There are plenty of tools available online for your email marketing, all with a varied list of features to best suit your need, but if you are new to all of it, it can seem daunting and you will be left wondering if you made the right choice and if you are missing out on something. Well, fret not; we attempt to make this easier for you with a list of great autoresponder tools that you should consider.
We liken choosing an autoresponder tool is like buying a car. You have a list of basic requirements that you have like driving to the city, space for family members, being small enough for your garage, and safe enough for kids to learn to drive with.
With these details, you come to the conclusion that you need a fuel-efficient, 4-seater, easy-to-drive small hatchback from a brand with a good service network. Sure, you’ll consider looks, color options, and gizmos for entertainment but your priorities have to be fulfilled first.
In the same way, when you are just starting out with autoresponder tools, you should outline your requirements as per your business. Keep in mind, the rate of growth of your subscriber list and a ballpark number for the number of subscribers for, let’s say, a year and how much content you want to drive out. Think 100 subscribers receiving 3 emails a month would put you in the bracket of 9000 emails a month. Segmenting these requirements will help you better gauge offerings on the market.
We all have our favorites and these are our picks for 2021:
1. MailerLite
MailerLite is an affordable email marketing software founded in 2005 and has tens of thousands of companies that use their service. Their success is simplicity and great features that are available for free. It’s a great place to get your feet wet without feeling overwhelmed. You can upgrade for more features, as you grow comfortable.
Some of their best features are:
- Segments for your subscribers: Increase relevancy by ensuring the best content gets delivered to the correct subscriber. You could start with age, country, emails clicked or make your own from the options.
- A/B testing: Get the most traction out of your tests. Get great insights to optimize your subject, email content through these easy-to-set-up tests.
- Automation: Build out automation from welcome emails to more complex onboarding processes with just a few clicks. Freeing up your time.
- Value for Money: MailerLite is very well priced. With great features for starting your marketing automation, easy-to-use format, 25/7 live chat support, and decent reach even on the free version. It is a big win on value for money.
2. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is great for you if you are a content creator. If you are a blogger, writer, course creator for example then ConvertKit is definitely for you. If you have up to 1000 subscribers, it is free and ConvertKit’s autoresponder has easy-to-build series templates with drag and drops visual editor features that make building autoresponders quick and intuitive.
Our favorite features are:
- Built for content creators: With expertise in curating the tool for content creators, you can bet they understand what it takes to make your autoresponder work for you too.
- Scalable: As your subscriber list grows, you have access to more advanced tools that make your work even more efficient. Creator Pro plan for example offers subscriber engagement, deliverability reporting, Facebook custom audiences that boost your capabilities.
- Sell products and services: You can directly sell your book, course, or content via email. What is more, is that you can track the progress on a dashboard and even create automated emails targeting specific subscribers so only interested ones receive your email.
3. AWeber
We would place AWeber in the mid-range in terms of pricing but it does offer a lot in terms of functionality. Their free version is limited to 500 subscribers but does not let that fool you into thinking they are an expensive option. AWeber offers a lot of features in the free version that will help you practice and learn from before you upgrade to their Pro version.
Most of the competition tends to offer these features only in their upgrade package so AWeber’s offerings make sense when you are just starting out on your autoresponders. You have little in the way of risk as you will already be familiar with a lot of their features should you upgrade later on.
Best features to highlight:
- Legacy Follow-up Messages: This feature enables you to send a series of messages to all new subscribers as part of their autoresponder series. Easy for you to build that relationship quickly and with the series, you do not overwhelm your subscribers with large emails and content at once.
- Blog Broadcast: This feature compiles posts from a blog into a newsletter form. This makes it easier for you to send customized content topics without spending too much time putting it all together. Great way to drive engagement instead of driving your content one at a time.
- Great Support: A large vault of video tutorials with links explaining options and help options help you quickly learn to operate. Not to mention their 24/7-phone support option as well.
4. Sendinblue
One of our favorite autoresponder tools is Sendinblue. You can have unlimited subscribers but you can only mail out 300 emails a day on the free version. That presents a great starting point if you are just starting your autoresponder setup. You are limited to only 1 login so that also reaffirms use for small companies that are moving to automation.
Best features include:
- Value for Money: They are very cost-effective if you are just starting out especially. They offer great features for first-timers with services like automation, advanced segmentation, and dynamic personalization.
- Good for startup e-commerce: If you are just starting out on your eCommerce offerings, Sendinblue will be a great option for creating custom triggers based on purchase, orders, and other KPIs that address specific items from eCommerce.
- Work-Flow Automation: You can build out impressive workflow automation that are triggers actions using your visitor’s email and website engagement behavior. You can assign lead scores and send transactional messages as well.
5. Mailmunch
Mailmunch is a lead generation tool with some email automation and advanced email marketing capabilities. Consider this if you are looking for a strong lead generation tool as well. Their autoresponder tool is easy to use and takes little time to set up.
The best features we found are:
- Plenty of Templates: If you do not want to spend a lot of time figuring out designs, then their large library of templates would make this a quick and easy affair.
- Easy for Beginners: With its simple to use and easy design, it is a great starting point to quickly design and roll out email campaigns.
- Easy tracking: of stats including open rates, click rates, and demographic information,
6. Couple these tools with chatbots for a seamless experience
While these autoresponder tools are great at automating certain aspects of email marketing, you can really spice up your automation game by incorporating chatbots as well. Integration of chatbots with autoresponders allows you to automate an even bigger chunk of your marketing, thus allowing you to process more leads quicker.
By setting up chatbots on your website, you’re setting up a seamless top-of-the-funnel entry for your leads. Your chatbots can quickly answer common questions and direct users to relevant people in your company. The best part is, chatbots can also collect emails, which can then be used to send autoresponders using the tools described above.
7. NotifyVisitors
NotifyVisitors is an email marketing tool that allows you to easily create email campaigns from their suite of intuitive features and customizable email templates, enabling you to reach out to potential customers with the latest offerings or special deals.
You can also use application push notifications, schedule campaigns in advance, and see analytics reports for campaign performance.
NotifyVisitors provides a comprehensive email marketing solution at an affordable cost and makes it easy for businesses to maximize email conversations.
Features
Automated Campaigns
NotifyVisitors offers automated campaigns to save you time and effort.
Drag and drop editor
It offers a drag-and-drop content editor to customize email templates that suit your brand’s needs.
Segmentation
Segmenting the audience to target subscribers in a better way and send relevant content to them.
Conclusion
Autoresponders are a great tool to drive your email marketing and there is no one size fits all. Choosing which tool is best suited to your needs largely depends on you identifying your needs as a first step. We have tried to differentiate the strengths of our favorite autoresponder tools to help you make a better choice.
In ending ask yourself this – What do I want to achieve with my autoresponder tools? The more you break it down, the easier it is to find the autoresponder tool that best boosts your email marketing efforts.
