Number one has been through just building my brand, early on I was using email marketing as a method of brand building by sending around helpful articles and newsletters. Number two I used email marketing as a means of marketing my course on investing in the stock market, about a year and a half ago.
And then recently I have used email marketing as a method of basically taking my efforts for affiliate marketing, and improving them. And number three finally, most recently I have been using email marketing with my blog, investingsimple.
blog, as a means of making money through affiliate marketing, and I actually have different recommendations based on each of these three situations, based on the email marketing softwares or services I have used in the past.
Now my two recommendations here are going to be numbered one, AWeber, which is the email marketing software I am currently using, and I’ll go over a number of reasons why I am using this one specifically.
And then number two, Mailchimp, which is the one that I was using previously when I was doing that brand building for myself and also marketing my investing course. And before we get into the review here, I just want to go ahead and show you guys one item here that’s available through AWeber that I have found to be extremely useful and valuable, regardless of whether or not you’re actually going to go with AWeber or a different email marketing provider out there.
They offer a lot of free information here when it comes to getting started with crafting you’re emails and learning more about email marketing, they offer 45 plus email content templates, as well as a complete course that’s going to show you how to get started with email marketing, that’s gonna be the top link in the description below.
And again, I would recommend that to anyone regardless of whether or not you’re actually going to use AWeber, they offer this completely free to anyone out there who is interested. So first of all what I wanna go ahead and do is log you guys into my AWeber dashboard and show you exactly how I am using AWeber for my affiliate marketing efforts, and actually the different lists that I have created here.
Just to give you guys a quick overview of this platform. Then I’m gonna go into the reasons why I specifically chose to use AWeber. And then we’re gonna transition into talking about Mailchimp, which is my number two pick, and the different types of businesses I would recommend for AWeber versus using Mailchimp.
So first of all, this right here is my AWeber dashboard, as you can see, today I’ve grown my lists by 59 subscribers, 24 yesterday, and I have a total of 3,017. And this right here is a recently sent broadcast email.
So, primarily you can use email marketing softwares for one of two things. Number one, setting up an autoresponder, which is mostly what I’m doing with my email marketing efforts. And then number two, you can send out these broadcast emails, that are going to go right to all of the members of your list, or as an autoresponder is only going to be sending emails to new subscribers on a recurring basis of maybe everyday or every couple of days.
Now, within AWeber you can have multiple different lists, as you can see I have three different ones here, one being my Affiliate Marketing Course list, number two being my Test Group Applications for a course I am launching, and then number three, my InvestingSimple list, which is tied into my InvestingSimple blog.
And then you basically just choose this dropdown menu up top here to decide which list you want to be looking at. So, we’re gonna start off here with InvestingSimple, and I’m gonna show you what my autoresponder looks like, and you view that by just going over here to Messages, and taking a look at the Campaigns.
So, it’s a very straight forward, easy to understand platform. To be honest with you guys, when you first get started with it, it might be a little bit strange finding out where everything is, but once you get the just of it, I have found it to be the easiest email marketing software to use.
And this right here is my basic welcome campaign, and this is what I’m using to basically monetize the back-end of my InvestingSimple blog. Now, in case you’re not familiar with what that looks like, let me just show you guys quickly, we’ll jump over to my blog, and I’ll show you what I am doing to be collecting emails.
Essentially on the homepage of my blog people can click this button to get the Beginner’s Guide to Investing. Once they click that, they’re brought over to a ClickFunnels landing page, which integrates directly with AWeber, and they can drop their name and email to get a completely free copy of my investing book that I put together.
And then after they receive that book, they receive a series of follow-up emails that contain affiliate links for a different brokerages or investing apps, or budgeting apps that I am personally affiliated with, which allows me to make money on the back-end with this email list.
And that’s the best part about email marketing, is that if you’re actually doing it correctly, what you’re making from these emails is going to far surpass how much it costs you for this email marketing service.
Both Mailchimp and AWeber are almost identical in terms of pricing. So, I don’t look at it in terms of price, I look at it in terms of the functionality as well as what type of emails you can send through each platform.
But I wouldn’t worry too much about the price of either one of these, because you’re emails alone should be bringing you more business or making you more money than it costs you to actually have that email service subscription.
And as you can see on the right-hand side here, this is the actual email sequence that people receive, it starts off with the welcome email for the Free Investing Guide, and then it goes into a series of different affiliate related emails, as you can see here, this one has a 32% open rate, 8% click rate.
And I haven’t really optimized these emails, but over 20% in most cases is generally what you’re looking for. And I believe this is a eight or nine day email marketing sequence. And then let’s say for example you wanna switch over to a different list and view, your autoresponder will jump over to my Affiliate Marketing course, and this one is a significantly longer one here where people receive a series of, I think this one is actually 30 emails long.
Now this one I didn’t write myself, I have a copywriter who does some of my emails for me. But the ones from my InvestingSimple list, I absolutely wrote these emails myself, using a lot of those tips from that free guide there, that AWeber has put together on Email Marketing for Beginners, which is going to be again, that top link in the description.
Now I will say this, this right here is the extent to which I use AWeber for email marketing. I don’t get into anything more confusing than this, I basically just setup campaigns like this or auto responders that are going to send emails automatically as people are added to the list, or I will occasionally send out broadcast emails.
I don’t get into tags or A/B testing or any of that, so I can’t speak to those features, because I have personally never used them, or any more types of advanced reporting. But I’ll go ahead and show you guys what these emails look like, and to be honest with you, they are extremely simple.
I will open up the welcome email for the free Investing Guide, and you might be thinking to yourself, well, why wouldn’t I wanna have more bells and whistles and fancy images and pictures, and what I have found is that, the simpler the emails are that you’re sending people, the better.
Because if you send something loaded up with images and flashy GIFs and all this different stuff, it looks like a mass produced email, and I have found less and less people actually open it, so I stick to the very simple text emails just like this, and that is all you ever really see from my email marketing efforts, is just straight text emails, just like this.
So, that is my number one recommendation for people who are doing affiliate marketing or any kind of personal brand building, maybe you’re selling a digital product or building a personal brand online, I would personally recommend AWeber, and that’s exactly what I’m using for these different purposes.
Now we’re gonna get into number two now, and talk about Mailchimp, and you’re gonna understand a little bit more why I transitioned from using Mailchimp to using AWeber for my email marketing.
And if you guys do decide that you wanna sign up with AWeber, I have a link in the description below. It is an affiliate link, you guys don’t have to use it if you don’t want to, but I certainly do appreciate it, as at no additional cost, you can help me out and support my channel for putting this video together.
So here we have the Mailchimp dashboard, I still have my account activated under the free plan, because I just leave it open just in case I wanna go back in here and look at any of the old emails that I’ve sent.
And this is why I really like Mailchimp, is because they offer a free plan for up to 2000 subscribers, and this is great for people looking to get started with email marketing. One downside to AWeber is that after that 30 day free trial, you do have to pay, it’s a certain price per month, and all the email marketing providers out there, they charge you a monthly fee or monthly subscription cost based on your number of subscribers.
Now in terms of the pricing between Mailchimp and AWeber, after that 2000 subscriber threshold they’re pricing is almost identical, but I really do like Mailchimp because they offer that free plan for you to get your feet wet with email marketing.
But I wanna just quickly segue and talk about why Mailchimp may not be a good fit for you. And that is the fact that Mailchimp is best for people who have goods and services or a brick and mortar business.
Maybe you sell shirts online, or you have some kind of online store. Maybe you have some kind of art blog, and you’re looking to send really nice beautiful well crafted emails, because to be honest with you, in terms of the emails you can create, you can make beautiful, very visually appealing emails, but for me, for doing affiliate marketing and building my personal brand, that’s just not anything I’m looking for, because I want my emails to have a more personal feel.
And then the big issue here that I ran into with Mailchimp, is that they do not allow affiliate marketing, which is a huge part of my business. So, after I learn that, I had to mitigate over to AWeber, which they do allow affiliate marketing.
And the reason behind that, is because Mailchimp doesn’t really wanna be associated with affiliate marketing, and that’s unfortunate because, affiliate marketing in and of itself, is not a scam me business or a bad business.
But unfortunately there are people operating pretty shady or pretty scam me affiliate marketing businesses, and that is why Mailchimp essentially had to take out this hard stance against affiliate marketing.
So, if you have any plans to leverage affiliate marketing with your online business, I would recommend AWeber, which is exactly what I use, as they allow affiliate marketing. The other area that you might run into trouble with, which a friend of mine ran into, is if you are sending any emails related to making money.
So I didn’t personally run into this issue when I sent emails about the stock market and my investing course through Mailchimp, but a close friend of mine sent out a free guide on how to make money online, he was not doing affiliate marketing or anything, and he was banned from Mailchimp because it was make money online content, they don’t seem to like, make money online, anything related to, get rich.
They block all that out, because they see it as a high risk category that they just don’t wanna be associated with, because the potential for someone being a scam artist in that category is unfortunately significantly higher.
So, if you have a business, a cake decorating business, something like that, Mailchimp is perfect for you, and you have that free plan available. But if you’re doing personal brand building, if your doing affiliate marketing, anything related to making money, that is when I would recommend AWeber, and you don’t wanna have to start somewhere else, and then get banned or have to mitigate and switch over to a new email marketing service, it is a huge pain in the butt.
But overall, I will say this, Mailchimp has a very sleek design. And then another pro that I have here for Mailchimp, one of the reasons why I like them, is that they offer build-in landing pages that honestly look pretty good.
I’ll go ahead and show you one that I had created at one point when I was offering a Passive Income Masterclass event. This is right through Mailchimp, it’s not ClickFunnels, it’s not anything else, and it’s included with even the free plan, so you can have landing pages where you can collect emails.
Otherwise, if you use something like AWeber, you’re gonna have to go through a separate landing page provider like ClickFunnels, however, they have the best landing pages out there, so I would actually recommend that route if you’re serious about having high converting landing pages.
But if you’re just getting started, Mailchimp does offer basic landing pages that I have found to be pretty effective and it’s an added bonus that I really enjoy about Mailchimp. So, basically the two pros here for Mailchimp are that they offer, the free plan up to 2000 subscribers, and they offer built-in landing page, but the huge con is that they do not allow affiliate marketing, they have a hard stance against it, and they also don’t like people sending out emails related to making money, get rich, anything in that category.
So, if your business is related to that, I would stay away from Mailchimp and personally I would use AWeber. But anyways guys, that’s gonna wrap up this video. That is in my opinion the two best email marketing softwares out there right now.
Like I said, if you wanna go ahead and grab that free guide from AWeber, that also comes with the 45 plus email templates, and a free course, that’s the top link in the description below. And I also have an affiliate link if you decide that you do wanna sign up for AWeber.
I’m not affiliated with Mailchimp, I just think they are a great service that I used in the past, so I don’t have any links for them. But other than that, if you do decide to use AWeber, that’s an option if you guys decide that you wanna use my link.
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