I recently had the opportunity to test SendPulse for my business. Based on my findings, I want to share my thoughts on the best ways to optimize this tool for your business as well as go through the pros and cons of the software.
Before I go further, I want to give you a heads up! SendPulse sponsored this article. As I told them I would give an honest review. Fortunately, I liked most of what I saw. Otherwise, I would not write this article.
They had several features I can see enhancing my email marketing efforts.
SendPulse Walk Through
SendPulse offers free and premiums versions for their email marketing automation service. The free service provides customers with 2,500 free emails and 15,000 email sends per week. That is an amazing offer when you realize how many tools you get with the free version.
To help you start the free version here is a video going through the sign-up process.
Once you set up a free account, you can upload your list. For me it was a humbling experience. I needed to update my list. I spent a few hours scrubbing contacts to remove as many unsubscribes, bounced emails, and other bad emails from my list.
I had some help with this process. I removed unsubscribes and bounces based on information from MailChimp. Additionally, I went through and removed a few people that I did not believe were a good fit for my business. It is okay to remove those who you cannot help with your services to focus on those you can help.
Once I scrubbed my email list I then uploaded the list to SendPulse. The video below walks you through how to do this.
Finally, I created an email to send out to my list letting them know I am alive and ready to help them. Since I wanted to reactivate a dead email list, I decided to send a survey. The survey asked recipients what information on social media they could use to grow their business.
Send Pulse Pros and Cons
Now that we walked through the system, let’s spend some time going over the pros and cons of using SendPulse. Like I mentioned before this is a paid review, but I also required that it be an honest review.
SendPulse Pros
1. Enterprise level features without the enterprise level costs
Even the free account on this software goes beyond what most email marketing automation providers offer. For example, they provide email marketing automation to free accounts. This is a paid feature on MailChimp.
Speaking of which they allow free access to websites with less than 2,500 emails. Probably done to best MailChimp 2,000 free email subscribers. I am not complaining.
Additionally, you have A/B tests and a multitude of subscription forms to use on your website. I also have a subscription to ActiveCampaign. It does a lot of great things. Even with the lite paid account you do not get access to all the different forms.
While there are some workarounds for this on WordPress, it is nice to have the easy option. As a marketing automation expert, I want it easy and automated. Do not stretch my mind with workarounds.
SendPulse provides the different email forms I need to grow my list and drive revenue.
2. Cool automation features for unopened emails
SendPulse has a cool automation features for unopened emails. You can even use this feature for emails you sent out via MailChimp.
SendPulse provides you with the ability to resend email to all those who did not open the email after a specified number of days.
For example, if you send out an email to 1,400 subscribers, the chances are that many will not open the email the first time. You can automatically re-send that message to the non-responders on a set number of days later with a different title to test messaging.
This is an invaluable tool to engage your list with valuable content.
3. Email and SMS automation in the same place.
I did not test the SMS automation tools, but it is good to know that both of these tools are in one place.
When I uploaded my list to SendPulse it gave me the number of email AND potential SMS subscribers to my list. This is invaluable if I want to send out a message via text in addition to email.
Whenever you can create an integrated campaign you generally see better results.
4. Add WebPush to your website.
Another nifty feature is the ability to add a Push campaign to your website. This feature increase signups to your website. You can add valuable information your readers want in noticeable spots on your website
SendPulse helps you integrate the tool on platforms like WordPress.
SendPulse Cons
1. Improved Image Uploader
During the email campaign video, I had to stop and play a few times. This was because I struggled uploading the image. This is a simple fix, but user interface (UI) is vital to a successful system for customers.
On a website like SendPulse it is vital, because many of the users are not marketing experts like myself. Instead they are small business owners who might not know workarounds to UI glitches.
2. Email Campaign Screens Transition
Not sure if glitchy is the technical term. The screen seemed to move backwards after I saved the design, and then went forward to the final step.
This is a small problem, but I got nervous for a second that my email saved.
3. List quality question
This is not so much a con as it is weird. They confirm the validity of your list not after you upload it to SendPulse. Instead you get the message when you hit send on your first email.
It is awkward enough hitting send on your first email without the warning bells and whistles. I would rather you ask me about the quality of my list when I upload the list.
Plus, you need to include a 40+ character description of the list. The character count seems a bit arbitrary. If I am getting bit nit picky, my apologies.
4. SendPulse Integrations
SendPulse should increase the number of integrations with other services. Currently, they rely heavily upon Zapier to integrate tools.
Zapier is a great service. The problem is that Zapier adds an extra layer of complexity to your email marketing automation. The fewer steps in the process the less chances for something to go wrong.
Now, if I was to guess I assume this is on the project list, so please bump this up to the top of the list. Integrations are vital to the success of a new marketing software company.
To be part of an integrated campaign, your software must link to other providers.
The good news is they integrated their services with WordPress, Woocommerce, and Gmail. Now please add integrations with Facebook, Google Analytics, and SalesForce among others.
Final Thoughts
Overall, this is a great service that has many features that make me my marketing efforts more effective. From email to SMS to WebPush features, SendPulse added many great email marketing automation features to help you grow your list.
Don’t take my word for it though. Take a test drive with the free service to see how it can improve your email marketing automation campaigns.
