What email marketing service should I use?

As a website designer, I get asked all the time about email marketing platforms and which ones I recommend. So in this video, I'm going to go over Squarespace, MailChimp and ConvertKit* to give you my pros and cons of each to hopefully help you make a decision on which platform would be best for you.

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Squarespace Email Marketing

So I recently tried out the Squarespace email marketing system platform, whatever you want to call it because, well, I have designed more than a hundred Squarespace websites. At this point, I personally have three Squarespace websites of my own so my thought was it would be so much easier if I could have my website and my email list in one place. It would be very on-brand for me as a Squarespace designer, to have a Squarespace email list… right?

The Pros

1. It's nice to have everything in one place rather than have all sorts of different accounts you have to log into and manage. So pro #1 is that if you have a Squarespace website, it's nice to have email marketing built-in. All you have to do when you're logged into your website is click into Marketing > Email Campaigns and from there you can manage your mailing lists, email drafts, scheduled emails, and analytics of emails that you've sent. It's super easy when it’s all in one place.

2. My next pro is that it is easy to add a sign up form on any page of your website. Again, it is built into your website so all you have to do is just click and add a newsletter block. (Watch video for demo.)

3. My 3rd pro is that emails look really good and they can be on brand with your website. For example, anything you create on your website, you can duplicate in your email. It's the same design platform system which makes everything look very cohesive.

4. My next pro Is that it's easy to add your latest blog post to an email with just one click. (Watch video for demo.)

5. My last pro is that you get three free campaigns. So to try it out, you can send out three emails and get a feel for if you like it before you decide to pay for it.

The Cons

1. The backend of Squarespace Campaigns is almost too simple. If you've ever been in MailChimp or ConvertKit, you know what I mean.

2. The other con, and this is actually what made me decide that Squarespace email marketing is not for me, at least in this current moment, is because I can't integrate it with Zapier or collect emails from anywhere else online. So for example, I have courses and templates that I sell on Thinkific. So I like to have people who sign up for my products over there to be automatically added to my email list. And that is not possible if you use Squarespace. So that is my big, big con for Squarespace email marketing right now.

3. And then the other thing that at first I thought would be a pro, but it turned out to be a con for me, when I really thought about it, is that you are charged per campaign. So I thought, for example, if I send one email a week to my list, it would have ended up being cheaper than the platform I'm currently on, which is priced by subscriber count. But then I realized I would want to send out automated emails or send my clients a separate email each week, that would suddenly double the amount of emails and kick me into a different price point. I realized that being charged per campaign was not the right route for me.

If you have any pros and cons to add to this list for any of the platforms, definitely leave those in the comments below to share with me, but also for anyone else watching this video, who might be considering these three services!

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MailChimp

The Pros

1. It is cost-effective way to start an email list which is why about 90-95% of my website clients use MailChimp.You can use MailChimp free for up to 2,000 subscribers. And that's a pretty big deal when you're just getting started with an email list. So big pro right there, right?

2. MailChimp is very easy to integrate with Squarespace, Zapier, or whatever other platform you're using online. And that is a big pro in my book.

3. Another pro is that it it's a popular platform with lots of tutorials and resources to help get you started. MailChimp has been around for a while and is a big player in the email marketing game so there are a lot of resources out there to help you figure out how to use it.

The Cons

1. So I guess I should say that I started out with MailChimp myself and then I switched over to ConvertKit*. Unlike Squarespace, I thought there was too much going on in the backend of MailChimp. Over the past 4-5 years since switching, they have made so many changes to the backend of MailChimp. I have clients complain to me all the time like, “my MailChimp is such a disorganized mess. I don't know how to fix it.” So that's what I'll say about that. They’ve made changes, but there's just a lot going on back there.

2. On MailChimp, you're going to have to recreate your branded design look from scratch.

3. They have options for multiple lists/groups, which is a great. A lot of my clients are musicians, so they'll have different groups or lists for people who live in different states so they can do targeted email marketing when they go to those states. But as things change on the backend of MailChimp (which seems like a lot), those groups seem to get messy and kind of impossible to use because things change so often.

So those are my pros and cons of MailChimp… it’s a great way to get started but when you get in, there's a lot you're going to have to figure out.

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ConvertKit

And finally, my third platform for today is ConvertKit*. This is the platform that I'm currently using. Although I did try to give Squarespace a shot, I'm going to stick with ConvertKit.

The Pros

1. They have options for sign up forms or for standalone signup pages, which before you come at me, I'm pretty sure MailChimp does this too, but I'm using ConvertKit so this is what I know and like about them.

2. The main reason I switched over to ConvertKit* from MailChimp is because in ConvertKit, you have one list of subscribers. ONE list. That is their main thing. One list with multiple segments to organize your subscribers in various ways. So in MailChimp, if people sign up for List A and then they come back and sign up for something else you're offering on List B, you are paying for two different subscribers, even if they have the same email address. And for that reason, I was like, “I'm out, this is a mess.”

3. Another pro is that I have a link for you that will give you 1,000 subscribers for free. If you're interested in trying out ConvertKit*, most plans do start at a price so this is a great way to try it before you buy it! (Just click any of the ConvertKit* hyperlinks in this post to get 1,000 subscribers free!)

4. And my last pro is that you can set up and sell products directly through ConvertKit. Now I don't do this because I have Squarespace websites, but this to me is a pro you can function as a business and sell things online directly through your email list.

The “Con?”

1. I'm going to put this as a con, but in my opinion, it has become a pro. But when I switched from Mailchimp to ConvertKit, I was like, “ugh, this is the one thing I don't know about, but we'll see.” So, ConvertKit* is more about just sending a text email and not doing all the designer stuff that Squarespace and MailChimp do with the design templates and layouts. You can add buttons and links, images, but it's really just focused on sending a text email and what I've realized about this and why I would rather put it in a pro is because this looks so much more realistic than when you get one of those emails that is like totally formatted and has a “designer” layout. With those you instantly know it's marketing email, but so many of my ConvertKit emails get opened and replied to because it looks like I just sent an individual email to that person. And that to me is a pro.

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All 3 of these email services…

1. They all have analytics to show you how your emails are performing - how they're being opened, what's being clicked, etc. You can check all of that on Squarespace, Mailchimp, and ConvertKit.

2. They all have automation options. Whether someone signs up for your list and you want to automatically send them a freebie or if you want to set up an email to send in the future, you can do that.

3. They all give you customization options. So, when you write your emails instead of just going in with your email copy, you can start with, “Hey Katherine,” or whatever the subscriber's first name is.

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Questions or comments?

If you have any other platforms that you use that you would recommend, let us know those in the comments. And do you have any pros and cons? Like I said earlier… add to my list below in the comments so everybody can see. Plus, I know this isn't like an all-inclusive list, just my personal experience and opinions.

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