Background Email Marketing Strategy For Ecommerce

When I asked you to name an email Marketing tool, what would you say? Email Marketing Strategy For Ecommerce

MailChimp? Aweber? ActiveCampaign?

Like many online industries now, email advertising continues to be Dominated by the identical big players for the last ten years. Which means they get promoted very heavily and achieve a great deal of mindshare.

Now and then, however, an Underdog disrupts the market, inducing long-time users to question their loyalties.

MailerLite has done precisely that.

So now, in this review, I’ll be tearing MailerLite from limb To limb to find out if it really stands its own ground against the big boys…

…and, more importantly, whether youshould consider making the change.

MailerLite Advantages

– Uses tag-based system (called Groups)

– Powerful Segmentation using principles

– Custom Fields for advanced email personalization

– Advanced Campaign kinds (auto-resend, A/B, etc.)

– Easy to Utilize email builder/template editor

– Practical Email elements such as countdowns and product boxes

– Intuitive Type, popup and landing page builder

– Supports Automations using visual workflows

– Offers Both readable and in-depth reporting

– A Fraction of the price compared to most other solutions

Click here to sign up your free account of Mailerlite.

MailerLite Cons

– Strict Approval procedure

– Few email Templates accessible

– Very few Form templates accessible

– Can’t Create emails without leaving the visual workflow builder

– No Support for website tracking Email Marketing Strategy For Ecommerce

Sign-up Process

Like most email advertising providers Nowadays, You’ll Need to Go through a review process before being able to correctly use the program.

When you first register, you’ll be asked to complete your profile.

This includes information like your organization name, website, Industry, address, business size, record size and even the type of material you plan to send.

Then, you need to verify your Site (or domain name).

This remains part of this acceptance process, and MailerLite will Simply ask which email is associated to this domain so they could email you a verification link.

Once you’ve completed those Steps, you’ll need to wait it out.

The MailerLite staff will review your application, assess your Website, and ascertain whether you are a good fit for their service.

(Quite simply, they are making sure you are not a spammer/scammer)

As shown above, you’ll still be Able to use the software to create campaigns and play with the features, but you will not be able to send anything before accepted.

I had been”partially” approved within a few hours, which gave me a Temporary limit of 500 subscribers.

Here Is What the email said:

Annoying, certain.

However, while these measures aren’t ideal for getting started, it Does help prevent unscrupulous users from hurting everyone else’s deliverability.

Campaigning

If you’re anything like me, you’ll rely upon automations to handle The majority of your email marketing.

(We’ll get to automations shortly, do not worry.)

But whether it’s a new blog post, podcast, or timely Announcement, there’s always some excuse to send a more instant email.

That is where’Campaigns’ come in.

Clicking the brand new’Produce Campaign’ will provide you several choices.

– Regular campaign: A Conventional broadcast email.

– A/B split effort: Multiple email Variations, including subject line, from name and, yes, even content. (Woop!)

– Auto resend: Resend to subscribers who Do not open your broadcast email, with the choice of altering the subject line and email articles.

– RSS effort: Create a recurring campaign That sends new content to subscribers using your website’s RSS feed.

Aside from a few additional choices, the Majority of these will follow The exact same step-by-step process of a normal campaign.

So let’s walk you through it.

As Soon as You click to create your campaign, you’ll be requested to Select a preferred editor, whether that be the dragn’ drop, rich text or HTML.

You can change to the Templates tab and choose from among their pre-designed email templates — that will move you to the dragn’ drop editor by default.

At the time of writing, you’ll find 21 email templates to choose From which is a little on the low side, however, the layouts are super contemporary.

And, of course, if you’d just Like to reuse a previous email, you can click on the’Recent Emails’ tab.

For this instance, I will choose the first template in the library.

The editor is easy to work with, Which makes customizing these templates a 5-minute job.

You can also use the cubes in the sidebar to add different Kinds of articles to your email, including videos, product columns, and social links.

After making your changes, simply click’Done Editing’ and you’ll Be carried to the recipients’ options where you are able to select your classes or segments.

The advanced tab also allows you To build segment-like rules on-the-fly, in case your targeting is not quite right.

Finally, right before sending, you’ll get to the’Schedule’ screen.

This is where you control when your broadcast email should go Out, if that’s instantly, at a set time/date, or in accordance with your subscribers time zones.

Impressive, right? Email Marketing Strategy For Ecommerce

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Handling Your Subscribers

Possessing granular control over your readers is arguably among The most essential aspects of any email marketing program now.

Why?

Because highly personalized campaigns Are Essential if You are searching to increase clicks, opens, and, above all, your own conversions.

And while most providers Permit You to”label” readers in order To target them more effectively, MailerLite uses a slightly different approach.

When you start up your subscriber dash, you’ll see two Choices; Segments and Groups.

Segments are basically principles.

Your readers belong to a section only when they meet the Specified principles, and will be automatically inserted or removed so.

Here’s what setting up a rule looks like:

Notice how you can even combine Rules, as well as another rule if the first doesn’t exist.

Pretty smart, eh?

The following tab is for groups, and despite the difference in name, These behave much like your usual”tagging” system.

(MailerLite even debated Changing the name to’Tags’, but ultimately decided against it.)

Contrary to Segments, Groups are upgraded manually or through an Automation principle — which we’ll get into in a minute — and they don’t have any value aside from what you actually call them.

As you start to use this stage, you’ll Start to understand Where Segments and Groups are typically used, however, MailerLite offers a hand in the event you’re uncertain:

Fundamentally, groups are much more of a Deliberate action on a per-subscriber foundation, whereas Segments allow you to bulge multiple contributors together based on a common denominator.

A tad confusing, I’ll admit… but I believe it is a fair trade-off For the additional flexibility. In any case, they are discretionary.

Finally, the’Fields’ tab is used to personalize your email copy.

You will notice that MailerLite has Already populated this area with their particular fields, such as name, business, and country.

If You Would like to create your own custom fields, you can do this by Clicking on the’Add new field’ button.

So how do they actually work?

You can either upload a CSV file of your subscribers along with Your custom field information in separate columns… or can easily add these fields to a forms which will only apply to future readers.

Here’s a screenshot of a test area I created and added to a form:

I won’t go too much into the shape Things here because I have a whole section on that below, but this is the approach I would recommend if you wished to use this attribute.

Again, once you’ve gathered your custom field data from new Readers, you are able to pull them in to your email content and subject line.

Just click on the’Personalization’ drop down and choose your Custom field.

I am barely scratching the surface Of what is possible with custom fields, but it is important that you understand that this is a feature you may use.

Overall, it’s reasonable to state MailerLite has their contributor Management and personalization features on stage. Email Marketing Strategy For Ecommerce

Landing pages.

If you’re not impressed with what you’ve seen so far, then maybe The webpage builder will tickle your fancy.

After selecting’Landing Pages’ from the forms page, then you will be Able to pick from 8 pre-designed templates.

Again, while the template choice Is not winning any awards, but it will offer a great base to work from if, for example most people, you don’t have that natural eye for design.

I went ahead and selected the’Lead Generation’ template, though They all finally do the same task; accumulate an email address.

This time, the editor will give you 17 building blocks to Further build or change your landing page.

Now, I’ve used my fair share of Visual site builders, and it is already better than a few dedicated alternatives *cough* WPBakery.

Together with the fundamental building blocks, you can use elements like Hero segments, popup buttons, reviews and countdown timers.

It will not be replacing landing Page builders like Thrive Architect or LeadPagesanytime soon, but credit where credit due, this thing over-delivers on all 3 kind types.

Form Builder Tool

Unlike some email marketing tools, MailerLite really Provides a Decent pair of form building tools.

Not only that, but you can also create popups and landing pages Through this exact same interface, so there’s a lot to cover .

Let us start with your Bog-standard embedded form.

These forms are first created inside MailerLite so as to get An embed code, which you can then place on your site to display it on specific pages.

Despite beginning super fundamental, the form designer lets you To personalize everything in the kind style, fields, background, title, enter fields and, of course, the button.

Form text can also be edited directly, which gives you a chance To envision your own copy in real time.

It would’ve been nice to have Some templates, but as you know, there’s more to a form than simply its appearance.

Clicking the’Settings’ tab will Make It Possible for you to configure how the Form works, such as adding extra fields and establishing a custom success page.

(There is a GDPR compliance option. Sweet.)

And talking of the success page…

…MailerLite also enables you to customize the default message, That can replace the embedded kind also prevents users .

Last but surely not least, you Can assess the way your form screens on cellular by switching the toggle to reactive mode.

You won’t Have the Ability to make any layout changes here, but it makes Sense to test, nevertheless.

So that’s an overview of this Embedded form but as I said before, you may even create popup forms in MailerLite.

While the Vast Majority of the installation process is identical, you will find Still a few differences I’d like to point out.

Unlike embedded forms, you can choose between a set of Templates:

While this isn’t the most In depth choice, they do offer a good base to work from and the editor is just as simple to use with this form type.

Clicking on the’E-commerce’ template takes me to a preview Before moving to the editor.

Here, you’ll notice there are a few new choices under form types This time around:

Contemplating paid tools such as Thrive Leads exist for both ribbons and slide-in forms, it is pretty impressive to observe this amount of control over popup types.

And, as before, you can play with the styling options to get it Matched with your branding.

Finally, you can choose the close Behavior of your type under the’Settings’ tab.

The default option is the X icon, but you can swap out this for A”No thanks” text choice, or have both.

This is really where most email Marketing platforms will render you, but MailerLite has yet another trick up its sleeve.

Click here to begin your free account of Mailerlite.

Reporting & Analytics

Like many tools, you’ll find a summary of your effort Statistics in the main dashboard.

Here you’ll see everything from campaign open and click data, Subscriber growth, automation analytics, and kind signups.

Clicking into any effort will Give you specific coverage for this campaign.

This is where you’ll discover a few more advanced statistics such as Unsubscribes, spam complaints, bounces, studying environment, email client and much more.

This should be plenty of Information for the ordinary consumer…

…but if you really want To dig into the numbers, you can click into individual areas of the report for a more comprehensive breakdown.

You can find some real gems beneath These reports.

By Way of Example, the’View Mail’ tab also shows a click map, so It’s possible to see your readers interacted with your emails compared to another.

Reports for automations will also be Available under the’Automations’ tab, although I found these to be less enlightening than campaign reports.

Here’s a quick example:

Total, MailerLite does a Stellar job with their reporting interface, and most will find the available statistics more than enough to meet their needs.

Email Automation

What is email advertising with no dashboard of automation?

For most reading this, MailerLite’s automation capabilities Could simply make or break this review.

The good news? If you have used a visual workflow builder, You will instantly feel at home here…

Much like the rest of MailerLite, That the automations interface is simple, clean and simple to navigate — something that certainly can not be said for each and every email marketing program.

After establishing your trigger, you can Start adding steps to your workflow.

These measures could be anything from sending an email, adding a Delay, a bubble break, or an act, like moving a subscriber or upgrading their records.

Here’s a straightforward workflow I set together, where readers Are unsubscribed if they don’t open my email within 7 days.

There are innumerable Possibilities when it comes to workflow automations similar to this, and MailerLite ought to not have any trouble with the vast majority of use cases.

Granted, it is not quite as Feature-rich as something such as ActiveCampaign since it lacks some of the conditional components. (Split, Go To, Goal, etc.. )

For Instance, there’s currently no automation for transferring Readers directly into another automation.

That being said, the Majority of these actions can still be achieved by moving Subscribers into different classes that activate new automation workflows. It is simply much less efficient…. yet.

Another question of efficacy here is when generating new mails From the automation workflow builder.

After adding an email cube to The workflow, you will be asked to add your subject line that appears on the block itself.

From there, clicking the’Design email’ button will fire up the Editor:

Now, you’ll be briefly Redirected to the typical campaign creation wizard, which I covered earlier in the critique.

This time, however, as Soon as You’ve created your email, clicking on the ‘Done editing’ button will guide you back into the automations workflow instead of the usual sending options.

Finally, your email will be Loaded into your own automation.

A Wonderful touch here is having a thumbnail preview of your Email inside your automation cube, so it’s possible to get an concept of what it contains at a glimpse.

While this process may seem like A grind on newspaper, it is really much faster than what I am used to with other email advertising tools — ActiveCampaign being a great example.

On the other hand, if you’ve come over from something like ConvertKit where The editor is loaded inside the automations builder, so you will probably find that this downgrade in functionality.

It is quick enough for me, Personally, but I guess it is all relative.

Before I wrap up this segment, there’s one Kind of automation You won’t find in MailerLite, also I think it’s important to highlight.

Site tracking.

The ability to activate an automation (or step) based on the way Subscribers interact with all the pages on your site.

This kind of behavioral targeting only isn’t available in MailerLite right now, so if it’s something you use or intend to utilize, you may want to skip this one. Email Marketing Strategy For Ecommerce

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Click here to begin your free account of Mailerlite.

Pricing

The cost of MailerLite is undoubtedly one of the tools largest Selling things, and let us face it, we all love a good deal.

For starters, they offer an unlimited free plan that includes All features (including premium) to get up to 1,000 subscribers.

While There’s some subtle Branding in your mails using this program, it’s still an wonderful option for those starting out.

And what about the top programs?

It ends up, at around half of the Cost of the rivalry on average, MailerLite is by far among the least expensive options on the industry. Additionally, if you are willing to pay yearly, you are also able to get a much better discount.

In fact, I have not been able to find anything that does exactly the Exact Same job, cheaper.

Wrap-up

MailerLite is among the very few email advertising tools to interrupt The (very crowded) sector in the last couple of decades, and that’s no easy feat.

While it’s not as quickly as ConvertKit, or as feature-rich As ActiveCampaign, or as template-heavy as MailChimp, it performs exceptionally well at virtually anything you can throw at it.

I find MailerLite strikes the perfect balance Between flexibility, speed and simplicity, and at a price point you’ll seriously struggle to conquer.

Thinking about giving it a spin? Let us know how it works for you From the remarks. Email Marketing Strategy For Ecommerce

Click here to begin your free account of Mailerlite.