Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to connect with your audience and stay top of mind.
Whether you’re an individual blogger, a travel company, or an online retailers, you can use email marketing to grow your business. But as the market becomes more saturated, understanding which tool is best for your needs is more important than ever.
In this article, we’ll cover the basics of email marketing, including key differences between AWeber and ConstantContact, as well as helpful advice for brands who are just getting started.
Why Should You Use Email Marketing?
There are several excellent reasons to use email marketing, including the fact that it’s one of the easiest and most affordable ways to connect with your audience. We’ll discuss some of the other advantages of email marketing below.
Email marketing works. A report from HubSpot found that users who regularly engage with content received 7.7 times more leads than those who didn’t.
One of the major benefits of email marketing is that it provides you with a ready-made audience. When you have a mailing list, you can use email to send out periodic communications to your audience. This keeps your audience engaged and interested in your content.
These periodic emails can be useful for keeping your audience engaged in your content. You can use them to announce new articles, tips, or tools. Or you can even send out a weekly newsletter to keep your audience informed about the latest news and trends in your industry.
Key Differences Between AWeber and ConstantContact
As discussed above, email marketing is a wide-spread and effective method of connecting with your audience. It’s also one of the simplest and most affordable ways of connecting with your audience. This makes it a great choice for any brand or business who is looking for a way to connect with customers.
But not every email marketing service is made equal, and it’s important to understand the differences between AWeber and ConstantContact before you make a decision.
First of all, AWeber is a marketing automation platform designed for email marketing, while Constant Contact is an email marketing agency. As a result, AWeber offers you a variety of tools to help you automate your email campaigns. For instance, you can create automated emails from scratch or download templates from AWeber’s library of content.
On the flip side, Constant Contact provides you with an entire team of email marketing experts. Their experts will help you set up campaigns, manage lists, and send out your emails. Plus, they’ll train you how to use their platform so that you can take advantage of all their tips and tools for email marketing.
Which One Should You Choose For Your Email Marketing Needs?
Now that you have an idea of the basics of email marketing, including the fact that there are two major players in the industry, it’s time to figure out which one is best suited for your needs.
If you’re just getting started, go with AWeber. They offer a free plan that allows you to send up to 15,000 emails per month. Plus, you’ll find a large number of tutorials and walkthroughs on their website to help you get your feet wet with email marketing.
Conversely, if you’re an experienced marketer who needs a more professional touch, go with Constant Contact. They also offer a free plan that lets you send up to 15,000 emails per month. But their paid plans start at $12.95 per month for a single user and go up depending on the size of your audience. Plus, their customer success managers are available 24/7 via phone to help you get your account set up and working smoothly.
When Should You Send Out Your Emails?
Now that you have a base of regular email subscribers, you can decide when to send out your periodic emails. Ideally, you want to send them out at the same time each week to maximize the impact on your audience.
If you have a specific routine that you follow with regards to your blog posts, you can use that to your advantage. For example, you can choose to send out a new blog post every Monday. In this case, it would be a good idea to send out the email on Friday, since you’ll have the weekend to collect feedback and get more content ready for the next week.
On the other hand, if you’re just getting started, it’s a good idea to experiment with different schedules to see what works best for your audience.
How Should You Format Your Emails?
Unlike social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, your email audience expects to receive messages in a particular format.
According to HubSpot, people who get at least 80% of their communication via email expect to see emails in plain text with no fancy fonts or graphics.
Further, they expect to see relevant content that is neatly organized and easy to understand. So if you want to keep your readers engaged, make sure that your emails fit these expectations. This will help you develop a consistent ‘brand voice’ and establish you as an expert in your industry.
To that end, if you’re using AWeber, their email templates are clean and easy to customize. Plus, they provide you with an abundance of newsletters, blog posts, and other content for you to choose from. If you do decide to go with AWeber, make sure to check out their blog for helpful tips on making your emails standout.
Which One Should You Go With?
In the end, it comes down to your needs. If you have a small blog with just a few hundred email subscribers, you can experiment with different email marketing services to see which one works best for you.
On the other hand, if you have a larger blog or a blog with a significant audience, it’s best to go with AWeber. They also provide you with a large number of features and tools that you can use to automate your email marketing and grow your business. Plus, they have a large library of pre-written content available to choose from, which makes it easy for you to create compelling emails even if you’re not a professional writer.
For what it’s worth, at the time of writing, AWeber has over 1.4 million active users, while Constant Contact has over 500,000, which makes it a clear winner in the ‘connected with the audience’ category.