| Professionally Reviewed by: Alex Gurevich Digital Marketing Expert |
Written By Ria du Plessis - Digital Marketing Expert Updated: 09/01/2021 |
Mailerlite in a nutshell
Free plan: | Yes |
User accounts: | Multiple accounts with individual log ins |
Segmentation and geo: | Yes |
Time-zone-based delivery | Yes |
Free trial: | Yes |
Means of use: | Desktop and mobile devices |
Industry: | Freelancers, small businesses and bloggers |
What is Mailerlite?
Mailerlite is a newer email marketing software great for small businesses, freelancers and bloggers. They offer features including a landing page editor, embedded forms, subscriber management, A/B split testing, and RSS campaigns for an affordable price. The software is simple to use, and you won't get lost having to navigate your way around creating an email campaign.
Mailerlite Pros & Cons
PROS | CONS |
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PROS
- Easy-to-use: Mailerlite is a great beginner-friendly software. Their interface is clean, and you can easily navigate your way around creating an email campaign.
- Advanced list segmentation: This is an essential feature since it allows to send relevant content to your subscribers. Mailerlite enables you to segment your lists based on specific characteristics, including geolocation, age, behavior, interests, email engagement, and time zones.
- Outstanding deliverability rates: I have come across reviews online, that have tested Mailerlite's deliverability rate, and it is currently at an incredible 9%. These rates indicate that your subscribers will more often than receive their emails in their inboxes and not in the promotion or spam folder. One part of a successful email campaign comes down to the engagement you receive from the emails you have sent.
- Numerous integrations: Mailerlite has 125 integrations, including popular platforms like Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce, and Zapier. Integrations help strengthen your email marketing software by adding features in departments it might lack, such as adding more advanced CRM system to help manage customer relationships.
- Landing page editor: Mailerlite offers the ability to create a landing page from scratch giving you the freedom to design as far as your imagination will take you. Landing pages give your audience a first impression of who you are as a business or blogger, including capturing leads and converting them into customers.
CONS
- No spam testing: Since there is no spam testing feature, you can't see why your emails aren't being delivered. There are ways to try and avoid having your emails flagged as spam. Don't use words that make a promise you can't guarantee, such as "biz opportunity," "double your income," or "earn extra cash." Avoid using too many images or a lot of exclamation marks.
- Lacking advanced automation: Mailerlite offers basic automated workflows but could do with more advanced options. I would have liked to set up a workflow that sends an email with a discount offer when a subscriber visits the product page without purchasing an item.
Who is Mailerlite Good for?
If you are on a tight budget- Mailerlite is one of the more affordable email marketing software on the market, and they offer a generous free plan that gives you 1000 contacts and 12,000 emails per month. Even though they lack a bit in the automation area, other features like list segmentation and landing page editor make up for it.
If you are a blogger- Mailerlite offers an RSS campaign feature that allows you to keep your subscribers up to date whenever you publish new content on your blog. Not only will it keep your contacts engaged, but it will also improve your website traffic.
If you are looking for a website builder- With Mailerlite, you can create an entire website using their drag-and-drop functionality. The website builder allows you to create a blog or freelance website without paying an additional cost.
Mailerlite is not recommended for:
If you are looking for built-in CRM- Mailerlite does not have CRM features, but you can integrate 3rd party platforms to help manage your customers' relationships. The downside is that an advanced CRM platform costs money, and if you are a small business on a budget, you wouldn't want to pay additional costs on top of your email marketing plan.
If you are a large business- Mailerlite is a great email marketing tool for smaller businesses and can undoubtedly create successful email campaigns. On the other hand, their features aren't advanced enough to support companies with a large subscriber base. Mailerlite will do a great job at segmenting contacts, but their automation could impact the workflow of your email campaigns.
Mailerlite Deliverability (Rated: 4/5)
Mailerlite’s deliverability rates are high according to other reviews online, but the system does not disclose their rates. You are able to keep an eye on certain metrics yourself, which can help you in improving your email marketing efforts going forward. I gave a score of 4.
Mailerlite doesn’t disclose its deliverability rates, but you will be able to see how many of your emails are being marked as spam, the hard and soft bounce rate, and which customers are unsubscribing after receiving your mail. Keeping an eye on these metrics will let you know if your email format needs changing to look less spammy.
You can help to improve deliverability rates by scheduling emails to go out at set times across different time zones. This way, your emails are less likely to get ignored.
Mailerlite pricing (Rated: 4/5)
The pricing is tiered according to the number of contacts you have in the system, and the rates are affordable, earning Mailerlite a score of 4.
Version | Features |
Free - $0/month |
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Premium - Up to 1,000 subscribers - $10 per month |
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Pricing will increase steadily based on the number of subscribers you have. The features of any paid plan will be exactly the same, but prices go up as follows:
- Up to 2,500 subscribers - $15 per month
- Up to 5,000 subscribers - $30 per month
- Up to 10,000 subscribers - $50 per month
If you have more subscribers than this, check out the price slider on the website to get an idea of how much you’ll pay.
Cancellation/Refund Policy
Mailerlite does not offer refunds unless they have decided to terminate their services with you without a reasonable explanation. You can cancel your plan from within your Mailerlite account or choose to downgrade to a cheaper plan.
Key features and workflows
Creating emails and campaigns
It won’t take you long to set up your first email campaign, as the email editing tool is easy to use and automation options are made clear. You’ll also be able to keep track of your campaign with some useful metrics.
To create an email campaign on Mailerlite, navigate to the “campaigns” tab on the main navigation bar. You can even click on the orange “create campaign” button on the top right corner of your screen and choose the “Regular campaign” option.
You will then be directed to a section where you will need to fill in your campaign settings.
Now it is time to choose your email template. You can build your email template from scratch or choose one from the “template gallery”. For this example, we chose the “Gift Voucher” template.
After you have chosen your template, you will be directed to your drag and drop editor. You can easily add content to your email by dragging and dropping blocks from the left-hand side onto the email template or you can edit a section by clicking on the pen icon and clicking “Change”.
If you hover over a block, you can either 1) delete it, 2) clone it, 3) hide the block, 4) edit it.
When you are done editing your email, you can click on “Done Editing”.
You will then be taken to the section where you will select the recipients of your campaign. When you are done, you can click on “Next: Review and confirm”.
After you have reviewed and confirmed the email, you can click “Next: Schedule”.
Choose “Send now” or “Schedule” your email campaign for later and click on the orange button.
Emails sent/opened and links clicked
Tracking of emails sent/opened and links clicked is standard across most email marketing platforms, and Mailerlite is no different. These metrics are vital in measuring the success of your campaign, and the software makes your statistics clear and easy to find.
Creating and importing email lists
You can create mailing lists from scratch or you can upload a bulk list via a CSV file. Once you’ve uploaded the file, you’ll see a preview of your data. Here you can amend headings and data items to make sure everything is in the correct format before you hit submit and import your subscribers.
Split tests and A/B testing
Test your campaigns on a small group of subscribers before sending emails to your full list. The platform has a very easy to use A/B testing feature where you can trial different subject lines, sender names, and email bodies. You will then choose what the ‘winning’ criteria will be, such as opens or links clicked.
Personalization
Mailerlite offers some decent personalization options based on the data you have collected on your subscribers. For example, you can add personal touches by sending birthday messages, news about promotions in someone’s hometown or simply adding your customer's name in the subject heading.
Reporting and Analysis (Rated: 4/5)
The analytics on offer are not as broad as some other email marketing software out there, but Mailerlite still offers you a view on basic metrics to gauge your campaign’s success. I give them a score of 4.
As a tool aimed at small businesses and bloggers, you won’t find as wide a range of reporting tools as you might with other email marketing platforms. However, you’ll still get all of the basics, and should have more than enough to run some good campaigns.
Engagement reports
From your main dashboard you will find average statistics across all of your campaigns that include open rates, click rates and subscribers who are marking your mails as spam or unsubscribing. You will be able to see even the devices people are using to open your emails, which can help you to better optimize campaigns for mobile.
Heat maps
The software doesn’t come with a built-in heat map, however a number of third parties have developed a suite of free tools, which you can download from the app store. The heat maps will tell you exactly where your campaign is going well, and where it might not be landing effectively.
Campaign comparison report
The platform doesn’t have a feature that allows you to compare individual campaigns. However, you can pull a report that gives you the average statistics across all of your campaigns combined. This can be a useful tool for tracking overall improvements, but other marketing tools provide more detailed reports.
Mailerlite Segmentation
Mailerlite offers segmentation options, but it can be a little bit confusing if you are new to email marketing. You will have two options: segments and groups, and both are a bit different. To be in a segment, your subscriber will meet a certain set of rules that you have set up, such as ‘Made a purchase’, for example.
The group option allows for even further segmentation beyond this and works like a tagging system found with other email marketers. This is also where your automation options are.
Luckily, a how-to guide is available to help walk you through exactly how groups and segments work. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll find a great deal of customization on offer.
To create a group on Mailerlite, navigate to the “subscribers” tab in your main navigation bar.
On the next section, click on the “Groups” tab and you will see the list that MailerLite created for you.
To edit your existing list, click on the “Edit” button on the right or you can delete the list and create a new one.
To create a new group rather than editing the existing one, you can click on “Create Group” at the top right.
Follow the instructions, name your new group and you will see your new list appearing above your old one.
You can add contacts to this group by clicking on “Add Subscribers” in the “All Subscribers” tab. Choose the method on how you want to add your contacts and then select the list you just created.
To create a segment after these steps, you can click on “Segments” and then select the “Create your first segment” option.
Name your segment, set the conditions for your segment, and click on “save changes”.
Social media tracking
You can link to your social media accounts when you send emails, but Mailerlite doesn’t track engagement via social media.
ROI analysis
The platform doesn’t provide any return on investment reporting, this is a metric you will have to calculate yourself once your conversion rate statistics start rolling in.
Mailerlite Integrations (Rated: 4/5)
The integrations offered are not as extensive as some of Mailerlite’s competitors, but there are still many to choose from, which earns them a score of 4.
As it’s aimed at small businesses and the solopreneur, Mailerlite is more limited in terms of choice of its integrations than its competitors. There are still some good tools on offer, though, and it has around 100 integrations in total.
You will also be able to find some integrations made by third-party developers that partner with the platform, however, you might need to pay extra for some of these.
Google Analytics
You can integrate Google Analytics with your dashboard using Zapier’s app.
API integrations
The Mailerlite API is built on HTML and RESTful coding languages. If you have some developer skills, you can use the platform to develop your own apps and integrations.
E-commerce tools
You will find all of the major E-commerce tools here such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, Stripe and PayPal. Through these apps you can track stats on what your customers are buying as a result of your email campaigns across every store you use.
CRM integrations
You will find 13 out-of-the-box CRM integrations with popular platforms, like Zapier, HubSpot, Zendesk, Zoho and Pipedrive. Connecting with any of these CRMs will allow you to sync all of your contacts seamlessly with your marketing efforts.
Social media integrations
Mailerlite’s social media integrations are very basic. You can’t sync your social media accounts directly to your dashboard, but you can use the basic functions like adding a subscription tab to your mailing list on your Facebook page.
Apps
You will find some reliable survey apps that let you build interactive quizzes and games into your newsletters and emails, which can really help with engagement. Some other popular apps include landing page builders, an email verification checker that cleans up your mailing list, and a tool to embed videos into your campaigns.
Plugins
Plug-ins are centered around WordPress, with 10 to choose from in total. Options are a little bit more limited if you’ve developed your E-commerce site using a different platform, though.
Mailerlite Automation (Rated: 3/5)
The automation features are lacking in advanced options, and so you will be limited in what you can do with what is available. What options there are, are easy to use, but overall Mailerlite only scores a 3.
Mailerlite uses a workflow based automation tool that is based on the different groups you’ve set up and assigned your subscribers to. It is a fairly easy interface to get to grips with, and you have a lot of automation options open to you.
For example, you can trigger follow-up emails to every subscriber that clicks a link, issue monthly newsletters to loyal customers and even automate campaigns that are based around key dates and anniversaries.
To create automation on Mailerlite, you can navigate to the “Automation” tab in your navigation menu.
After this, you can click on the “Create workflow” button. This will take you to the next step.
In the next section, it is time to name your workflow, select your trigger (for this example, we chose the trigger “when a subscriber joins a group”), and select the group. After this, you can click on “Save” to move on to the next section.
After this, you will be taken to the section where you will be able to see your entire workflow mapped out. Here, you will be able to add or remove steps. To add another step, click the “+” sign. To add a delay, click on the “Delay” option and edit the settings on the right-hand side.
To add an email to your automation, you will choose the “email” option.
On the right-hand side, you can edit your email settings and when you are done, click on design email to add the content.
Check out the “Email Design” section on how to edit your email design.
You can continue to add elements to your automation workflow until you are satisfied. To activate your automation, click the toggle to “ON”.
Design and Ease of Use (Rated: 5/5)
Mailerlite offers an easy interface that is simple to navigate and build the campaigns you need, as well as tools and templates to make the process as seamless as possible, earning Mailerlite a perfect 5.
Ease of use is definitely one of the platform’s strengths. Its interface is clean, looks modern and it’s easy to find everything you need. Once you understand how groups and segments work, it’s straightforward to set up campaign automations and track results.
Drag and drop interface
The Mailerlite drag and drop editor is incredibly user-friendly. You will be able to customize just about every aspect of your emails including fonts, colors, images, signatures and your call to action. The preview editor shows you exactly how your email will look to your customers, making it easy to tweak as you go.
Landing page creator
You will get a few pre-built landing page templates that cover topics like ebooks, pre-launch product hype and a ‘coming soon’ option. You can edit these templates to fit any sort of marketing situation you would like, or use the drag and drop editor to create a landing page from scratch.
To create a landing page in Mailerlite, navigate to the “sites” tab in the main navigation bar.
In the next section, you can click on the “Create Landing Page” button.
Follow the steps, name your landing page, choose your subscriber list, click “Save and Continue”.
Now it is time to choose the template you are going to use to build your landing page. For this example, we chose the “restaurant” template.
To edit your landing page design is easy. The drag and drop editor is very similar to the editor that you used to create your email campaigns. To edit a section, click on the pen icon, and on the right-hand side, choose a replacement or use the editor.
You can add additional content to the template by dragging and dropping blocks from the right-hand side.
Make sure you edit the “Success” page by selecting the tab to edit the page that your visitors will be taken to after they have subscribed to your landing page.
You can preview your landing page and once you are done, click “Save and Publish”.
Next, adjust your settings for your landing page and click “Save and Continue” at the bottom.
You can now view all of the elements of your landing page and make adjustments as you wish. Your landing page is now live.
Email templates
Mailerlite has dozens of different email templates to get you started that cover industries like real estate, healthcare, book stores and general eCommerce. If you don’t like any of the templates, or can’t find one to suit your business, the customization options mean you will be able to create
Design and Ease of Use (Rated: 5/5)
Mailerlite offers an easy interface that is simple to
something that’s perfect for you.
Mailerlite Customer service (Rated: 5/5)
Mailerlite’s support is considerable, spanning 12 languages and with access to a 24/7 live chat, earning them a perfect score.
The platform has great customer support that’s available in 12 languages. The free version gets you free email support, while the paid version lets you access the 24/7 live chat option. You will also find a number of how-to articles and videos that walk you through the most popular features.
Contact Information
https://www.mailerlite.com/contact-us
Mailerlite Alternatives
Sendinblue: If Mailerlite’s automation features are not up to your standards, then Seninblue is another affordable email marketing software that offers powerful automation as well as SMS marketing. With Sendinblue, you can get unlimited contacts with up to 300 emails per day.
ActiveCampaign: If you are looking for an email marketing software with advanced features and willing to pay a premium price, then ActiveCampaign is a smart choice. You will not find email marketing software with more advanced automation than this one. However, the software can be overwhelming due to its sophisticated features, so it is better suggested for experienced users.
Omnisend: If you are an E-commerce business, this software will be perfect for your email marketing strategy. Omnisend is focused on helping your online store convert email subscribers into paying customers. Since you can't use the software without an online store, you know the features are tailored explicitly for the E-commerce industry.
What I liked about Mailerlite
- Easy to use
- Great customer support
- Free plan is more than enough for freelancers and bloggers
- High quality email templates
- Good landing page editor
What I didn’t like about Mailerlite
- Segments and groups can be difficult to get to grips with
- Not as many features and apps as its competitors
My verdict
Mailerlite is an excellent choice for freelancers, bloggers and those running a small business. If you have less than 1,000 subscribers, the free package has more than enough features for you to get by on. For larger organizations, the ability to send unlimited emails at such a low price is also a great incentive.
The only downsides are that it doesn’t have as many features as its competitors, and the segmentation will take a bit to get used to. However, this shouldn’t put too many people off.
