every aspect
- Free forever plan that also includes automation – that is not something that email service providers often do
- Fair pricing
- Set user permissions for collaboration and team management
- The editor tracks any changes so it’s a walk in the park to fix any mistakes when designing an email
- Landing pages are included in the forever free plan
Cons
- MailerLite has a rather strict approval process
- Basic reporting but it is enough to run good campaigns
Who is MailerLite for?
In the toolbox of a marketing expert, email marketing is one of the most important ways of promoting your business. Knowing this, if you run or plan to start a business, you want a tool to help you grow your email list, send optimised email campaigns, engage your audience with automated messages, and last but not least track the campaign results.
Especially when you’re starting out (any kind of business), MailerLite is a solid choice. It will help with the entire email marketing process, like the aforementioned tasks as well as with automation and you can work in a team.
MailerLite user interface
MailerLite is very easy to grasp and anyone will be able to get things done in matters of minutes. There’s never a moment where we had to scratch our heads and hunt for an option. Every control is clearly labelled and at hand whenever you need it.
After signing up and completing your profile, your account undergoes a manual approval process. For that, you need to verify your domain name and the email address with which you’re going to send emails. Even if it doesn’t take long to get the approval, it may be intimidating especially for people who are less technically inclined.
Campaigns
A campaign is set up in 4 steps: Setup> Design> Receipients> Confirmation.
You can choose to send a regular, A/B split, auto resend, or RSS campaign.
For each campaign type, you can insert a personalisation into the subject line and set in which language you’re going to be sending the email. After choosing the campaign type, you’ll be taken to the template gallery. Pick the one you like and add your content or customise it to your needs with the easy-to-grasp drag-and-drop editor of MailerLite. Of course, you can also design your newsletter from scratch in the editor.
A thoughtful feature is that MailerLite The editor also tracks your changes so that it’s a cinch to fix any mishaps. When you’ve completed designing your email, you can send a preview to share with your proofreader or teammate. The preview can be shared with a link or downloaded as a PDF, although any personalisation added won’t show up in the preview.
Besides the drag-and-drop editor, there is a rich text WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor and a custom HTML editor. The former will appeal to old-school marketing specialists and those who just want to send simple text emails and the latter allows you to write your emails in HTML or import premade emails formatted in HTML.
Sign up forms and landing pages
As a comprehensive email marketing solution, sign up forms are also included. You can build popup and embeddable forms. Creating a form is just as easy as designing an email campaign.
If you intend to send out campaigns or use specific landing pages in your social media, you’d be happy to know that you can create landing pages with MailerLite. It provides a template gallery to choose your landing page, and you can customise it just like with the email templates. You can host the landing page on your domain (not available in the free plan) or let MailerLite host it for you.
The landing page comes with built-in SEO options so that you can add a page title, page description, and keywords. If you add your Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel, you can track the traffic.
List management, segmentation, and personalisation
Should you already work with other email services, you already have an existing mailing list. It’s easy to import it via a csv or txt file, or copy-paste. Creating and managing your contacts is just as easy as any other task in MailerLite.
To send personalised emails, you have the option to add custom fields that you can use to segment your list or for automation workflows.
Automation
A visual editor helps you build your automation workflow. With the workflow builder, you can set up dynamic automations within minutes. All automation workflows can be tracked so that you see email opens and click. As such, you gain insight into your automations and can improve them if necessary.
All plans including the free one have automation included so that you don’t have to do the repetitive tasks needed to nurture the relationship with your audience.
MailerLite integrations
MailerLite has all the necessary plugins to integrate with the important services. It supports popular eCommerce platforms such as WooCommerce and Shopify. For more options, connect it with Zapier. It also provides a RESTful API, so that you can build your own integrations.
MailerLite reporting
MailerLite gives you basic reporting in the dashboard, but there’s no dedicated section for this. For more reporting, you have to navigate to “Subscribers” where you see the stats.
Support
Even with an easy-to-use tool, you can get stuck from time to time. You’ll find your questions are most probably answered in the extensive knowledge base that also has video tutorials.
All plans but the free have access to live chat support 24/7. Even so, the email support is prompt and competent as well. The support team speaks 12 languages, should there be a language barrier.
Pricing
A subscription in MailerLite is based on the number of subscribers as well as how many emails you send – at least for the free plan. Once you’re on a paid subscription, it is only based on the number of subscribers. Further, if you purchase an annual plan, you get a discount of 30%.
Is MailerLite right for you?
MailerLite is a cloud-based email marketing service that’s incredibly easy to use regardless of how tech-savvy you are. It comes with a comprehensive set of features and functionalities but goes easy on your pockets. Also, there are no major shortcomings. So, it’s a great email marketing solution for solopreneur, small and medium-sized businesses, and everyone starting out with email marketing.
If you’re someone who needs a lot of data and stats, look at other providers.
As even the free plan includes automation, why not head over and try for yourself? If you’ve questions about MailerLite, leave a comment below and we’d be happy to help you sort it out.
Original post here: MailerLite review
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