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19 Email Marketing Platforms for your Music Software Business

pulsedownloader

pulsedownloader

Pulse Downloader
Full article here: https://pulsedownloader.com/19-email-marketing-platforms-for-your-music-software-business/

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Nowadays there are literally hundreds of options for email marketing and its difficult to tell which one is right for you, especially if you’re only getting started.

Thankfully as there are so many options, there’s always something for whatever size your company is, whatever your budget is and where you are on your overall journey.

TLDR: If you’re just getting started (ie. have 0-1,000 email subscribers) and want a quick recommendation, we would suggest going with either Mailchimp or Klaviyo‘s freeplan as they’re free (up to 250 contacts for Klaviyo and up to 500 contacts for Mailchimp) and very easy to integrate and get setup with. Once you’re a little futher down the path, its hard to argue with the sheer depth of Klaviyo’s automations, analytics, segmentation and other features. Even though it can get quite expensive after a few thousands subscribers, you should easily make more revenue than standard email marketing platforms once you take advantage of Klaviyo’s more advanced features.

While it might be enticing to try go with a self hosted email service (ie. you need your own server to run it) like Sendy, you’ll find it requires a lot of setup, technical knowledge and regular long term maintenance and also lacks some of the more common features that “standard” email platforms offer.

Read the full article here: https://pulsedownloader.com/19-email-marketing-platforms-for-your-music-software-business/
Click to read more...
 
I've recently migrated from Mailchimp to Sendy and didn't experience what was written above. Setting up Sendy took 30 minutes. You copy everything into a directory and change a couple of access rights. That's it. Updates are easy.

Now, I save more than $1k per year*, and it feels like the right decision. You can do a lot with this marketing money, and I'm sure I can make a better investment elsewhere.

Mailchimp is not very flexible for low-volume advertisers (like us). You can buy into a monthly plan (which you cannot pause without paying extra) or in credits (which are not flexible because they come in tiers). AFAIK the only way to stop paying is to delete your account. Once you do this, the links in your emails stop working. Of course, that will cause you issues when those link to software updates.
In my opinion, the marketing/analytics features are not worth it either. Depending on where your business is located, sending out abandon cart emails might be tricky (GDPR). Other than that, I cannot think of anything I've used, and Sendy, in combo with Google Analytics, doesn't give me.

I know many people looking for an alternative to Mailchimp (and the other blockbuster services). I can only advise everybody to think twice before going down this route.

*Sendy costs $70, and then it's free. If you use Amazon SES to send emails, each batch costs a couple of cents. If you use your own ISP, it might cost nothing.
 
babylonwaves said:
I've recently migrated from Mailchimp to Sendy and didn't experience what was written above. Setting up Sendy took 30 minutes. You copy everything into a directory and change a couple of access rights. That's it. Updates are easy.

Now, I save more than $1k per year*, and it feels like the right decision. You can do a lot with this marketing money, and I'm sure I can make a better investment elsewhere.

Mailchimp is not very flexible for low-volume advertisers (like us). You can buy into a monthly plan (which you cannot pause without paying extra) or in credits (which are not flexible because they come in tiers). AFAIK the only way to stop paying is to delete your account. Once you do this, the links in your emails stop working. Of course, that will cause you issues when those link to software updates.
In my opinion, the marketing/analytics features are not worth it either. Depending on where your business is located, sending out abandon cart emails might be tricky (GDPR). Other than that, I cannot think of anything I've used, and Sendy, in combo with Google Analytics, doesn't give me.

I know many people looking for an alternative to Mailchimp (and the other blockbuster services). I can only advise everybody to think twice before going down this route.

*Sendy costs $70, and then it's free. If you use Amazon SES to send emails, each batch costs a couple of cents. If you use your own ISP, it might cost nothing.
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Great to hear. Some people may struggle with it however and what you might find is that if you're trying to send a lot of emails to many contacts (ie. multiple tens of thousands), that's when you'll find it difficult. You'll need to group email sending into batchs so as not to overload your server and you'll need to ask Amazon to increase your SES sending limits - this is actually quite difficult to get approved for. Just take a look at the Sendy forum to see some problems people have:


Also, split testing is not available in Sendy, nor drag and drop visual email builder. Segmentation is available but not at the same level as Klaviyo for example where you can build entire customer profiles based on how they interact with your store. You can do abandoned cart emails, but Klaviyo offers browse abandonment emails which are not available in Sendy either.

Not ruling out Sendy at all by the way. Its is definitely a great option if you want to save money initially and are happy to research the setup aspects and deal with ocassional technical pains along the way. If you want some of the more in depth segmentation and automations though, it can't match the bigger platforms.
 
pulsedownloader said:
Some people may struggle with it however and what you might find is that if you're trying to send a lot of emails to many contacts (ie. multiple tens of thousands), that's when you'll find it difficult. You'll need to group email sending into batchs so as not to overload your server and you'll need to ask Amazon to increase your SES sending limits - this is actually quite difficult to get approved for.
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Once I had SES set up and out of the sandbox, Amazon gave me an allowance of 50,000 emails daily. And they've welcomed me to request more. It wasn't that difficult TBH.

As for the difficulties - I wonder, is this something you've experienced yourself, or did you just read about it?

I don't want to start advertising for something here. But I think what you recommend can trouble others in the future. At least, I regretted it deeply. I'm not sure if spit testing and the "better" segmentation are worth it.
 
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babylonwaves said:
Once I had SES set up and out of the sandbox, Amazon gave me an allowance of 50,000 emails daily. And they've welcomed me to request more. It wasn't that difficult TBH.

As for the difficulties - I wonder, is this something you've experienced yourself, or did you just read about it?

I don't want to start advertising for something here. But I think what you recommend can trouble others in the future. At least, I regretted it deeply. I'm not sure if spit testing and the "better" segmentation are worth it.
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Cool glad to hear you had a great experience with it! Yes I have tried it myself on two occasions actually (with different companies) and we had difficulties getting Amazon to increase sending limits. Sounds like you had a different experience, so glad that wasn't the case for you.

For someone who is getting started with their company, I wouldn't be spending the time figuring out Sendy and how to integrate it into your website, but just go with one of the bigger providers for the $20 or so a month to save time. But again, its all just opinion!
 
babylonwaves said:
Once I had SES set up and out of the sandbox, Amazon gave me an allowance of 50,000 emails daily. And they've welcomed me to request more. It wasn't that difficult TBH.

As for the difficulties - I wonder, is this something you've experienced yourself, or did you just read about it?

I don't want to start advertising for something here. But I think what you recommend can trouble others in the future. At least, I regretted it deeply. I'm not sure if spit testing and the "better" segmentation are worth it.
Click to expand...
We make 40-50% of our revenue from Klaviyo in large part to our extensive automations and segments, it's worth every penny.
 
babylonwaves said:
@Andrew Aversa
Wow - that's a lot. Can you elaborate on this a bit?
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Well, I do email marketing consulting/teaching on the side so... let me know how much detail you want :D

Basically we use advanced segments, conditions, tags, and automations to make sure people receive the correct emails and offers they're interested in. We also do A/B testing to increase open and click rates.

Our automations include:

* Abandoned cart
* Abandoned checkout
* Browse abandonment
* Welcome series
* Several re-engagement series
* Sunset series
* VIP one-shot
* Happy birthday one-shot
* Post-free purchase
* Post-paid purchase
* Dynamic interest-based cross-sell to specific products
 
Andrew Aversa said:
Well, I do email marketing consulting/teaching on the side so... let me know how much detail you want :D

Basically we use advanced segments, conditions, tags, and automations to make sure people receive the correct emails and offers they're interested in. We also do A/B testing to increase open and click rates.

Our automations include:

* Abandoned cart
* Abandoned checkout
* Browse abandonment
* Welcome series
* Several re-engagement series
* Sunset series
* VIP one-shot
* Happy birthday one-shot
* Post-free purchase
* Post-paid purchase
* Dynamic interest-based cross-sell to specific products
Click to expand...
As a customer, I've noticed this, btw, and the "targeting" is on the whole much better than most companies I receive emails from, not just sample companies. It also doesn't cross the line into seeming creepy.
 
Used this on and off for over a decade.
directmailmac.com

Direct Mail | Easy-to-use email marketing app for your Mac

Mac software that makes managing your email marketing campaigns easy. No headaches. Just results.
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It’s a Mac app which means no tooling around in a browser. Due to a design quirk, you can save the same email address more than once..which means you can use the app for transitional email too.

I’ve used all the usual suspects. I’m also another Mailchimp abandoner..
 
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