Being in the web development industry, I’ve had the pleasure (and, often, discomfort) of working with so many different web-based software to run our business. Naturally it’s not just for our business – the research I do to pick out the right software is ultimately recommended to our Realtor® clients as well.

One of the biggest elements of modern marketing is email marketing. Yes, there’s been controversy over how effective it is since people are sick of spam, but the results are still there – if you do it right! But before we even get into “how do I do email marketing right”, let’s talk about something more basic. “What’s the proper way to send out email newsletters?” – a question we often receive.

No More Microsoft Outlook!

Well, if you are thinking “I use my list on Outlook!” we need to have a serious talk! Outlook is not meant for email marketing. Outlook will simply send out the exact same message to everybody on the list without any personalization, and it offers no tracking whatsoever. A proper email marketing system is able to send out one email per recipient, but trough an entire list. It can individualize each email (for example, the email can start with “Hi Susan..” instead of “Hello,”). So then, what do we use?

Introducing Mailchimp

Sign Up Now for $30 Reward Credits from Mailchimp!

Proper email marketing is done by proper software, and we recommend, based on our own experience, Mailchimp. This is a web based application built just for email marketing, and that alone. We used to use Interspire’s Email Marketer, but that software was way too outdated and expensive to use. Also, the email editor was so error prone, that ordinary users with minimum computer savvy were pulling their hair out while editing newsletters. After we migrated our clients to Mailchimp recently, everybody was happy. So far Mailchimp has been a winner in the email marketing software category for us, by a far far margin – and our criteria is strict. 

Mailchimp boasts the following benefits:

  • Easy to create & design templates, even for basic computer users
  • Easy to type out emails and set up the layout without breaking the template
  • Great email tracking system – see who opened your email, how many times, and which links are being clicked
  • Integration with Google Analytics to see which campaigns send you the most traffic
  • Cost effective – free for up to 12,000 emails per month on basic features. Even the premium accounts are very cost effective, starting at a mere $15.00 month, and gives you auto-responders, social profile scrapes and more.

You can track clicks, views & who opened your emails

Get $30 in Monkey Rewards Credit When You Sign Up!

We at BRIXWORK & Sonika use Mailchimp as our email marketing tool as well – so give it a whirl! You can sign up for Mailchimp here for free – and get $30 in reward credits when you subscribe. Happy Marketing!