What To Look For in a WordPress Email Marketing Plugin Solution?
Discover the best email marketing plugins for 2024! Elevate your strategy with powerful tools designed to enhance your outreach and conversions.
Get ready to transform your email marketing strategy in 2024! This informative video explores the best plugins to enhance your outreach and improve conversion rates. Learn about powerful automation features, analytics tools, and customizable templates that will take your campaigns to the next level. Curious about which plugin suits your needs? Tune in now for expert insights.
FluentCRM
Prices $129 per year
Omnisend
Free | Standard starting at $16 | Pro starting at $59 per month
WPFunnels + Mail Mint
Prices 239.99 per year
Bravo (formerly Sendinblue)
https://www.brevo.com/plugins/wordpress
Prices Free (300 per day) | Starter $9 5,000 emails per month | Business $18 5,000 emails per month | Enterprise price on request per month
MailPoet
Prices Starter Free 1,000 subscribers | Business $10 – 5,000 email per month
Newsletter Plugin
https://www.thenewsletterplugin.com
Prices Basic Free | Blogger $79 per year
Groundhogg
Prices Basic $20 | Plus $40 | Pro $50 | Agency $100 per month
MailHawk
Prices Basic $10 per year, 1,000 emails per month | Plus $12.50 per month, 30,000 emails per month | Pro $25 per month, 60,000 emails per month. All plans are paid annually.
ConvertKit
Prices Newsletter Free 10,000 subscribers | Creator $29 1,000 subscribers | Pro 1,000 per subscribers $59 per month
MailerLite
Prices Free 12,000 monthly emails | Growing a Business $15 Unlimited monthly emails | Advanced $30 per month Unlimited monthly emails (1,000 subscribers)
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:00.950] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 90. In this episode, we will discuss how we will look for the best plugins. Suppose you want to do email marketing in 2024. We’re going to be looking… Our primary focus will be on WordPress email optimization and email marketing.
[00:01:30.070] – Jonathan Denwood
But we’re also going to look at some of the SaaS leading products because there are a lot of different services and plugins, and we’re going to delve into them. So, hopefully, we can clear some of the confusion around this so you can choose the right product and get on with marketing your membership community website. I’ve got my regular, semi-regular co-host. He’s a special guest, but he’s semi-regular. I’ve got Kurt with me. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself?
[00:02:12.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan. Thank you. My name is Kurt, Speaker 2. I run an agency called MananaNoMas. We focus primarily on membership and learning websites, specifically with SCORM. I also work directly with WP-Tonic and Lifter LMS.
[00:02:27.060] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show. I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. Coming back, folks, I want to point out we’ve got some fantastic special offers from the major sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress plugins and services to help you build a membership or community-focused website on WordPress. Plus, we’ve got a great course at a fantastic special offer price, which Kirk did. That shows you how to build a membership community-focused website from the beginning to end in 2023. For WordPress, use the latest technology. You find all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals. Wp-tonic. Com/deals. Find all the goodies there. What more could you ask for? I do like to say that. Let’s go straight into it, Kurt. I think there are three buckets here, Kurt. There’s the pure WordPress plugin native solution, as I call it. That has some great strengths because it tends these plugins, pure plugin email, newsletter, stroke, and optimization, plugins tend to have a lot of integration with the leading learning management systems like Lifter LMS, LearnDash, or Tuta LMS, and with membership plugins.
[00:04:27.300] – Jonathan Denwood
But I recommend that if you’re serious about building an eLearning business in 2024, you should use a learning management system. You got these native plugins. Then there’s a second bucket, which is a SaaS-based software as a service, but they offer a great WordPress plugin, and they integrate into WordPress not as well as the pure native plugin solutions, but they do a pretty good job. And they also offer a lot of functionality, which you might be interested in. We’re going to be going through this in this episode. Then there’s the third bucket that might offer a plugin, but it’s a stripped-down solution that doesn’t. It’s just about working in WordPress. Still, you will hit walls quite rapidly, or you’ll probably have to utilize something like WP Fusion to get the access you want. What’s your response to the three buckets that I’ve outlined initially? Do you think I’m on the right track?
[00:05:58.490] – Kurt von Ahnen
You’re definitely on the right track, Jonathan. What I find more and more frequently when I’m interacting with clients is a significant disconnect between what a CRM is versus the perspective of what the client or the user envisions it to be. There’s so much more to email than just the tool. You have to plan your content; you have to know it. As you plan your content and see how you will use that system, that use case probably dictates your best tool. Just because fluent might be great for one person doesn’t mean it’s the best tool for everybody. But I’ve noticed myself when you talked about restrictions, next thing you know, you think it’s going to work. You think it’s going to do everything you want it to do. Then the customer says, “Well, I want to automate when they fill out this form or get this email; this happens with the membership or the course. And then you’re like, well, now that’s a Zappier integration, right? It’s Zappier WP Fusion or WP automated WP or something. But it ends up being a… Your term would be, which is Brew.
[00:07:13.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
Americans would probably call it a Frankenstein setup, right? Where now you’ve got three or four tools activated and configured to send a message or to activate something. And so that level of complication, if you do that repeatedly, can become quite a spider web of mess there.
[00:07:30.650] – Jonathan Denwood
You see that in the SaaS world, even if you’re not going to use WordPress, if you decided that you’re going to use something like Wix or Squarespace, you’ll find that you really got to do a delve because a lot of the SaaS offer a lot of functionality, but that also shows up in their price. And a lot of that functionality you might not be interested in or for quite a period of time, you’re You’re not going to utilize, but you’re paying for it. And then there’s also deliverability. I struggled there. There’s a lot of issues. So you’ve got those three buckets, and then dividing those, there are a couple of sub-buckets, as I put it. And that’s the difference between marketing optimization emails and a newsletter email. There’s There’s a lot of cross-fertilisation, but I do see them as two clearly differentials. A lot of people, you can have a very bare-bone email as a newsletter, and there was a lot of recommendation that that style you should go with a couple of years ago because it seemingly would get into people’s inbox I think Google and Microsoft and the leading inbox mail providers, their technologies become much more sophisticated.
[00:09:11.920] – Jonathan Denwood
So that doesn’t really work. Then you got the whole thing With a newsletter, you want branding, you want your logo. Having a bare bone doesn’t reinforce your branding purposes. Where more marketing, type email or trying to encourage persons to go back to your membership website, to re-engage in the course, to reduce churn, all the things that you want to encourage students because churn is a major problem, is one of the major problems in eLearning, having a successful membership website. What do you reckon about what I’ve just outlined, Kurt?
[00:09:59.890] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree with most of it. Again, my thing is I really drive down to use case and people’s efficiency with the tools. I am consistently perplexed at people’s lack of preparedness or people’s lack of effort in this particular segment of web development or web usage, however you want to phrase that. The lack of preparedness, the lack of content, the lack of strategy, and the lack of follow through. Those are things that regardless of what tool you choose, I think could really hinge on whether you find success or not. You had mentioned getting people to reengage with courses. And that’s a practice with me quite frequently in the eLearning space. And that is having a tool that can fire off a list of email sequences based on somebody everybody’s activity throughout a course, that takes a lot to set up. A lot of people don’t realize the work and effort that goes into it. And then I think we’re going to talk about this a little bit, but like email performance, right? How many people open it? How many people click through it? How many people do it? Because then you have to be willing to analyze your results and tweak it to constantly get it where it needs to go.
[00:11:23.880] – Jonathan Denwood
The thing that people don’t, and I’ve fallen into this, you can have fantastic results resources on your website that really explain how to use the membership website, how they navigate, log in, navigate. You could be all in your help section. You could have a massive button saying frequently asked questions. You can have all sorts of things that are big and clear on your website. People won’t see it.
[00:11:54.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
No.
[00:11:55.650] – Jonathan Denwood
You could be in your footer. There’s nothing on your a website that tells me how to use your calls. Well, I didn’t know that. Well, it’s a big section of your frequently asked questions. Well, I couldn’t be bothered to read that. What I’m trying to point out, unless you have on board login sequence, and then you also have optimization. If somebody signs up for your course and they don’t log in for a period of time, you need a sequence of optimizations that encourages It changes them to log in. Because if they don’t log in and you have a period of refund, which most kosher membership websites do give a reasonable period where you will get a full refund, they’re going to ask for a refund because they’ve gone on to other things. Life is busy. They’ve forgotten. And then they think, Oh, well, I’m not using it. I want a refund. So this is important. When it comes to WordPress, there are one or two other concepts that you need to know about. The native solutions, as I describe them, have enormous benefits. But there is, like many things in WordPress, there are some minor additional hoops that you have to jump through or things you need to know, but they’re not major.
[00:13:35.290] – Jonathan Denwood
The SaaS solutions tend to play on this a little bit, not so much in the email marketing, but when it comes to actual e-learning platforms, they say that WordPress is a little bit more complicated. Well, I’ve been using some of the leading platforms, SaaS platforms lately, and I can tell you that the more powerful ones are not easy to use. The main concept you got to understand is SMTP. That is a technology that allows your WordPress website to actually communicate with a email sending engine. I’m going to explain this second concept quickly. But this bit of technology communicates with the native WordPress email plugin, with your email sending engine, as I call it. Without this bit of communication, not much is going to happen. The best plugin, and it’s totally free, and it is the best, is Fluent SMTP. But I think it is clearly the best, and there are some others that are pushed, but this is totally free, and it comes from one of the major native WordPress email and marketing optimization plugins. They really know what they’re doing, and I would have no hesitation in recommending this plugin. It works with other systems, and you’d be totally happy, I feel.
[00:15:27.860] – Jonathan Denwood
The other-Can I jump in first? Sorry, go on.
[00:15:30.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think for new users and listeners that are hearing what we’re talking about, there’s probably an air of confusion, and I want to make sure that we clear that. When you start a WordPress website, your site does send emails But like you’ve registered for a website and it triggers an email. It says, welcome, you’ve registered for a website. There’s transactional email and then there’s marketing email. And when you want to send email in mass from your website or connected to your website, then you need these things that Jonathan is talking about. It’s just like when people say, I don’t understand why you say I need a video host to do my videos. Wordpress can host a video. It’s like, no, you don’t want to host video in your WordPress website. Just like you don’t want to try to force your WordPress website to run a massive email.
[00:16:21.410] – Jonathan Denwood
This is the whole area that confuses, folks. There are quite a lot of hosting providers that do provide inbox and transactional email. But there’s also a lot of WordPress hosting providers that don’t. Like WPEngine, Kinster, some of the better providers. They don’t provide email functionality. There’s various reasons why they don’t. I’m not going to go into them in this show. It’ll be a bit too long. But it’s about 50/50. But those that do, they have very tight limits, daily limits about how many email, transactional. What do I mean by transactional? I mean, if somebody finishes a course and they need a certificate, many learning management systems, like Lifter LMS, will send a certificate when they finish the course. That’s a perfect example. Well, that’s what is called transactional email. Marketing email is around onboarding series or if somebody hasn’t logged in. But there’s also both transactional marketing, there’s a gray area. So some people would say that what I’ve just expressed goes into transactional, but it’s a gray area, right, folks? Well, like I say, 50 of the hosting will allow you to send out transaction or marketing email, but they only let you send out, at best, 100 a day, or might be a bit more generous than that.
[00:18:13.080] – Jonathan Denwood
But if you got any list at all. You can’t rely. They’re native sending limits, they normally don’t end up in people’s inbox. They’re really quite poor. You really need an engine provider. The plugin provides the front-end. The plugin provides a screen where you can set up your optimizations, you can build your newsletter. It gives you the interface to build a nice-looking newsletter or set up your marketing optimization. It won’t send it out. Only the SaaS will do that. But you need to set up a email sending engine. There’s a number of them, and they’re normally a lot cheaper than the SaaS solutions. The combination of a WordPress plugin with one of these engines is still normally a lot cheaper, and in some ways, can be a lot more powerful. I’ve probably I’ve lost most of the people listening to this podcast, but I’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible. What’s your own comments on what I’ve just described? Have I done a reasonable job, Kurt?
[00:19:42.480] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I think you have. The big thing for me that I wanted to communicate was just because you have a WordPress website and something works, doesn’t mean that’s the way it’s supposed to work. When you have a base blogging website and it sends a few notifications out, don’t assume that your site can send to an email list of 1,500 people. It probably can’t. So that’s why you need that. That’s why we’re having this discussion about advancing your email game and having the right SMTP tools and the right tool to send the emails that you’re looking for.
[00:20:20.300] – Jonathan Denwood
Right, Theo. We got about 10 minutes, I reckon, for the first half of the show, so we can go into some of the solutions here. So I would say one of the main native WordPress plugin solutions. To me, what it offers on the marketing optimization is top-notch. What it offers in the newsletter is there. It does offer a small list of templates for your newsletter, and it does provide a drag and drop newsletter builder. It’s very similar to Active Campaign in how it works in the marketing optimization, but also what it offers on the newsletter side, because Active Campaign for a number of years didn’t offer anything when it came to the newsletter. It’s now improved that, but it’s not its top focus. I would utilize the same language with Fluent CRM, but you can, unlike some other marketing, optimisation-focused native plugin solutions, it’s actual newsletter builder. It isn’t bad. What would you say about this, about Fluent CRM, Kurt?
[00:21:56.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
I moved to Fluent after using a different CRM tool. And at first I found it to be stark and sterile in its user experience, just the way that it looked and the menus were hidden in an odd way for that drag and drop portion. But once I got used to it, I found it to be much more powerful, direct and clean in its experience. So I’ve really enjoyed the product. Sometimes I wish there was more… Templates would be the keyword there. I wish there was more variations of templates or more like, this is a fun one. This is This is an influential one, this is a sales one, and some of the other products have that. And that’s, I feel, where Fluent has its competition in its lack of pre-made inspirational content.
[00:22:59.520] – Jonathan Denwood
You got to know what you’re looking at. It does have some, but they’re only about half a dozen.
[00:23:03.430] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, and it’s not for nothing. They’re not impactfully beautiful. Some other products really have more aggressive templates that are easier to look at. That’s why I was saying earlier, it’s important to know what you want to produce and have a strategy and a plan to produce it. Because Fluent is an awesome tool. If you know what you want to put in the space, it’s got a editor there, but it doesn’t give you a great foundational launch from if you’re not creative.
[00:23:36.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I hope Kirk’s got my updated list that I sent to him yesterday. Oh, I do. Because he’s going to get lost because we I’m also going to go on to the next one. That’s a great native solution, and I think we’ve given you some honest and great insights about- It’s become my favorite over the last two years. But it has, I won’t say exactly weekly weaknesses, but it’s focused. It’s very similar to active complain folks in its focus. I’m going to repeat myself. Let’s go on to on the send. And so, as I said, it’s not a native WordPress solution, but it’s in the second bucket that I described at the beginning of this show. It’s a SaaS solution, but it’s WordPress plugin It’s very feature-rich, and it works with WordPress. It cannot work as well as a native solution, but it’s one of the top SaaS hybrid solutions around there. It offers a lot of functionality. It offers email, newsletter, and SMS functionality. They’ve got a lot of experience in e-commerce with Shopify and now increasingly with Woocommers. It’s not one that I’ve actually utilized myself. They’re also a sponsor of this show, I want to point out, but I’m giving you a totally honest feedback.
[00:25:25.950] – Jonathan Denwood
It does seem to offer a lot. It does have a free version, and the standard version, I think if you pay monthly, it’s $16. All these sasses, either they There’s a limit on how many subscribers you can have, or there’s a limit on how many email per month you can send out, and it varies. That makes things confusing when you’re trying to work out which one is best for you and offers the best value. The only thing I would say before I throw it over to Kurt with Omicend, is that there are… This will be in the show notes, folks. I did research about Do the email get into your inbox with all these that we’re discussing? And one of the leading inbox testing firms said that on this end isn’t the best and it isn’t the worst. It’s in the middle ground of the actual email getting into your inbox. But there’s a lot of factors around that. What do you think about on this end?
[00:26:58.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
I feel I feel like when Omnicend came out, I got super excited because it was like email and SMS together. And people that do any research on communication, they start to realize that 10 to 15 % open rate on email is acceptable, but texting is a 90 % open rate, right? And then email can be over 24 to 48 hours, and texting can be within three minutes. And so when you look at the power of texting and SMS technology, technology combined in a tool. You can’t help but be really, really attracted or at least intrigued by what it’s going to do. Where I fell out with the Omnisend messaging, though, is I think about a lot of the clients that I work with, and they’re generally having lists to start with in the 2,500 to 3,000 range, some of them up to 5,000. If you’re at 3,000 members on your list, you’re at $70 a month for Omnisend. And if you’re at 5,000 users, you bump up to $90 a month. $90 a month for messaging to go out, it all becomes a return on investment game. Right now, you got to figure out what’s costing me this much to send the email?
[00:28:16.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
For every dollar I spend, how much am I going to make in revenue in my product? You have to be really clear about your goals at that point because each message is costing you something.
[00:28:26.390] – Jonathan Denwood
You’ve made some excellent points. I just want to add To the excellent point Kirk’s made, it’s definitely not one of the best value. It’s aiming at the upper… When it comes to UX design and usability, I think they’ve really got a great interface, and they’ve obviously been in the market a long time, and they’ve got a good UX design, and it’s reasonably easy to utilize, but it’s offering a lot of functionality. If something offers more functionality, inevitably gets a bit more complicated. It’s the pricing, because a lot of people that are serious about building a membership website, they get into the 3-5,000. And all these providers know this, and they offer a reasonably free product, but a lot of them are very cut back. So you end up… They also give a sliding scale on their pricing, and it always starts at 500. But as soon as you bulk it up to the 3-5,000 level, where a lot of people find themselves in, it gets a lot of these platforms, these non-native WordPress solutions. They get expensive quite quickly. There is one particular one that is much more generous on the free program, but it just cuts you down to subscribers, though.
[00:30:05.760] – Jonathan Denwood
They know what they do in these SaaS platforms. They’re there to make money, folks. It’s a polished solution, but if you’re not going to use the functionality and get that return, there’s probably better solutions. But if you’re the right person and you’re going to use it all, it’s a pretty impressive solution. Solution. Would you agree with that, Kurt?
[00:30:32.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
I would, absolutely. Like I said, I was really attracted to the idea of having email capability and SMS capability in one spot without having to do Twilio integrations and all those kinds of things. I thought it was a really good solution. Unfortunately, a lot of my clients in that audience range are more like hobbyists instead of businesses. I feel that if they’re going to spend $90 a month on communication, they need to be more of a business and less of a hobbyist. So it comes down to use case. If I’m sending messaging that’s going to generate sales and revenue, that’s the cost of doing business. If I’m sending messages about how I like to make cakes and eggs, then chances are that’s not the right platform.
[00:31:19.570] – Jonathan Denwood
I might be wrong here. I’m just thinking about this as Kirk was giving some great insights. I think if you’re the person that’s been using Convert kit, and you’re looking for SMS functionality, I think it’s going to be a bit different because Convert kit’s got some strengths. Also, it was the darling of the WordPress user, the professional blogger, membership website, because it could do… I’m going to talk about Convert kit, so I’m not going to go too far. But there’s certain functionality offered at the time that really appealed to the somebody trying to build a real eLearning business on WordPress, even though ConvertKit is a SaaS. But it’s one of these hybrid SaaS’s that offers a lot. But it offered a lot. If you’re using ConvertKit and you want SMS and you want the other bits, I think you’re going to be attracted to omnisend. I think if you’re not that type of person, there’s probably other solutions that offer a better price to functionality metrics. I think this is a good time for us to go to our middle break. We will be back in a few moments, folks. We’re coming back. We’ve had a feast, a feast of email, plugins, sasses.
[00:32:54.340] – Jonathan Denwood
We probably lost a lot of you, but now I think we kept it. This could get a lot more techy, a lot more quick, folks, but I think with Kirk’s help, I think we’ve managed to keep it in, rein it in a bit. And I think we’ve provided some great knowledge. Before we go into our other providers, in in this space, I want to point out that we got a great free resource on Facebook. It’s the Membership Machine Facebook Group. If you’re looking to build a membership website on WordPress or even on a SaaS like Kajabi, and you’re looking for a great group of experts and people trying to build their membership website like you, you really want to join this group because it offers a lot of functionality. I’m always posting new content, videos, and other stuff on there. I think you please join it. It’s totally free, folks. That’s the Membership Machine Facebook Group. We’d love to see you there and become part of the tribe. On we go. On to one, WP Funnels and Melmin. It’s doing a lot of what Fluent CRM is Melmin, and I want to point out we offer Fluent CRM and WP Funnels with Melmin as part of our hosting plan at WP Tonic.
[00:34:29.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, It’s a great company. I’ve been pushing it a little bit. I should push it a little bit more. Their strengths. Their strengths is when it comes to UX design, they’ve got one of the most polish native WordPress plugin UX designs. It’s actually better than Fluent CRM. Fluent has been on the market a bit longer, and it’s actually a bigger company. But for what they’ve done, it’s a really lovely UX design, and it’s got a lot of power built into it. They decided that they were going to offer a lot more building newsletters and that side, which is a little bit limited on Fluent CRM. So they decided to They had an extra plugin and call it Melmin. I think they’re offering a lot more templates, predesigned, and they’re actually quite good. And they’ve got a much more sophisticated email/newsletter builder. The problem is having them in two separate products. I just don’t agree with it. I do understand why they did it. There were business for those reasons, but I think it’s very confusing because they don’t offer the… You think that they’re also offering an email sending engine as part of Melmin, but they’re not.
[00:36:14.320] – Jonathan Denwood
You still got to set up and you end up with two plugins as well. We provide both, but I just find their decision to be a bit confusing. The price is pretty attractive. Well, I said the price with Fluent CRM for one website is just under $130 a year. It’s just amazing value. With WP Funnel, it’s 239. If you have both WP Funnel and Melmin, and I think you’ve got to have both, it’s a bit more expensive, but it’s a very sophisticated interface. What do you think of what I’ve said about WP Funnel plus Melmin?
[00:37:02.230] – Kurt von Ahnen
One of the first things I looked at was the templates. I thought they had a really good choice. To me, a template is not the content you’re sending. I got to keep reminding people, you’re not looking for a ready to send email. You’re looking for the inspiration of your email message. And they have a lot of really good templates to get people started. The idea of two products is confusing. And ever since Russell Brunson started talking about that stupid potato gun, every time they want to call something a funnel, in my mind, it’s just an email series. And to me, it complicates the discussion unnecessarily. I either have an email sequence or I have a standalone email, and I don’t understand why you’re doing it.
[00:37:50.360] – Jonathan Denwood
You pointed out this is the other thing. Thanks, Kurt. That’s fantastic insight. This whole business, because people get confused. This funnel, like some of our funnels, actually make an enormous difference to your business. They get into these elaborate, which Branson and his cronies encourage. It’s a diversion. But on the other hand, sending out a sequence when somebody signs up for your membership website or they’re not used is important, but you don’t have to build some monstrous… It’s just over… It is important, but there’s a lot of people that have overemphasized that side of things. Am I making any sense here?
[00:38:37.630] – Kurt von Ahnen
I hope you are because it’s ringing true with me. I believe that certain people take a sliver of something out of our tech world and try to convolute it into something genius.
[00:38:52.930] – Jonathan Denwood
Mystical. You know what?
[00:38:55.250] – Kurt von Ahnen
At the end of the day, you’re sending an email. Are you sending a single email or are you sending a of emails? And does this tool do both? In this situation, it’s really like two tools, and they separate those functions.
[00:39:08.390] – Jonathan Denwood
The actual funnel building engine that comes from WP Funnel, in UX and usability terms, is one of the most impressive plugins in this area, folks. It’s very… Then they bolted on the newsletter and having a nice selection of templates. They’ve got a really nice product. I’ve kept on using Fluent because I invested in it. But if you haven’t invested, you can look at both and make your decision. If you host with WP on it, you have access to either. We’re at AppNotes it to some extent. We have recommendations, but they’re both great. We provide the email engine as well as part of our hosting package. It’s a great setup. On On to the next one. Bravo. Formularly Sendinblue. It’s another darling pushed a lot. I think they did get bought out, and that’s why the name change. It does a lot of what Omicend does. It’s a free product. They have a free product, but you can only send 30 300 email per day, and it has a limit on the subscribers, the starter plan, or it doesn’t. I think it doesn’t actually. You can only send 300 email a day. You’re going to look at the start.
[00:40:48.360] – Jonathan Denwood
The starter plan is only $9 per month. That’s the monthly price. You can send out 5,000 emails per month. That ain’t bad. The The business is $18, and it’s still 5,000 email per month. It does a lot of the things that Omnicent does. It has got SMRs, XMN-S, and it’s one of the more popular players. I think it’s a real Swiss army knife. I have used it and I have helped people, but it was a year ago, so there I might have improved it. I don’t think the UX design is up to on this end level, but it does offer a lot of stuff. To get all the stuff, you do have to go to the higher plans. What’s your thoughts about Bravo, Kurt?
[00:41:50.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
I had a client that used Sendinblue when it was still Sendinblue, and that’s what happened all my hair, Jonathan. I pulled it out. I was not pleased. I was not pleased.
[00:42:06.950] – Jonathan Denwood
These are the reports I’ve been hearing.
[00:42:09.290] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I just struggled. I did. I haven’t, in all fairness, I haven’t been into Brevo much. One thing I do like about Brevo when I was doing the research for the show was when you go to their pricing table and you say, I’m a starter versus I’m a business, and you say, Okay, I’m a business. I’m legit. When you look at the sliding scale, once you get to 20, and they do it by how many emails a month, not necessarily how many subscribers. And once you get to the 20,000 emails a month, it’s unlimited subscribers, which I really appreciated because so many other platform- That’s a great point.
[00:42:47.170] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m button in. You got a lot more to say, but that’s a great point. It’s more straightforward there, Charles. A lot of these SaaS platforms, folks, they’re sneaky. They’re sneaky, but they’re in It’s business, folks, to some extent, but they’re sneaky. A lot of how much it’s really going to cost you is a bit hidden, isn’t it? They’re more upfront. But what was the things that you didn’t like? What led to your hair loss thing, Kurt?
[00:43:14.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, for one, the client themselves was a little bit of a challenge, and their subject matter wasn’t in my wheelhouse. But these were the days when I was taking all the jobs. I was like, I got to do it. I need the money. They said, Oh, I use this send in blue thing. And then it was, how does the API connect? Do we have to use an API? Do we use a automation tool? Do we bring in WP Fusion? The customer didn’t want to pay for WP Fusion. They were under the impression that everything would just automatically connect, that we would have a-If a WordPress website, no.
[00:43:48.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Their plugin, I don’t put them in this middle bucket of this hybrid solution. They’re in the third category, folks. Their integration with WordPress isn’t fantastic.
[00:44:02.870] – Kurt von Ahnen
No. When you have a customer that says, I want to have a lead magnet and use WP forms, when they fill in the form, I want them to get added to this list, and then I want that list to add a tag that sends this message, That sounds, what I just said might sound confusing to some, but that’s the simplest of integrations you want to see in a CRM with your WordPress website, and to make that become reality on that customer’s budget without buying things like WP Fusion, it was a challenge to me at the time. That’s dated information that could have changed since the name changed. But when it was Send & Blue, I lost some hair.
[00:44:41.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. On to the totally opposite, which is MailPoet. We We actually provide this at W… We provide a lot of marketing email solutions as part of our hosting package, but we offer Mail poet. And unlike WP Funnel with Melmin, it does provide an email sending engine. You don’t have to use it. You can use another engine, but being that you’re paying for it, you can use this. It’s a pretty good email sending engine. When I was looking at the delivery figures, it does tend to get into your inbox. I think they were bought out by Automatic a while ago, which is the parent company of WordPress. Express. Now, it does provide the engine. If you got the free plan, you can send out to a thousand subscribers, which is quite generous. Then for 10 bucks, you can send out 5,000. Well, this is the whole thing. They change metaphor. The free plan is subscribers. I presume you can send out as many email to those subscribers as you like. But then when you go to the $10 business plan, you can only send out 5,000 1,000 email, but you can have as many subscribers. I find that really confusing, right?
[00:46:07.450] – Jonathan Denwood
But if we got people that are hosting with us and they just want to send a newsletter and they just want a really easy, it It comes with a really easy builder. I don’t think it comes with that many templates. I might be wrong there, but I don’t think it does.
[00:46:25.830] – Kurt von Ahnen
You’re going to- Actually, one of the reasons I love Mailpub Mailpoet is-It does.is the templates. The templates are amazing. Yeah, I was right. They look great, they’re modern, they’re crisp. The other thing that Mailpoet has that I absolutely love is they set up, and other tools have this now, too. A couple of other names on top of my head have done this, but they send out an automated recent posts messaging. So you can set the system to say, Oh, when I have a new blog post, I’ve sent it to this list, and it automates that process and does it for you. And that’s a really great way to bring viewers back to your point.
[00:47:06.370] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m sorry about it, folks, but actually, I do use it every week, and I do that, but I had my template. I coded my own template up. Then I got one of our developers to code it up. I designed it. I didn’t realize that. But they also offer some marketing optimization. It’s I’ve been in beta a while. I don’t use it because I use Fluent. I don’t think it compares in any way to what Fluent or WP Funnel is offering there. I don’t know. Am I off track there as well?
[00:47:47.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
Say that again because I think I misunderstood.
[00:47:49.130] – Jonathan Denwood
The marketing optimization side that they are offering.
[00:47:53.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think I’m in the same boat as you, Jonathan. I’ve used Mailpoet as a newsletter engine because I I like the templates. I know that makes me sound lazy, but the templates are awesome, and it saves me time and it works. Then I use my Fluent for my real heavy lifting with emails and lists and automations.
[00:48:15.110] – Jonathan Denwood
The next one we got is we got a couple of native. Like I said, that’s a native solution, but it does provide the email engine with some strange from subscriber to 5,000 email feature. I don’t work that well out. The next one is newsletter plugin. Haven’t really used this one, but I know it’s really popular because it’s really very Gutenberg-based, which is a native page building technology. It’s $79 a year, and it’s got a really modern interface. I presume they’re offering a lot of templates as well. I don’t know because I haven’t used it, but it’s very popular because of the price. You do need an email sending engine, but for the price, and it’s got a nice interface to build. I presume also they’re offering some nice templates as well. Am I right about this, Kurt?
[00:49:16.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
The templates I’m not super aware of. What I did like about it was the amount, the sheer number of integrations that they listed as part of their services. So, WooCom commerce, works with different form builders, has a composer, easy digital downloads, Google Analytics, the events calendar. I mean, it works with, like when we say it’s a WordPress focused tool, those are some key tools that people use in their WordPress sites. This newsletter plugin has an integration for all of those major tools.
[00:49:52.040] – Jonathan Denwood
You can’t beat the price, can you? 79 bucks for a year for one site license. The thing is, if you’re really in the newsletter, I would suggest that you’re just looking to send a newsletter that make Mel Poet for the free plan for a thousand subscribers. I think if you’re in that smaller list. You can’t beat it, really, if you’re looking for a native solution that provides the engine. But look at newsletter plugin, it’s recommended. On to the next one, which is Groundhog. Now, Groundhog is a native WordPress solution. Their pricing model, they’ve tried to adopt a SaaS pricing model to some extent with a native plugin. When it comes to UX design, I don’t think it matches up with either Fluent CRM or WP Funnel with them. But it offers a lot of integrations. When it comes to the marketing optimization side of it. I think it does the job. I think when it comes to the UX design, the other two native marketing, optimization, stroke newsletter offer better interfaces, but it works. Other people would have a different opinion to mine, and I’m fine with it. When it comes to the actual newsletter, it’s rather primitive.
[00:51:39.200] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s really gone with this plain-jane interface design, mostly text-based, and you can add an image and it will get into your inbox. But I think that’s died down anyway because the male clients have become even more sophisticated. But if you’re not bothered a branded newsletter and you’re happy with that setup, you’re going to be fine with it. What’s your response to what I’ve just said then?
[00:52:14.790] – Kurt von Ahnen
Groundhog is a unique use case platform situation. I was a customer for years. Technically, I still am a customer. From an email perspective, they’ve updated the email drag and drop editor in the last year.
[00:52:32.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, I have done so. I’m at that, Emily.
[00:52:34.650] – Kurt von Ahnen
So they’ve updated the email editor. It’s much more intuitive than it used to be. There’s a lot of strengths with this platform. Lots of templates, lots of suggestions on how to use the platform for business, lots of suggestions for automations. Their support offers courses where it gives you like, hey, download this template, add it, and then that template could be used as a funnel. So it has a lot of that support. Where I got distracted with Groundhog was all the bells and whistles, Jonathan, because you fall into that trap of just because it’s there doesn’t mean you need it. So it has project management cards, birthday reminders. I mean, it just goes sales pipeline. I mean, it just has so many… It’s almost like Salesforce and fluent and these things combined. But quite honestly, the interface itself doesn’t have that crisp professional appearance when you look at your screen. Like, fluent to me looks a little more sterile and business-like, and Groundhog looks more hobbyist and fun-like, but it’s not priced like a hobbyist and fun-like platform. It’s priced like it’s a serious to-do.
[00:53:50.460] – Jonathan Denwood
I might be totally wrong here. Do you think in some ways it’s the native version of Bravo? It offers a ton of stuff, doesn’t it? It offers a ton of stuff. But as you comment with Bravo, it can… But I think it… Because Bravo, you… Am I totally wrong there? Or is there some linkage?
[00:54:16.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
I don’t know. I think from a business perspective, there’s a ton of SaaS platforms out there, like your all-in-one business platform, SuiteDash. There’s all these things like that. And from a certain perspective, I think Groundhog attempted to fit some of that. And I think what happened is there’s just so many tools and so many things in Groundhog that it can actually become more of a distraction than a benefit. And I know that I say that in the weirdest, strangest, sideways way, but I was a customer for years, and like I said, technically still am. But it’s not cheap, and there’s just a lot in there. And if you try to use all those tools, if you’re a solopreneur, and you’re really trying to leverage all those things, sometimes the tool itself distracts you from your own success.
[00:55:08.470] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it can become too complicated, can’t it? I know. All right. Let’s go in some ways to the totally opposite, a laser focus to its user base. Somebody that started something and had a real laser focus at its target audience and really hit bullseye. And that’s Convert kit. And the founder, Nate, he really was a power blogger himself and built up some really impressive digital businesses through lead magnets and offering PDF books and that, and really understood influencers and bloggers and people trying to build members membership online businesses. And there was a real niche about… And a lot of these people were using WordPress, and it was very clumb. A lot of them were using Mailchimp, or they were using some other really clunky email system. And he offered really scripts that were predisease designed for that particular niche and offered landing page, building landing pages really easy and linking all the things that particular large group of bloggers, influencers, subscribers would need. And it really became the darling of it. And they have a free plan, and that’s up to 10,000 subscribers, I think. And then the creative goes down to 1,000 subscribers. But 1,000 subscribers, so that blew me away.
[00:57:07.710] – Jonathan Denwood
And then they got the Pro, which is 1,000 subscribers for 59. But the free plan, I’m pretty sure, unless I made an error, you get 10,000 subscribers, but I think they pin you down on the amount of email you can send. But their pricing seemed a bit odd. Very similar to Mail post pricing structure seemed a bit odd to me.
[00:57:36.350] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s confusing because that newsletter thing that says sign up for free up to 10,000 subscribers, you can send one email For a month.
[00:57:47.960] – Jonathan Denwood
For a month.
[00:57:48.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
You can send one email up to 10,000 people, whereas when the creator and the pro things, you can send unlimited email sequences up to 5,000 subscribers. Well, I have my pricing thing I set at 5,000 because I was really trying to compare on that sliding scale, what were these things all like for that size audience? The pro version, I’m showing at $93 a month for up to 5,000 subscribers with unlimited email sequences.
[00:58:20.920] – Jonathan Denwood
I find the whole language and their pricing structures a little bit confusing. I I’m tempted to say misleading a little bit, but I think that would be a bit strong. I don’t know. It’s in that gray area. So saying misleading is a bit too strong a word. But I’m struggling for the right. The other problem with it, folks, is that it does come with a nice newsletter builder. It does come with templates. Its main driver was integrating it with landing pages. But the thing is, and it did appeal to the people that were using WordPress, and building a landing page when it came out was a real pain But with modern page builders like Animator or what we love, Cadence WP, building a landing page, and a lot of these page builders come with a library of landing pages. Our offering with Cadence WP, where we built our own starter websites. We provide a lot, provides a template landing pages, and they’re really easy to edit. So one of the major drivers for Convert kit is gone down. If you’re in the WordPress space, it depends what you’re using. But the people that are using it love it, don’t they?
[00:59:59.730] – Jonathan Denwood
Or is he gone? I think my co-host is gone. Oh, he’s come back.
[01:00:06.150] – Kurt von Ahnen
I just have to step away for a second. I’ll be right back.
[01:00:08.470] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. I’m going to natter on until he comes back. But With that blogging course, Crowd, that building a membership website, it is still very popular. I think if you don’t want to use a native WordPress solution and you’re looking for something that is in the middle ground, I can really see why you still won’t be attracted to it. The only thing, it’s a bit like what we said about Omicend, is if you get into that 3,000 to 5,000, which is where a lot of people are, where they’ve moved on from a very small list and they’ve managed to build it up. It can be very profitable to have a targeted newsletter list between 3,000 and 5,000. It gets rather expensive, doesn’t it? I think they know it, ConvertKit gets very expensive, doesn’t Oh, yeah.
[01:01:31.910] – Kurt von Ahnen
How many times have you talked to a client in the last year, Jonathan, where you’ve said, Oh, what are you using for your CRM? Because you offer Fluent with the hosting. And then they’ll say, Oh, I’m using Keep right now or Active Campaign or Infusionsoft became Keep, right? You say, What are you paying for your CRM tool? And they’ll be like, Oh, $1,700 a month or something. And you’re like, Oh, my goodness. How in the world are you? Because you and I both understand that if we use a fully native solution in the WordPress site and just power it with a mail engine, we’re going to be able to save them. They’ll be paying pennies on a dollar.
[01:02:13.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but the problem is it’s rebuilding. If you’re using something like Active Campaign and you’ve built up very complicated marketing optimizations, having to rebuild those because they offer no methodology to migrate the business logger, they’re not going to, folks. And trying to rebuild that or influent. I have done it. It is not a cheap… And if you’ve got very complicated ones, it is a bit It’s a bit of a nightmare. It can be done and you would save still a lot of money. It’s just the pain of having to go through it. But the reality is, I think people should treat it as the opportunity to have a look at these optimizations because a lot of people just build them out, build them out, and build them out, and they’re not getting a lot from the optimizations. You can take it as an opportunity to cut at least 50 20% or less of the optimizations that are not really on reflection doing much for the business anyway. Would you agree with that?
[01:03:25.800] – Kurt von Ahnen
I definitely agree. I’m also a huge proponent of scrubbing and cleaning your mail list periodically because A, you have people join your list that it’s just spam, web spam that’s come through your web form or something like that. Anything that’s not a real name, anything that’s obviously a fake email address, go ahead and scrub that out of there. There’s tools to do that online.
[01:03:48.790] – Jonathan Denwood
If you’ve got 3,000 to 5,000, you should do it once a year, I think. There’s three, but there are in expense. I’ll use a paid service myself and export the list, import it, and it will tell you if the email is bouncing. The reason why you got to do that, folks, if you don’t do it once a year, it will affect the delivery of your emails because it’s hard bouncer as it’s called, really are a sign that you might be a scammer to some extent. You might be Clean your list once a year. If you’re getting into the 10, 20, 30, 50, 100, half a million, you should be doing it at least every six months, every three months. If you’re getting in the top echelon, you really should be hiring somebody like us. Part of the support package, we do it monthly because if you’re in the hundreds of thousands, you won’t be utilizing any of these services anyway, probably. You’ll probably be linking it to a provider like Amazon Web Services, their email. But I wouldn’t really suggest that for anybody in the, let’s say, 5-50,000 email area. I think it’s only worth the effort if you’re looking at you between 50-100 plus emails per month, 100,000, then using Amazon Web Services, it’s got to be managed much more, but there’s enormous cost savings, but they only work if you’re I’ll send it out.
[01:05:45.930] – Jonathan Denwood
If you’re between 50 to 100 or 100,000 plus, in my opinion. A lot of people aren’t going to agree with me there, but that’s my fault. On to the last one, which is a darling as well, and I can understand it. It’s MailerLite. It’s a French company, but we won’t hold that against them. Bonjour. I got love hate with France. I’ve spent many happy times in France. It’s just Parisians aren’t so nice. Anybody that’s been to Paris will tell you that. They offer a free It’s a plan and it’s 12,000 emails with no subscriber. Or is it a thousand subscribers?
[01:06:37.850] – Kurt von Ahnen
Up to a thousand.
[01:06:38.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Which isn’t bad, is it? A thousand subscribers and 12,000 emails. That ain’t bad value. It’s a like on the send and some of the other, I think we would say that with Bravo as well. It’s a Swiss army knife. They offer landing pages, marketing optimizations, a good library. I think you get what you pay. I think even with the free plan, their library of templates isn’t bad. I think if you go with the next level up, which is $15, but with a limit of 5,000 emails per month, which ain’t bad. I don’t think it does anything that particularly fantastic, but it doesn’t do things badly either.
[01:07:37.190] – Kurt von Ahnen
The sheer number of templates that they offer through their website is confounding. It almost makes me wonder if they have a community repository where people submit stuff and make it available because they’ve just got pages and pages and pages of templates available. And then the other thing that distracted me while looking at their offer was they’ve got their own website builder where people can build their own sites and put things together.
[01:08:07.620] – Jonathan Denwood
I wouldn’t use it, folks.
[01:08:08.950] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, that to me is like, I don’t know what that is. I was like, okay, this is a yellow flag at best.
[01:08:14.940] – Jonathan Denwood
I haven’t looked at the landing page. It was like Convert kit. They got a landing page builder. I think that’s okay, but I haven’t used it for quite a while. They got the marketing optimization side. I haven’t used that, the actual marketing optimization builder. They’re offering a lot. A lot of it isn’t terrible, but it isn’t fantastic. But on the Newsletter, email sending, and what they give you for the free plan, and even the basic plan, the value to function matrix dies It may sound a bit, but on the free plan, you can’t beat it if you’re looking for a SaaS. Would you agree with that? I can see why a lot of people do love it, though, don’t you?
[01:09:12.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
I am, and I tell my customers this, so it’s not a secret. I’m design handicapped. I’m great if someone gives me assets and I have people on my team to do design if I need it, but personally, I’m design handicapped. So when I see that they offer over 250 templates, I’m pretty intrigued. It’s a great offer. It’s a good value, especially for the dollar that’s proposed. I just don’t know that it would be the perfect fit for a lot of the projects that I work with. It comes down to use case.
[01:09:45.750] – Jonathan Denwood
I think if you’re just going to use it for the newsletter, folks, I think you’d be fine. I think, especially on the free, and I just think… But my experience with it is about 18 months old, folks. Things change rapidly in this sector. It just felt that the other fact, and they got a lot of other bits are okay, but they’re not best of I don’t read either. They’re appealing to very broad target, the small business sector, the medium business sector, where I have different criticisms of Convert kit, but those criticisms are different. It gets really expensive really quickly, but they got a more laser focus to the people that they were going to aim their product up. It really met the requirements where Mel light is a very more generalized product, aimed at a much bigger target audience. Does that make sense?
[01:11:09.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
It is.
[01:11:10.200] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. Now, when it comes to… Why would I think… I personally think if price is really important and you really don’t want to use a native WordPress solution, and you’re looking for free and you’re just looking for value for money and you don’t want to use a native WordPress solution. I think you can’t beat MailerLite, can you?
[01:11:44.770] – Kurt von Ahnen
No. Well, no, you’re right. That’d be a good one.
[01:11:51.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you can’t beat it compared. Now, if you’re looking, I can’t remember if MailerLite provides SMS. I’d be surprised if they provide that on the free plan.
[01:12:02.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
I don’t see it listed.
[01:12:04.120] – Jonathan Denwood
If that’s big, look at Oversend. The other factor with MailerLite is if you’re just going to build a newsletter and send it out through their system, you’ll be fine. If you’re trying to integrate the other bits with WordPress, their plugin isn’t that impressive in my It might have changed. You’re going to get frustrated very quickly based on my previous experiences. But if you treat it totally separate and just sending out a newsletter It’s when you try and integrate it with a learning management system and everything blah, blah, blah, it ain’t going to work well. If you then look at WP Fusion, their API, Manalites’ API, isn’t that particularly impressive? I would suggest that just use it for the newsletter for the 12,000 a month for the 1,000 subscribers. Just use it for the best value that it offers. But don’t think you’re going to do a lot of optimizations and that with your native learning management system on WordPress, or even with other sasses, other sasses like teachable and that. You’re going to be a bit disappointed, I think.
[01:13:40.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
There’s something that comes up with me, the idea of using a SaaS. So not for nothing, I get a lot of spam, and I can look at one pop-up and go, That’s a Convert kit, and I look at the bottom, it says, Send via Convert kit. There’s just a certain look to them. Then I get put off When I see that something came from MailChimp or something came from-Oh, you’re a snob, though, aren’t you? No, I guess I am a snob in that way.
[01:14:08.180] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re a professional snobber, isn’t it?
[01:14:11.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yes. When I use something that’s native to the site, whether it’s Fluent or Groundhog or whatever, I feel like there’s better branding coming from the source of who that’s sent from.
[01:14:21.460] – Jonathan Denwood
True, totally true. Now, if you’re looking at a native solution and you just want a newsletter and you’ve got a small list and it might grow a little bit, but you’re between 500 and maybe a couple of thousand people. I don’t think you can beat Mailpoet, even now. For the templates that it provides, which Kurt pointed out, it does provide a lot, and it’s got an easy builder. You can’t beat Mailpoet if that’s all you want to do. But if you’re building a course and you really want to build a real ongoing business, business, you’re going to be looking at optimization. But the good news is you can have Fluent CRM, and it works quite happily with Mailpoet. You can just use Mailpoet for the newsletter, and then you don’t have to use their email engine. It will quite happily allow you to use a third-party email engine, which is what Fluent CRM. So you could just use Fluent CRM for marketing optimization and use Mail poet for your newsletter. But it does mean you got two plugins, but a lot of people do that. If you’re just looking for the newsletter, I don’t think you can beat Mailpoet.
[01:15:47.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Would you agree with that?
[01:15:49.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
I 100% agree. A Mailpoet is a go-to for me and recommending to my clients as well.
[01:15:56.510] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, when it comes to the marketing optimization, like I I don’t think you can beat Flu at CRM. The only one that I think really challenges it, and you really got to look at both because they got strengths and weaknesses, is WP Funnel with Melmin. I think if you are going to look at WP Funnel, you got to buy both. You can’t just buy WP Funnel. You got to go for WP Funnel and Melmin, which is… I’m I’m bored having to say both names anyway. But we provide that WP tonic. But if you’re not with WP tonic, and you really got to look at both because what are the strengths of WP Funnel? They are a bit different to the strengths of Fluent CRM. But if you’re in marketing optimization, I think you could be happy with either, but you’re just going to have to do a bit of a dive. What do you reckon there, Kurt?
[01:16:58.210] – Kurt von Ahnen
I like the Mailman because of the extra design features that you get with it. It depends on the client. It really does. If I’ve got someone, like I mentioned, sterile is the word I use, but if they’re sterile, more business-like and they’re more resolute on what they’re going to do with the platform, then Fluent is probably their deal. It’s going to meet their needs.
[01:17:20.270] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s all the optimizations that they’ve done and other people. It is seen as the leader. And unlike Groundhog, it’s not trying to be a quasar SaaS solution. I understand it’s a native WordPress plugin solution.
[01:17:43.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
I don’t want to say anything disparaging against Ground Dogg. No, it works. I was a customer, but my comment was I believe he came from Infusionsoft before he made Ground Dogg. So you have all these extra tools, which some people might find useful. So if that’s your wheelhouse and you want a sales pipeline, a birthday reminder, and a project management card like Trello, or if you wish to put all that in your deal, it’s there. But again, when I think about use cases and clients, I have very sterile, committed clients who know what they want. And the customizations, especially the integration with Lifter LMS and Fluent, are phenomenal. That’s the tool. If they’re more non-resolute, flighty, open, and artistic, I will probably go the Millman type.
[01:18:35.760] – Jonathan Denwood
That type is going to find Fluent CRM. More difficult. They won’t be entirely satisfied with it, even though it does the marketing optimization they want.
[01:18:50.990] – Kurt von Ahnen
Because they want it pretty.
[01:18:52.420] – Jonathan Denwood
His primary weakness is their template library. It does the It’s a bit… But it’s not great. But if you want something that provides functionality and designs, you’ll be happier with WP Funnel and Melvin. That’s how I’ve rationalized it. But if you’re looking for templates and a newsletter, you’ll be satisfied with MailPilot, but you won’t be pleased if you want to do marketing optimization.
[01:19:28.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah.
[01:19:29.540] – Jonathan Denwood
I think that’s the best way. But if you’re not interested in any native solution, you will be happy with MailerLite. Now, when it comes to the engines with these native solutions, the one we are partnered with and provide in one package is Sendgrid. Now, Sendgrid has a free plan, but you can only send out 100 emails per day. You can use it for testing, but that’s about it. The essential is 19.95 per month, and you can send 100,000 emails.
[01:20:13.510] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, and it’s a bargain. I went from 1 SM to 2.
[01:20:16.980] – Jonathan Denwood
If somebody says to you that it’s too expensive, you need to get a gun and shoot them. I have no idea what they’re talking about because that covers about 90% of people who need their email sending, won’t it?
[01:20:34.190] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Jonathan, I hate to do this to you, but I will leave you with the closing words, and I must jump in more.
[01:20:41.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, let’s wrap it up now. What’s the best way for people to find out more about you?
[01:20:48.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, maniananomas. Com is our agency website. But I’m on LinkedIn almost daily if you’d like to make that personal connection. And as Jonathan is very fond of me saying, I am the only Kurt von Ahnen on LinkedIn, which makes it easy to find me.
[01:21:02.300] – Jonathan Denwood
We will be back next week with another great show, internal, where we’re a guest. Hopefully, you enjoyed this. Could you give us some feedback? We’ll see you next week, folks. Bye.
[01:21:13.150] – Kurt von Ahnen
See you.
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