If you are subscribed to the blogs I write and work at (Audio Mentor, Jar Creations, Music Shop, etc.), you’ll notice that I use GetResponse to sent you emails. I used to send my subscribers emails with Aweber and I tried mailchimp.com for a bit before ultimately transferring all my subscribers and contacts into GetResponse.

What Is Email Marketing?

I assume most of you reading this post would know what email marketing is, but in case you don’t:

Email marketing is sending marketing messages to a group of people via email. As a business owner sending emails to your potential customers is effective because near everyone today has an email address which they check regularly.

Marketers do not hard sell when they send emails to potential customers. Instead, they soft sell by giving value; sending emails that can potentially help potential customers in a form of tips, knowledge or a freebie – all in a selected niche.

Now softwares like Get Response, Aweber & MailChimp makes it possible to send emails to thousands of subscribers – all with just a click.

Great, so you want to get into email marketing and need insight on which one you should go for. I’ll tell you about my experiences between the three major email marketing softwares.

Pricing

Pricing is first because most would look at the cost to use these softwares, right?

Aweber is by far most expensive software to utilize when compared to GetResponse and MailChimp. It cost $19/month to use for your first 500 subscribers and then for every additional 2000 subscribers, the pricing varies. There are no free trials unfortunately, however the first month with Aweber only cost $1.

Mailchimp would have won the cheapest award as Mailchimp is free to use if you have up to only 2000 subscribers. That comes with a catch though. You can only send up to 12,000 emails a month and most unfortunate of all, you cannot use the autoresponder functions.

‘Autoresponders’ are automation systems within an email software to automate the sending of your emails. Very useful because automation is a compulsory recipe in business.

With the free version of Mailchimp, you get no support as well. Oh wells! Pricing for a paid account in Mailchimp starts at $10 for only 500 subscribers.

GetResponse won me over in pricing. You get to use GetResponse free for the first month before paying $15 per month for up to 1000 subscribers. At the 5000 subscriber mark (where your list starts really getting powerful), you’ll be paying $45/month for GetResponse, $49/month for Aweber and $50 for MailChimp.

Importing Subscribers

Importing contacts GetResponse was really easy. Keep in mind that I switched from Aweber to GetResponse. I simply downloaded all the subscribers that I had in Aweber before importing it as a list into GetResponse.

In Aweber, importing subscribers to your list would require your subscribers to confirm an email. This was annoying, especially after a physical event where I would have gotten a list of people who wanted to subscribe to my email newsletters. I found out I’ve lost a number of subscribers because of Aweber needing this little confirmation.

Nobody wants to confirm extra things or fill up extra forms.

GetResponse took this step away and made it easy to import subscribers. Simply import via an excel form. The confirmation will be done within a day. And done! You’re subscribers have been imported into your selected list and you can begin sending them emails.

Web Forms & Design

In my experience, I had the worse experience trying to design a web form in MailChimp. MailChimp does not come with beautiful, ready-to-use web forms unlike Aweber and GetResponse.

You had to integrate it with other plugins or design it yourself.

As a non-designer, I found this frustrating, having to take the extra step and trouble to design web forms that looked good for my websites.

However when I compared Aweber and GetResponse in terms of designing web forms, Aweber is a winner here. GetResponse has by far (I think), the ugliest web forms among email campaign softwares.

Much better looking forms in Aweber

There are also much more available web forms in Aweber as compared to GetResponse.

However you should know that Aweber’ forms are not responsive. The last I checked was a few months ago since I switched, so I don’t know if they have made any changes to their forms. GetResponse’s web forms are responsive, meaning that they’ll resize accordingly to look good in the various device screen sizes we have today.

Integration

MailChimp seems to very popular when it comes to integration with plugins and softwares. There are many wordpress plugins out there which integrates very well with MailChimp.

The same goes for Aweber with a number of ‘integration-ready’ plugins out in the market.

I’m seeing less Getresponse integrations with plugins on the internet. I use a plugin called Optin Forms, which integrates with GetResponse to create beautiful forms for my blogs. However tit’s good to note that if you are using WordPress as your blogging platform, there is a GetResponse plugin that gives you the ability to quickly add signup forms in your post and pages.

GetResponse don’t have the easiest integration system out there, but still with some quick guides it was easy to follow. Let me show you how I integrated GetResponse with Optin Forms.

First, I installed the free Optin Forms plugin

Create a web form in GetResponse and copy the value

Enter The ID into your plugin settings

All done! This is a sample web form on my latest blog, http://www.petspet.org

It only took me about four steps to integrate GetResponse into Optin Forms. If I can do it, I’m sure many of you can too. It’s pretty simple.

Support – When Trouble Hits

I remember having a problem once with my web form not sending out confirmation emails. Lucky for me GetResponse’s chat support was 24/7.

Super fast support from GetResponse

That was a winner over other email campaign softwares. I remember waiting for only about 2 minutes before a representative came to support my questions.

Aweber does have live chat support, but only from 9am to 6pm ET.

Awww man! Only from 9am – 5pm?

I don’t see myself going for support all the time but GetResponse was clearly a winner for me as they were there when I needed them.

Writing & Designing Emails

There’s one major reason why I dislike using Aweber when it comes to writing emails.

Personalization.

When you personalize your email copy, weird formatting occurs. Either the font size is different or an extra line break will be present in your email copy. See the image below.

How is Jimmy going to feel upon noticing with his name being placed like that?

Email Scheduling

GetResponse is again the winner here when it comes to email sending. There was a feature in GetResponse that gives you the ability to send emails in your subscriber’s timezone.

GetResponse automatically detects the timezone of my subscribers and send them an email at the time I want the particular email to be sent. I normally schedule my emails to reach my subscribers around 11am because according to analysis that’s when most emails are opened.

Time Travel feature in GetResponse

Split Testing & Statistics

Looking at your email statistics and split testing is very important when it comes to email marketing.

Analyzing what works will give you a better understanding of what to send out next, to maximize your results in email opens and click-throughs.

While MailChimp only offers a simple A/B testing at one time, both Aweber and GetResponse allows you to do multiple testing variants to the emails that you send out. For beginners in email marketing campaigns, I however find GetResponse to be friendlier in terms of the graphic presentation of the analytics. \

Both Aweber & Getresponse scored the same when it came to split testing and analyzing statistics.

In A Nutshell – Why I Chose GetResponse

There were many reasons why I chose GetResponse over Aweber & completely dropped Mailchimp.

I completely dropped Mailchimp because.. they do not allow affiliate links when sending emails. That means you cannot include Amazon affiliate links or links which are affiliated to any service in your emails. Many marketers are prohibiting the rule without knowing it. Read their blog on affiliate links here: www.mailchimp.combout-affiliate-links-in-mailchimp

With MailChimp out of the game now…

Aweber and Getresponse both offers lots of tools and functions to aid your email campaigns. They are designed for marketers who do not want to deal with too much technicality and design.

The reason I chose GetResponse over Aweber was mainly because of ease of use. I’m able to write, design and schedule my emails much faster in GetResponse as compared to Aweber. Here is a short list of reasons why I chose GetResponse.

• Importing contacts into GetResponse was faster. No need for confirmations on contacts that already gave me the green light to be on my list.
• As a non technical person myself, support was helpful
• Price is cheaper if you compare
• Don’t have a website? You can use GetResponse’s really beautiful landing page creator. Aweber does not have this!
• The GetResponse team makes you feel good. 2 days after I signed up, I received a call from the support team asking me how my experience was.

If you asked me, the only reason I’d go with Mailchimp is that it offers a free account for the first 2000 subscribers and I’d go with Aweber for its better designed forms.

Try Getresponse free for a month here: GetResponse 1 month free
Try Aweber for $1 the first month: Aweber $1 trial
Start Off with Mailchimp for FREE: Mailchimp Free Account