How do you manage your audience email list?
I'm wondering how to keep my audience email list in order. I collect email addresses from my landing page (https://www.datablist.com), from my app users, from my network list, etc.
Then users can unsubscribe directly from the emailing tool (Mailjet, Mailchimp..), but it is hard to sync those removals with other tools.
I've always found it complicated to have a clean mailing list, a single source of truth without a complex custom development.
Do you use only the contacts management feature offered by Mailchimp, Mailjet, etc. or do you manage them in a CRM, or another third party tool? And if so, which one?
Thanks 🙏
I've had the same problems the past, particularly syncing audience data between the app and Mailchimp. For my next project, I'm going to be using Firebase, so my plan is to make my Firebase database (Firestore) the single source of truth for audience data, and use Cloud Functions to sync that data to other services via their APIs (e.g. Mailchimp API, Sendgrid API). I haven't implemented this yet, so I can't definitively say that it's a good idea, but that's my plan.
Very interesting! That is my current set up (Firestore + Cloud Function + Mailjet) but I thought of moving out to a more powerful tool. Do you plan to do it with custom dev because you have already used a marketing software and it was limited or because of the pricing of those softwares?
Yes, I plan to do it with "custom dev" meaning writing cloud functions to connect firestore and email apis.
I haven't used a lot of marketing automation tools, only Mailchimp at a prior small mobile app company, so I can't say how good (or bad) other options are.
While Mailchimp is easy to setup and use, I didn't like the UI or pricing (we started off free, but by the time we had around 25k subscribers, we were paying like $300/month and it wasn't worth it at that price). But it was very frustrating to have Mailchimp be the "source of truth" because it's really not designed to be a coding environment. We had to be very hacky in the Mailchimp automation tool to get the results we wanted, and then getting the data back out to our app was feasible but clunky.
And since Mailchimp had all our data, we never decided to migrate because it was just too much work. We were not systematic about housing our customer data in our db.
I want all my customer data in the db b/c:
I don't plan on writing any automation logic, I will let ESPs like Mailchimp/Sendgrid deal with that. But as much as possible, I want my db and app to contain customer data and business logic and have the data flow to be uni-directional to ESPs as much as possible. It's OK for me if campaign response data or segmentation is kept at the ESP. It seems unlikely that I'll need to pull that back into my db, but I know I can do it via APIs if necessary.
If you have a need for a more powerful tool, then sure, look for a more powerful tool. I don't think I will need it.
Hope this helps, and good luck!
Very helpful, thanks for sharing! I understand your need to own the customer data and being able to build on top of it directly.
Good luck for your implementation and your project!
The best way to start will be whatever goals you're trying to achieve. This will determine the best tool for the job.
From an initial look, I recommend you look at ActiveCampaign and/or Onboardflow.
With ActiveCampaign (AC), you can do a lot of powerful automation to clean and nurture your list.
With ActiveCampaign, here's how I approach it (with their automation).
Here's a sample of my list cleaning sequence in AC
And here's one for onboarding users in AC
The trick is keeping things simple so you can engage your audience more without being spammy.
Thanks for this clear explanation. I didn't know those tools and https://www.activecampaign.com/ is very interesting.
My goal, as I'm starting my project is to have an audience list that I can enrich, segment, ask feedbacks/send surveys, send newsletters to. And once they are converted to customers, keep track of the plan they pay, etc.
I'm not looking for a one-size-fits-all solution, more a tool that integrate nicely with other tools. From what I've seen https://www.hubspot.com/ and https://www.activecampaign.com/ are suited for that 👍
Of the two, ActiveCampaign is the most cost efficient especially as you will be doing segmentation and automations.
At < $10/M, for what you can do, it's a hit!
Another "free" option, if you're willing to do the work is: https://www.mautic.org/
I've helped folks strategize their automation with either; I'd be happy to help with specific implementations.
Thanks for sharing. From a dev point of view, Mautic is a nice project. But from an user/easy to use point of view, it looks like a mess 🤯
I'll try ActiveCampaign 🙌
woodpecker was referred, there is a fee
heard good things about HubSpot
Thanks for your answer @zoftbase . I also heard good feedbacks on HubSpot, I will take a look !
the problem is hubspot doesn't include marketing automation unless you do their $800/mo fee.
I had a call with them a few weeks ago and yeah, it's a thing. they do have some startup pricing but you need to be part of a member organization to receive it.
Oh, I see, for the startup pricing with Hubspot, you must come from an incubator/VC..
I clearly can't afford the $800/mo for a marketing automation tool :/
Me neither. I'm in the process of migrating to Active Campaign for that reason :/