EmailOctopus is a free online email marketing platform with WordPress, Zapier, Amazon SES integration and more. Here it lets you create and automate email marketing campaigns in one of the easiest ways possible. It comes with all the tools built in that you will need to draft a smart and highly performing email campaign. There are two ways it lets you send out emails; using Amazon SES and their proprietary email servers. However, you if you are not a legit user of the platform then you will only get the SES version where you configure an email server on your own.
There are many email marketing tools out there and this one of the reasons, you need to select the one that meets your needs. Even through there are more popular and professional ESP available, as a startup or small company, you can go with EmailOctopus. It has all the features that you might need and it gets integrated right into a WordPress website as well.
It lets you add subscription forms on your website and it offers some Zapier zaps that you can import. With those zaps, you can add new Shopify and Gumroad customers in your email list. You can use all these tools in the free plan lets you send 10000 monthly emails to 2500 subscribers. And the free version retains the data for 30 days.
Main Features of EmailOctopus:
- Automated Email Campaigns: It supports automated workflows to help you set up onboarding emails for new joiners. You only have to configure these in your settings.
- Visual Templates Builder: Here it offers a simple as well as a visual email templates builder that you can use to design a professional looking emails. It has some ready-made templates already that you can use for your campaigns. However, the free plan will add EmailOctopus branding on outgoing mails.
- Amazon SES Support: If you want then you can use your own email server to send out email campaigns via SES integration. Amazon SES is a very cheap services by AWS where you will be charged $0.10 for every 1,000 emails. But this is a bit technical part and if you don’t want to go for this option then you can stick to the regular plan. An advantage in SES is that you will not have any limits on the number of emails you will send out each month.
- WordPress’ Integration: If you want to add your website or blog subscribers to email list then you can easily do that. EmailOctopus offers you a free WordPress plugin to do that. You can design a simple subscription form and then you can get user’s email right in an email list.
- Custom Domains: In the EmailOctopus settings, you can configure a custom domain to send emails. You only have to do some verification in order to set it up and if you own a domain then you can easily go through the process.
Using EmailOctopus to Send First Email Campaign:
Just go to the main homepage of EmailOctopus and then sign up for a free account. The regular free plan will be give to the approved users only if they need a legit email marketing solutions and if they fill out correct details. By default, you will be given SES based email configuration.
The very first thing you need to do is create an email list. You can easily do that by going to the “Lists” section. Create your first list and then import subscribed in it from a file. Or, if you want to initialize a list from the scratch then you can do that as well. So, create your list and add some subscribers in it.
Now, it is time to design an email template. Go to Templates and then select any ready-made template for your campaign. Later, it will open it for you a visual email template builder. From there you can simply change the certain elements or add new ones. You can fully customize the template according toy our will and save it.
Next step is just create your first campaign. Just select list to send emails to and then specify the corresponding details. Specify subject line and preview text like details and then send a test mail(up to 10 recipients).
After you are done, then you can just send out the campaign. Or, if you want to schedule it to send it a later time then you can do that as well. After you have sent the campaign, you will start seeing the analytics. Also, you can see the reports to analyze your audience.
Another important thing you can do is integrate this with your website. From the settings, you can find the link to its WordPress plugins and useful zaps for Zapier. In case of WordPress, you just install the plugin and activate it with your AP key that you can generate in settings. You can then design the subscription form and embed that to any of the pages of your website. When people submit their emails in it for subscription, they will be added to a specified email list automatically.
In this way, you can use this simple and powerful email marketing platform to send your email campaign. The free plan is generous enough for small scale use or startup or personal use. But later when you need higher usage volume and your list grows, you can think about subscribing to the paid plan of EmailOctopus.
Closing thoughts:
EmailOctopus has all the features that an email marketer needs. Also, getting started with it very simple too and I liked the fact that it supports Amazon SES and email automation. If you are looking for an ESP tool for your business then you can give it a try.
