Although email marketing can get the smell of spam fast, it’s still an essential tool for businesses to strengthen customer relationships and maximise ROI. Email newsletters have the full spectrum from massive automated campaigns to personal notes and so do email marketing software and providers.
But what if you don’t need a tool or service that almost feels bloated thanks to its ever-extending features? Meet 1and1Mail. It’s a lightweight email marketing software. It helps you maximise your email deliverability while avoiding you (your IP or domain) to be backlisted by email service providers.
Contrary to what all email marketing software or providers do, 1and1Mail is not cloud-based and software as a service but a programme that you download and install. In other aspects, it’s not so much different from other email marketing providers: It comes with a template designer, analyses the performance of your messages, scheduling, and contact management. And then it has some features that you won’t find elsewhere such as that it helps you import newsletter design from your web page or content spin (more about it later).
Since it’s an application for you to install, you need to know some server basics such as how to connect an email client with an email server. Also, since it 1and1Mail allows you to design your email templates, it’d if you know some HTML and CSS.
Pros and cons of 1and1Mail
1and1Mail is a software that you download and install that let’s you design and create, schedule and send personalised mass e-mails, and manage your e-mail contacts.
Pros
- The software can be used for free forever with 50 contact
- Affordable pricing
- One-time price to buy
- It can download a webpage and create an email template
- It can automatically spin various elements in your emails when they’re sent for more variety (content spin)
Cons
- Only works on Windows
Who is 1and1Mail for?
If you like to keep in touch with your audience but don’t need all the features that other email marketing providers offer, 1and1Mail is a good place to start. It has the features that you’d expect such as personalise the salutation, body, and subject of your emails, and create limitless contact lists. It also shows how your emails performed with open and click rate reports.
If you look at 1and1Mail clients, you’ll see it’s used by SMEs and large enterprises alike.
1and1Mail user interface
The user interface of 1and1Mail feels like just any other mail client you’d be used to when working on windows. If you’re coming from Thunderbird or Outlook, you’d feel at home right away.
Before you can send any kind of email, you first need to add your SMTP server. But if you’re already working with something like Outlook, you’d most likely know how to add your email server to your email clients.
Although 1and1Mail may look a bit outdated, it’s well designed: All elements are clearly labelled and nothing is hidden away in endless submenus. It’s easy to get to grips with and you’ve got your first campaign ready in a jiffy.
Campaigns
Creating your campaign is done in 3 steps:
- Select the address book or address book group (in marketing lingo it’ll correspond to a list or segment)
- Add your content
- Send
Of course, you can go through additional steps such as scheduling when 1and1Mail should start sending, adding click tracking, and testing.
List management, segmentation, and personalisation
You can add as many address books (aka lists), address book groups (aka segments), and contacts as you want. You can also import and export your contacts.
You have the freedom to add almost countless custom fields as you want, but it won’t create dynamic segments for you.
Advanced features
1and1Mail offers to download a web page and build it as an email template for you. This is great if you want your email templates to look like the branding of your website.
If you want to add more variety to your content, you can use 1and1Mail content spin. It will automatically switch variations for the email subject, body, entire paragraphs, sentences, or words in the email body.
With its auto remove, 1and1Mail checks for any bounced and unsubscribed email address so that your sender score stays high and you’re not suspected of being a spammer.
To avoid being blacklisted by email service providers, you can tell 1and1Mail to rotate the IP with the proxy servers.
1and1Mail reporting
Each sent campaign has its own reporting. You need to right-click a campaign to see its report. You’ll have a list of the recipients with when the message was sent. You’ll also see other data points such as
- Opens
- Clicks
Support
1and1Mail offers telephone customer support and promises to answer any e-mail inquiry within one business day.
To set up 1and1Mail, you can follow its clear and concise take a tour video. It shows you everything in under just 6 minutes (jump to the video at the bottom of 1and1Mail website).
Pricing
You can use 1and1Mail free of charge forever for up to 50 contacts. The only important features missing are the open and click report as well as auto IP switcher to avoid being considered a spammer.
To buy 1and1Mail you only need to fork up once. It’s not a subscription for which you have to open the purse strings every month. It’s also nice that you don’t need to pony up the full price for upgrades but they can be had for $10.
1and1Mail is so confident of its capabilities, it offers a full refund including the transaction fee) if you notify them white 15 days of your purchase.
Is 1and1Mail right for you?
1and1Mail is a solid choice for not only small businesses but for anyone who wants to have a simple tool to manage all email newsletters. It’s a cost effective way to send your message to many recipients with just one click.
However, if you need dynamic segmentation and automation, or in other words, if you need more marketing automation features, you’d be happier with other options such as Moosend or MailerLite.
Original post here: 1and1Mail review
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