GetResponse Review

Full review

GetResponse bills itself as the "World's Easiest Email Marketing" – how accurate is that assessment, and what does the service offer beginners and those that are not new to email marketing? We checked out the GetResponse package.

Setup

GetResponse bases its pricing on the number of people you send your emails to, creating a price structure for a set amount of email subscribers. The cost of a plan with GetResponse varies from £12 per month for 1,000 subscribers, to £400 per month for 100,000 subscribers, so you really need to know how many people you are going to be sending emails to. If you pay annually you can save quite a bit of money on the cost of each plan. If you’re not sure, you can try the service free for 30 days with no credit card input required.

Email creation

When you want to send an email you are likely to want to send an HTML email to take advantage of the design opportunities this format gives. With GetResponse you have access to over 300 templates to start you off on your email design process. Once you’ve chosen your template you don’t have to leave it as it is – GetResponse offers you the opportunity to adjust and edit photos and images, add buttons and text blocks, and use the drag-and-drop editor. You can also save snippets from your email to reuse across campaigns or in the future. Non-beginners can create from scratch using the HTML code editor. Another bonus is the library of more than 1,000 stock photos.

Campaign creation

GetResponse gives you a decent selection of ways to import contacts and manage lists, which is incredibly useful when you are managing email campaigns. Import contacts from your email or your social networking accounts, or from your computer, in popular formats. Preview how your email will look in different email clients, from Yahoo! to Opera. If you are sending emails across the world then the Time Travel scheduler helps get your message to readers at the same local time all over the world. In order to attract subscribers in the first place, create sign-up forms using a template and embed them on your website or Facebook page.

Deliverability

According to research by Return Path, the GetResponse service provides 99 percent email deliverability. The company works with ISPs for instant whitelisting and to maintain deliverability into your subscribers’ inboxes. To prevent spam emails, GetResponse also works on anti-spam policies and gives you tools to avoid sending unwanted email marketing to people. The service automatically processes unsubscribe requests, complaints and bounces.

Tracking & reporting

We like the convenient tracking and reporting tools included with the GetResponse email package. Your campaign is only as good as the responses you get, and you can track these responses using the email intelligence tools. These tools include hour-by-hour metrics, an email comparison tool and segmentation tools. The hour-by-hour metrics comparison tool allows you to discover the best time of day to send out your emails by looking at when subscribers open your mails and take action. The segmentation tool is useful because you can group your email subscribers into segments according to whether they opened or clicked, and you can do this with a single click. Further tools include the ability to calculate the ROI of emails, view follow-ups, and view email campaigns side by side to see what worked and what didn’t in order to maximise the success of future campaigns.

Features

Autoresponder – Within the program you can set automatic follow-up emails to keep in touch with your subscribers.

Surveys – Use tools within the GetResponse system to create online surveys for simple market research on your campaigns. After you send the survey you can use the reporting tools to see how well the survey performed.

Social Media – Add social sharing buttons to the newsletter which help to increase engagement and maximise the power of your email marketing campaigns. Once added, you can track reactions across the different social networking channels.

Ease of use

The tools provided by GetResponse for email creation, campaign creation, follow-up and reporting are all intuitive and simple to use. You have a lot of choice over how to create campaigns and how to view statistics from campaigns, but the service is easy enough that beginners won’t have any problems creating and following up on their email marketing.

Help & support

Take advantage of different support options with the GetResponse service. The telephone support option gives you US and UK numbers to call, and you can contact the team during business hours and on Saturday. There’s also live webinars, manuals to download, video tutorials, reports, and a live chat feature.

Overall

GetResponse is a solid, all-round performer where you can create good-looking emails, monitor their progress and manage future campaigns with ease. Sign up for the free trial to see what’s on offer.