A Mailigen Review: How Much Time Can You Save Through Automation?

Mailigen in a nutshell

What is Mailigen?

Mailigen is an email marketing automation software developed in 2010 to assist small- to medium-sized businesses and freelancers in nurturing leads, expanding revenue, and driving sales with automated email marketing. 

Mailigen Pros & Cons

PROS

• Free Trial: Mailigen’s 30-day free trial, which can be activated without needing any credit card details, gives you full access to their platform with 100 free emails.
• A/B Split Testing: with this platform, both integrating Google Analytics and Mailigen’s A/B Split testing software come standard on all plans without additional cost.
• Support: Mailigen has four different support options for you if you get stuck at any point while using its software – video tutorials, a support knowledge base, email assistance, and a phone number.
• Price plans: this platform's price plans include a pay-as-you-go option with additional add-ons available. Mailigen also has a monthly subscription which is cheaper than the pay-as-you-go option.
• Integrations: Mailigen's software allows you to integrate social media and over 100 apps, including SMS and email marketing, within your campaigns and automations.

CONS

• Reporting: this platform's built-in reporting tool doesn't provide very much vital information on customer behavior.
• Templates: Mailigen has very few email templates and no pre-designed sign-up forms. 
• Lack of spam checker: this platform's email editor has no spam checker or checks messages before you send them.

Who is Mailigen Good For?

Mailigen will be a good fit for you if:

• You’re a company that needs to reach your contacts frequently: Mailigen has unlimited email sends no matter which payment plan you're on, meaning that you can consistently send emails to your contacts and not worry about exceeding a plan's limits.
• You have minimal technical skills: if you have no previous coding experience, this platform is aimed at you. Mailigen's automation software is intuitive and easy to use, and everything you need is easy to find on its simple website.

Mailigen Isn’t Recommended For:

Mailigen will not be a good fit for you if:

• You need in-depth reporting: Mailigen's built-in reporting tools are rudimentary at best. While you can download your reports as Excel spreadsheets or PDFs, it doesn't provide much in-depth information on customer behavior.
• You need numerous templates and multiple layouts: this platform has about one hundred and thirty templates and five basic layouts at your disposal. However, Mailigen does allow you to create more unique templates by custom designing them in HTML. 

Mailigen Deliverability (Rated: 5/5)

Mailigen does not have a spam checker, which affects the deliverability rates. However, you are able to deliver by time zone, which does improve on overall deliverability rates. Overall, I give a score of 5.

Mailigen does not offer a feature to manage your deliverability rates, but it does offer features like a dedicated IP to improve your deliverability. I found that most reviews noted their high deliverability, and I found nothing that proved this wrong. They offer time-zone scheduling and geographic segmentation, which have been proven to help improve deliverability overall.

Mailigen Pricing (Rated: 5/5)

Mailigen offers a generous free trial of 30 days and regardless of which plan you have, you have access to all features. There are various options: a monthly, yearly or pay-as-you-go subscription, which means that you can choose which plan best suits your budget. I give a score of 5.

The pricing here is based on how many subscribers you have, or plan to have.

I only added five features, but full access to Mailigen's features is available on any payment plan. Furthermore, there are no long-term contracts with a monthly plan, whereas annual billing is a one-year contract. There is also a pay-as-you-go option where buying and exchanging credits means that the unlimited emails you send are charged at a flat rate to your account. For example, if you buy 500 email credits for $60, you will be charged $1.20 for every email you send.

Cancellation/Refund Policy

If you want to cancel your account with this platform, you must send a cancellation request to the Billing Department at least two business days before the repayment date. You can also terminate the service by closing your account on Mailigen's settings page. Mailigen also reserves the right to cancel your contract if they have not been paid. 

Mailigen Features

Mailigen has seventy-five key features that are fully available to you, no matter which price plan you're on. This platform's thirty-day free trial also allows you full access to its features, along with 100 free emails. Here are a few attractive features worth mentioning:

• A/B Split Testing

Before sending emails out to your contacts, Mailigen allows you to test various conditions, including the sender's name, email content, subject line, and the time or day of sending. This platform enables you to pick the size of your contact list test group using a slider and determine the test duration and the delay for the winning campaign. After that, you can decide whether to send the winner of the test automatically or manually.

• SMS Campaigns

This platform's SMS marketing software allows you to send a message from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world. There are over 800 Mailigen operators across over 190 countries. Additionally, you can send a personalized, scheduled SMS with your company name as the sender ID in any language with up to 918 characters. 

• List Management

Mailigen's list management software allows you to merge, deduplicate and segment your subscribers based on their activity history or demographics. This platform's mailing list manager also allows you to upload your contacts in the most common data formats (XLS or CSV), collect new subscribers via web sign-up forms, or sync with your CRM using API or integrations.

• Online Surveys

This platform provides multiple tools that help your surveys reach your customers. You can build your surveys using Mailigen’s intuitive drag and drop editor and nine “building blocks.” Additionally, you can add your brand and theme to your survey during the creation process. Once created, you can send personalized survey invites to your contact list and analyze the real-time performance of your survey.

This is what creating a survey from scratch looks like

These are a few templates you can use when creating a survey if you don't want to make one from scratch.

• Ease of Use (Rated: 4/5)

“Signing up to Mailigen is quick and easy. You can use any email address, and putting in your website domain is optional. Once you're logged in, your dashboard loads, and everything you need is down the left-hand side of the screen. The simple white background with gray writing is pleasing to the eye and effortless to navigate around.” They earn a score of 4.

Signing up to Mailigen is quick and easy. You can use any email address, and putting in your website domain is optional. Once you're logged in, your dashboard loads, and everything you need is down the left-hand side of the screen. The simple white background with gray writing is pleasing to the eye and effortless to navigate around.

Your dashboard once signed up to Mailigen.

Mailigen states that its design interfaces can be used by anyone.

Drag and Drop Interface

A drag-and-drop feature present throughout all creative tools lets you place visuals wherever you like

Landing page creator 

Ignore programming and coding by simply clicking your landing page into existence

Email templates 

You can choose from 64 email templates, or create your own

Sign up forms within newsletter tool (opt in-opt out process)

The newsletter builder can be combined with WordPress Publish Sign-up Forms for simple creation

• Multi-User Accounts

This platform's multi-user accounts software allows you to set different levels of permission and access to shared content with your partners, team, or outsourced advisors. You can select four different access levels for your team members, including Collaborator, Account Manager, Watcher, and List Manager. Additionally, you can set custom permissions based on the team member's capabilities if they don't fit the four different presets.

• Analytics and Reports (Rated: 3/5)

The analytics offered by Mailigen does offer a simple overview of your email campaigns’ performance, but overall, it does lack information which companies may want to consider. The analytics offer a basic overview, earning Mailigen a score of 3.

Mailigen's analytics and reporting tool allow you to track links clicked, unsubscribes, bounced emails, and opening rates. Additionally, you can integrate Google Analytics for advanced tracking, as well as GEO-location reports. You can also easily download any of the reports in Excel Spreadsheets or PDF format whenever you need them.

The ‘Track and Measure’ tab records a wealth of interaction data. 

Engagement reports (Email open rate and CR tracking)

Every email and link sent is attributed to a permanent engagement report

Segmentation 

Autosegment contacts by time zone, or create your own subject-specific groups

Social media tracking

Click tracking can be applied to social media widgets

ROI analysis 

There’s no current tool to measure or predict ROIs

• Creating Email Campaigns and Managing

Here are the functions that’ll enable you to make and run your campaigns.

Emails sent/opened and links clicked

Click tracking gives you a full history of every link sent

Deliverability rate and delivery by time zone (spam)

Spam folders often watch out for uniform message receipt times, and altering your delivery rate can avoid this filter

Creating and importing email lists

Import your current contacts from a CSV file in minutes

Split tests and A/B tests

Create any kind of test you can envision to build your datastore

Personalization

Newsletters and emails can autofill targeted content to create a stronger response

Mailigen Automations (Rated: 5/5)

The software is intuitive and user friendly, and there are plenty of options for users to take advantage of, earning them a perfect score.

There’s a lot of automation options that can be taken advantage of here. Most will be more beneficial after some data has been collected from newsletter campaigns and split testing. Put this data to work auto-filling headings and content, automating delivery for optimal reception, and merging cross-channel broadcasts.

This platform's automation software is easy to use and comes standard with any payment plan. Here are a few of the stand-out features that come with Mailigen's automation software:

• Different email series: you can set up other behavior-based email series with Mailigen, including an educational and a welcome sequence and win-back campaigns.
• Triggers: there are multiple triggers you can set up to start an automation, including sign up, date, action, update, and time delay. 
• Integrations: you can also include integrations and SMS messages within your automation.

New automation creation page

Various automation templates

Mailigen Integrations (Rated: 3/5)

There are 47 integrations offered by Mailigen, all of which are geared to improving your marketing efforts. However, social media integrations are relatively limited, and only 32 apps are currently available which earns Mailigen a score of 3.

Mailigen has 47 total integrations available for you to use to help your productivity and the effectiveness of your email campaigns. There are six different categories the various plugins and integrations are sorted in on the Mailigen website, including analytics, CMS, social, CRM, and e-Commerce. You can integrate your social media pages within your campaigns using Facebook or Twitter or sync your Pipedrive, Google Drive, and Zapier accounts using Mailigen's integration software.

There are a number of options for integrating with third-party platforms.

API integrations

Use the email marketing API to integrate with external services

Integrations with these platforms: Ecommerce, Shopify, Magento, Bigcommerce and Woocommerce 

Of the above, Shopify and Woocommerce are unavailable

CRM Integrations

A number of practical CRM applications can be used, such as Pipedrive

Social Media integrations

Only Twitter and Facebook are currently supported

Apps 

Just 32 apps are available

Plugins

There are a number of options to plug in the popular WordPress applications

Mailigen Alternatives

Sendinblue was launched in 2012 as an all-in-one email automation software. Since then, it has come a long way, with 200+ email templates available for you to use and a free version that allows you to send three hundred emails a day to an unlimited number of contacts.

ConstantContact allows you to reach your contacts through four different sectors: email marketing, eCommerce, websites, and social marketing. ConstantContact is easy to use and understand, and its prices start from $20 a month.

ActiveCampaign is an automation platform created for e-commerce, B2C, and B2B companies. It aims to help people grow their businesses from the ground up by providing excellent customer experiences. With price plans starting from $15 a month and being straightforward to use, this platform can do precisely that.  

Mailigen Customer Service (Rated: 5/5)

There are several different support options available: video tutorials, support knowledge base, email, earning Mailigen a score of 5.

You can email for support at support@mailigen.com, but there’s no phone number to speak of.

Conclusion

Mailigen is an excellent email marketing platform for its target audience of freelancers and small- to medium-sized businesses. With its generous free trial of thirty days and access to all of its features no matter what price plan you're on, it is different from some of its competitors. Its simple reporting and analytics tool might lack too much information for some companies. Still, if all you need is a general overview of what your clients are doing and how they're reacting to your campaigns, this software should suit you perfectly.

Mailigen can be an asset to your email marketing campaigns, especially when sending newsletters, due to its abundance of design assistance, and it’s intuitive data collection and actioning. This allows you to perfect your newsletters through trial and error testing and can automate some of the more arduous tasks. However, the necessity to know how many subscribers you plan to have might not suit everyone's needs.

A similar service with a pricing structure based on content, rather than subscribers is SendX. And while this service also assists with newsletters, it has a greater focus on cross-platform broadcasting.