Aweber vs GetResponse vs Mailchimp

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Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
which delivers cutting edge conversion strategies from the online trenches straight to
your earbuds. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
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once again it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

Jonathan: You are listening to the List Building Lifestyle Show. Here is the
“Daddy of List Building”, Mr. Igor Kheifets.

Igor: I think we should go back to the Czar of List Building if you don’t mind.

Jonathan: [laughter]

Igor: I think it’s going to stick for sure.

Jonathan: I thought it was like, “Who’s your list building daddy?” Let me spank
that. [laughter]

Igor: Now we’re getting into pimping and that’s like a really gray territory and I
think we should stay away from that. [laughter]

Jonathan: [laughter] Nice so what do you have for us today, Igor?

Igor: Well today as promised we’re comparing autoresponders like we’re trying to
find out which one is best for you if you’re promoting internet marketing
products. The three programs, the three software, three services we’re comparing
today are Aweber, GetResponse and MailChimp. There are four categories that I rate
my autoresponders. As somebody who has been banned like more times than I can even
care to remember, okay there are only four criteria that bother me that are really
important to me. First and foremost, it’s the email delivery, how well are my
emails delivered because I know that everyone doesn’t like ñ if you to go to any
autoresponder’s website and the first thing they say is we are the best in the
world, we got the proprietary technology and we guarantee 99% email delivery or
some shit like that.

Jonathan: What?

Igor: And 99% time, that’s bullshit. Nobody can guarantee 99% email delivery
simply because there is so many things that go into deciding that percentage that
are quite frankly are outside of the autoresponders control. For example, it could
be your from email address. You can be getting a really good IP from your
autoresponder company but your from email address is a Gmail, you will not inbox.
It’s not just going to happen anymore. I mean there are rules against that at this
point. The ISP will simply not let you in. Or you could be using a link that’s
actually banned so if you’re promoting a company such as Empower Network, I know
that the Empower Network doesn’t exist anymore and that’s probably why I’m using
them as an example but at one point when Empower Network was really kind of
picking up steam like it was really growing, EmpowerNetwork.com got blacklisted
because so many people mailed out that link so what happened was from that point
forward anyone from that point forward EmpowerNetwork.com in their emails landed
in the spam just because of the link. So whenever the autoresponder company
promises you 99% email delivery, please do not believe them because they simply
can’t promise that, there is no way they can guarantee that. So that’s the first
criteria, email delivery. Criteria number two is ease of use. So we’re talking
about the user experience, it’s how easy it is for me to load a new email, how
easy it is for me to set up a follow-up sequence, how easy for me to cloak a link,
to check my stats, to transfer my sequence from list to another and so and so
forth. Now the third one is functionality. In other words, what kind of options do
I get with it. Is it just about setting up my follow-up sequence and that’s it? Do
they track conversion using their own custom pixel? Do they provide me with an
ability to email my list at a specific hour of the day or maybe set up like a
five-hour gap between the two emails in my sequence allowing me to create a
scarcity launch? So that’s the kind of stuff I’m thinking about. Like do they
automatically segment prospects out of my prospect list and move them to the buyer
list when they buy something? Right? Not every autoresponder does that. So that’s
another thing that I’m thinking about and last but not least likelihood of getting
banned. So like I said, I’ve been banned a lot. I’m talking dozens of times so
obviously whenever I’m signing with anyone these days, the first thing I’m
thinking is okay am I signing up for two days? Am I going to get banned? If I am
should I even bother? And we’re going to talk about that in a few. So the ranking
system that I’m using for this one is 10 point scale. For email delivery, ease of
use, and functionality, I’m going to rate from zero to 10 with 10 being the best.

Jonathan: Nice.

Igor: And for likelihood of getting banned I’m going to rank from zero to 10 with
10 being the least likely to ban me. So a 10 basically means I can send out porn
and gambling and I will never get banned.

Jonathan: List Building Daddy.

Igor: Yeah that’s the List Building Lifestyle, that’s right. So I have this table
in front of me. So when it comes to email delivery which is to say when it comes
to being certain that your emails will be inboxing shall you choose to obey all
the rules of inboxing so not using your Gmail as your from name, not using a bad
domain as your cloaking and not mentioning a bunch of different spam words in your
email swipe and so on and so forth. If everything else is equal and just the email
software is different like how likely are you to inbox. So my results and by the
way it’s really important to say that; these are real-time, real-world results.
This is not speculation or theory. I have an Aweber account. I have a GetResponse
account. I have a MailChimp account and I have been using them for a long time. So
this is real-world data and it’s only related to the internet marketing space. So
if this is weight loss, not relevant. If this is dating, not relevant. If you’re
in the real estate market or if you’re selling podcasting service, not relevant to
you.

Jonathan: [laughter]

Igor: So in terms of email delivery, Aweber gets a “7” which means basically it’s
okay. It’s decent. It’s something I can build a business with. GetResponse gets a
“5”. The reason it gets a “5”, I really wanted to give it a “2” but the reason it
gets a “5” is because sometimes I meet a person who gets really good delivery with
GetResponse but most of the time, it’s crap. I’m thinking it’s because somehow
this one person ends on a good IP address in spite of GetResponse doing everything
possible to make sure that internet marketing lists don’t end up on those good
IPs. So GetResponse gets a “5”. MailChimp gets a “9”.

Jonathan: Wow.

Igor: MailChimp in my book gets a 9 out of 10 because it does deliver well not
just on Gmail, it actually delivers well on Yahoo as well which is really hard to
do because Yahoo and AOL are the same thing now and since the merger happened
Yahoo has been really difficult to inbox. They often put you in like a lock, they
may temporarily block your email and you have to stop mailing Yahoo addresses for
two days. Like they can do all likes of crazy stuff. So it’s really difficult to
inbox with them and MailChimp is actually achieving that; doing a great job. So I
applaud MailChimp for that. Now the ease of use, user experience so imagine the
least skilled person that is easily confused by any technology if we were to give
them an account in each one of these services like how likely were they to
actually load an email and set up the follow-up sequence. So Aweber gets a “10”.
Aweber is by far the easiest one to use, it’s the most intuitive. It doesn’t lag.
It doesn’t get stuck. It doesn’t reset, that’s the one thing I always hated about
Imnica Mail when I used them is it would always reset itself midway through me
loading an email.

Jonathan: Ugh.

Igor: Like sometimes I would be writing the email and something would happen and
it wouldn’t save it, it was just ridiculous. Aweber, they have an auto-save
feature so it almost never happens. At the very least you’re salvaging 80% of your
work even if your power goes out or you lose your internet connection. It’s really
good. The user experience in Aweber is incredibly simple, incredibly intuitive
like the moment you sign up you know exactly what you need to do to load up your
stuff. GetResponse on the other hand, gets a “5”. Again so GetResponse sometimes ñ
here is how I feel about GetResponse, GetResponse feels like someone who is really
jealous of Aweber and is trying to copy from them but make it seem different at
the same time.

Jonathan: Nice.

Igor: So they come up with all kinds of weird names for their autoresponder
sequences and for their broadcast sequences. They set up automation rules
backwards like instead of saying send out an email on day three, the condition may
seem like I’m exaggerating of course but the condition may seem like send out if
day number is larger than 2 and under 4, you know what I mean like all kinds of ñ
it’s the difference between a really good coding and really bad coding.

Jonathan: No kidding.

Igor: So lots of unnecessary bullshit around the essentials which I really hate in
GetResponse. I really do hate that. They also seem heavier and laggier than Aweber
like again just awkward. Can you tell I don’t like them?

Jonathan: [laughter]

Igor: Because this is an unbiased review. There is no bias whatsoever here.
[laughter]

Jonathan: Yeah.

Igor: Now MailChimp, the user experience with MailChimp for me, I rate it at a
“6”. I do it because for the most part they are okay but there are dozens of super
annoying things that force you to do a lot of repetitive nonsense. Just so you
understand what I mean, it took me 60 minutes to load up my very first automated
email follow-up email for my buyers’ sequence in MailChimp.

Jonathan: One email?

Igor: One email.

Jonathan: No!

Igor: The first email, it took me 60 minutes. Now this is after I have been doing
this thing for several years and acquainted myself with all autoresponders, right?
It’s after that. I thought I have the experience, I know what I’m doing, I know
what I’m looking for, and still it took me 60 fricking minutes to load it up and
set it up so it actually goes out. I have also experienced a lot of trouble with
the formatting issues because they got these templates and I had to modify them
and I had to save it as a template and I didn’t save it right so MailChimp turned
out to be way more complicated than I was hoping it would be and that’s why it
gets a “6”. So number three is functionality. Aweber functionality by the way I
know it seems like Aweber is the clear winner here but bear with me you may be
surprised. So Aweber functionality for me, this means like I explained can they do
an automated segmentation for the buyers’ list? Can they identify a person that
hasn’t been opening my emails for two weeks and remove them automatically? Can I
segment by landing pages? Can I segment by country? Can I do a lot of this crazy
stuff that you really need to do if you are taking segmentation seriously and of
course automation as well not just segmentation but really automating a lot of the
repetitive stuff. So Aweber gets a “8” out of 10. It’s pretty good but it could be
much better and what could make it better is AW Pro Tools which is a fairly known,
it’s a pretty popular plug-in that you can use to connect your Aweber through the
API to really put it on steroids. So you can kind of turn Aweber into fusion
software. GetResponse, like I said they copy everything that Aweber does, they
just do it in an awkward way so in terms of functionality they offer the same
things. Now they do have some advantages such as for example they allow you to
send out on a time zone specific hour which means if I set up the email to go out
on 7 am, I can go it out at 7 am EST for you Jonathan because you’re located in
Florida and I can have it go out for me 7 am Israel time because I’m in Israel.
This is actually a pretty good thing. GetResponse gets somewhere between “8 and
9″, I’m still leanings towards a “8”. MailChimp surprised me. MailChimp had better
automation than Aweber and GetResponse and I loved it. I honestly loved it. It was
difficult but I honestly loved it. I’m giving MailChimp a “9”. I didn’t feel a
need to create any additional plug-ins to really get the full benefit from using
MailChimp. They have really done a great job at functionality. Also by the way,
MailChimp stood out for me in another fashion. They stood out in the way they
educate their customers like their database was so much better. Like their
tutorials were so much better than what Aweber had to offer and what GetResponse
had to offer. Aweber and GetResponse have this sort of articles that feel like
they were written for SEO, you know what I mean?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Igor: It’s like 500 word articles with some general tips. Now MailChimp felt like
they were really trying to explain to the customer what the hell is going on. So
the easiest way to see that is to compare their articles on spam complaints and
what you can do to prevent spam complaints, right, the language they use, how
specific they get, etc. So again functionality MailChimp gets a definite “9” and
they are the best one that I have found. Last but not least of course is the
likelihood of getting banned which it is really important like I said not every
email autoresponder company appreciates what we do. They don’t like people who
promote make money online stuff; they don’t like people who are borderline biz op
and a lot of them for some reason I don’t know why, a lot of them don’t like
affiliate marketing and this is true not only just for autoresponder companies but
also for advertising Adwords. Like if you advertise Igor affiliate link on Bing,
you get banned. If you advertise affiliate on YouTube like you actually do a paid
ad and they figure it out it’s an affiliate link then they ban you, believe it or
not, they shut you down. So when it comes to the likelihood of getting banned, I
remind you here the scale is 0 to 10 with the 10 being least likely to ban you. So
10 being the absolutely safe place where you can email out porn and gambling and
child abuse and you will never get banned.

Jonathan: [laughter] Drugs.

Igor: Yeah, exactly. Aweber gets a “5”. GetResponse gets a “6” which again is very
similar to Aweber although GetResponse, they don’t tend to ban you but they do
tend to put you on a bad IP which is worse because they keep charging money and
you think that you’re mailing but the reality is your emails are not getting
delivered.

Jonathan: Wow.

Igor: It’s a sneaky move but what do you expect they are from Eastern Europe.

Jonathan: Ah hah!

Igor: I am from Eastern Europe, I’m Ukrainian, and this is within the culture to
try and kind of find these loopholes. MailChimp gets a “2”. Two meaning that
almost anything gets banned.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Igor: So I actually got banned on MailChimp when I was setting up my buyer
follow-up sequence for Igor’s Solo Ads customers which is not affiliate marketing,
and it is not biz op either, it is not IM, it is a service so technically,
Jonathan, it’s kind of like what you got, a service.

Jonathan: Right.

Igor: I serve clients looking for a service. Guess what? I got banned in five
days.

Jonathan: Wow. Nice work.

Igor: Yeah, thank you. I’m really proud of my achievements. So to sum it up,
the final score is GetResponse ranks last, dead last at “24”, MailChimp is second
to last with “26”, and number one is Aweber with “30”. Now MailChimp however
doesn’t get to stay on that list, I disqualified because it’s impossible to actually
mail from it. It’s impossible to not get banned if you’re dealing with the kind
of products we’re dealing with so MailChimp has to go and you have to choose
between Aweber and GetResponse and in that case you’re going for Aweber
hand down the best option. Now Jonathan, this is where I expect for you to
come in and argue with me, how come we are only reviewing Aweber and
GetResponse?

Jonathan: How come you’re only reviewing ñ this is probably the simple stuff that
you can get started with the lowest barrier to entry I can imagine.

Igor: Thank you for the question; it’s a really smart question, thank you very
much. The reason we’re reviewing Aweber and GetResponse is because these are the
two ñ a) yes they are the lowest entry barrier b) they are the cheapest c) the
other services always have some Achilles’ heel that I simply can’t get over. For
example, in InfusionSoft great company but they too will get you banned if you’re
in biz op or affiliate marketing and also they are really expensive like besides
the actual fee for the autoresponder, you actually have to pay $1500 or $2000 for
a set up fee or something like that where they have to teach you how to use it.
It’s very confusing.

Jonathan: Right.

Igor: Now you got other services like say Ontraport, I think everybody heard of
Ontraport, really expensive, $300 a month and it limits you to 100,000 emails.
With Aweber or GetResponse you never get any limits on how many emails you can
send. You get a limit on the size of your list. So if I have a list of 10,000
people on Aweber, I can mail that list every day and that’s going to be a total of
300,000 emails that I send out that month. On Ontraport, if I have a 10,000 person
list I can only mail that list 10 times during the course of a month because my
limit is 100,000 emails.

Jonathan: Crazy.

Igor: Yeah, and that’s 300 bucks. The reason it’s so is because Ontraport is more
of CRM than autoresponder so to explain the difference, a CRM is customer
management database where you sort of upload people manually and you manage their
entire profile including their phone number, address and a lot of different things
because Ontraport I think it allows you to integrate with direct mail and a bunch
of different things. Aweber or GetResponse has just been created for the email,
just to email the list. So that is why if you’re a List Builders and you’re just
getting into it and you’re not looking to create any sophisticated marketing
system that involve 15 different types of media than Aweber and GetResponse are
the two options that you should be choosing from.

Jonathan: Yeah, I want to second the Aweber thing because I’ve been using Aweber
since ’08 and now I’m getting away from it because my business is changing a
little bit but simplicity, pricing and deliverability for me have always been good
with Aweber. So Igor what do you have coming up for us next time?

Igor: Next time, we’re talking about spam complaints. I was actually reviewing
some of the most popular searches in Google about list building and it turns out
that spam complaints is a huge concern for people but with it I couldn’t find any
decent advice, any real world advice from people who actually work on lowering
spam complaints that made any sense. As somebody who got banned from many
different types of email delivery software, I have incredible amount of experience
with spam complaints because that’s one of the reasons they ban you is because
your spam complaint is too high. So I believe you’d benefit from checking out my
advice because I literally ate a dog learning it. So that’s what I want to chat
about next time.

Jonathan: Alright looking forward to that. Another List Building Lifestyle is in
the can, we’ll be back in your earbuds next time. Thank you for tuning in.

Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle Show, make sure to
subscribe on iTunes or Google Play to never miss an episode because who knows just
one conversion tactic we share on the show might double your list and double your
business. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
listbuilderslifestyleshow.com and don’t forget to claim your complimentary copy
of “The Wealthy List Builder’s Survival Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival .
This is Igor Kheifets until next time we talk, have a good one.

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