Actionable thoughts on email marketing services
If you’re building your business, building an email list is a must have I feel.
Several reasons:
you own your email list
you can build trust with long form content
people engage with emails
easy to measure the success of your campaigns
send emails automatically when a certain action is performed (e.g. a purchase of your product, download of your free lead magnet, etc)
a great way to practice long form writing and getting feedback on it pretty fast
When I first came into contact with the idea, I realized I can do this for free with gumroad.
People download a free lead magnet or join one of our free engagement groups and get subscribed automatically.
I also added automated email sequences for more infos on how to grow your account on X, more invite links to free engagement groups etc.
Unfortunately, a lot of emails from gumroad end up in spam - at least from what I can tell.
So I moved to Twitter’s Revue newsletter service.
It went really well.
I was able to grow my list nicely within a short period of time.
And then, they decided to shut the service down.
So I moved to Substack along with my list.
I’ve been writing a newsletter every Saturday for a while now and created 41 issues.
What I love about Substack:
it’s a community and the platform itself brings in new subscribers
the content is freely accessible
I think they have good measures in place to avoid ending up in spam
solid analytics to get feedback
intuitive UI to write the newsletter and make it look neat
In the beginning, growing the list went really well due to using Twitter as traffic source.
But then at some point Twitter decided to deboost links to Substack big time, because of Substack’s social media nature.
This meant I couldn’t grow my list anymore, because Twitter is my main source of traffic.
I then thought about doing a workaround:
building a bridge page that captures people’s email
redirecting them to a free lead magnet or the freely accessible newsletter issues
automatically subscribing them to Substack via an API
so that I can freely market the bridge page without being deboosted
But: Substack doesn’t have an API yet unfortunately and my plan went to pieces.
So I kept writing newsletter issues without growing the list actively on Twitter.
Of course, Substack brought in a few new subscribers, and some of my automated email sequences on gumroad did the same. I also had a signup link on our tweethustler.com website.
But the growth has stagnated, as you can clearly see:
I kept writing, because I actually enjoy it and it’s good practice too.
It gives me space to reflect and at the same time I can share my findings with you in the hope they spark some ideas for your journey.
Of course, you may be wondering why it took me about 6 months to make the shift.
If you’re following this newsletter for a while, you know that we had a rather big life change: we moved out of the city into a lovely little cabin in the woods. We’ve settled in nicely now and there are only 3 unpacked boxes left. Renovations are progressing beautifully too.
What’s next?
I feel it’s time to move the email list again.
Substack’s missing API and also the lack of email sequence automation are crucial points for me.
In the search for a new affordable email provider, I came across sendfox.
What I like about them:
they have a free plan for up to 1000 contacts (here’s their pricing)
no monthly fee, only one time fees when your list grows
they provide automated email sequences
they have a well documented API
a useful customer support
useful analytics
a landing page builder
Let me know if you’d like to sign up with sendfox, then I’ll arrange an affiliate link (purchase is done via AppSumo and their affiliate program wasn’t available today when I wanted to get my link).
So I finally did what I wanted to do the entire time:
build bridge pages: https://prodhackers.com/newsletter and https://prodhackers.com/xgrowth - the last link is a free twitter growth masterclass. Both trigger an automated email sequence with actionable tips on how to grow your brand on twitter.
signup is done via the sendfox API
I can freely market it now, yay!
Action Plan
If you’re considering going to a new email marketing provider, this overview could be helpful:
https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/email-marketing-services/
They don’t have sendfox included, I feel they’re like an insider tip. I also got this from a good friend.
Make a list of your needs and then cross check with their services.
Some ideas:
do they end up in spam?
is the pricing affordable also when you grow a lot?
do they have automated email sequences?
landing page builder?
an API?
are the emails themselves customizable so that they look nice?
useful analytics?
a helpful customer support?
If you want to continue enjoying this free weekly newsletter, I’d love to welcome you in our new list on sendfox.
You can signup either on https://prodhackers.com/newsletter or https://prodhackers.com/xgrowth.
Please make sure to also check your spam folder after signing up just in case.
Hope this helps! :)
Have a wonderful weekend,
@prodHackers