While social media algorithms keep changing, email remains the most reliable marketing channel. You might reach a thousand people on Instagram one day and fail to reach a hundred the next. But your email list is yours. You aren't dependent on an algorithm, and you can communicate directly with your reader.
Over the last six months, we tested three different email marketing tools with real newsletters and marketing campaigns. Here are our experiences.
Mailchimp: The Name Everyone Knows
Mailchimp is the OG of email marketing, you could say. It's been the industry leader for years and is the most widely used tool. It's especially popular among small businesses and e-commerce sites.
We used Mailchimp for an e-commerce client. We sent product recommendation emails, cart reminders and campaign announcements. The drag-and-drop email builder is genuinely useful. We were able to prepare professional-looking emails without knowing any HTML. The template library is rich, too.
Mailchimp's strongest suit is its e-commerce integrations. It connects directly with platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce. You can segment automatically based on a customer's purchase history and send personalized product recommendations. Thanks to this feature, our client's sales through email increased by 25 percent.
However, Mailchimp's pricing has risen sharply in recent years. The free plan is now very limited, and paid plans climb quickly with subscriber count. For a list of five thousand subscribers, you pay around $60 a month. When one of our clients reached ten thousand subscribers, the bill passed $100 a month and they started looking for alternatives.
ConvertKit: For Content Creators
ConvertKit is designed for bloggers, YouTubers and course creators. It's a simple but powerful tool and is much loved, especially among content-focused businesses.
We used ConvertKit for our own blog newsletter. Our favorite feature was the visual automation builder. You design email automations visually, like a flowchart. For example, you can easily set up complex scenarios like a welcome series when someone subscribes, a different series when they click a particular link and a re-engagement email if they don't open anything for a week.
A digital marketing specialist friend told me that after switching to ConvertKit, his email open rates rose 15 percent. The reason is ConvertKit's text-based email approach. Instead of complex HTML templates, it sends plain-text emails, which get through spam filters more easily. Because they also look like a personal message, readers engage more.
ConvertKit's downside is that its e-commerce integrations aren't as deep as Mailchimp's. Features like product recommendation emails or cart reminders are limited. If you're a content creator it's perfect, but if you're in e-commerce, Mailchimp is a better fit.