My Moosend Review:
Is This The Best Email Automation Tool for Authors?
Moosend is an affordable email autoresponder that you can learn to use in under an hour. Don’t let this fool you, however. This is no lightweight tool when it comes to delivering the goods.
Despite Moosend’s apparent simplicity, the results you will get are extremely professional in performance as well as appearance. As an author, I don’t have time for complicated systems that eat into my writing time. When I’m in front of my laptop I want to be turning out copy for my novels or stories; not fiddling about trying to make an autoresponder work.
When setting up my author’s webpage, thomasgreenbank.com, I knew one of the most important things was having a way to gather emails and sign up visitors to my newsletter. I knew nothing about email autoresponders, so had to spend a lot of time on research. I tried a few and settled on Moosend. One of the big plusses with Moosend was the fact that the free version (up to 1,000 followers) includes unlimited free support via live chat. I knew that was something I’d need. It doesn’t stop there, however.
We can easily spend way too much on ultra-powerful marketing automation software that we don’t really need. Plus, some programs can be really complicated and hard to use.
With Moosend, you get heaps of options to customise your email marketing automation. Moosend has a rich set of triggers and actions all easily managed within a drag-and-drop interface. Workflows can be shared among team members, if you use them, who can leave notes or memos where required.
The Moosend interface itself will educate you on how to automate and fine-tune your virtual workplace. There are templates, preset workflows, and rich tracking capabilities; all of which Moosend uses to make it simple to find what works for your unique subscriber base.
Leverage the AI to hyper-personalise your emails based on similar consumer preferences and other behavioural analytics.
One thing they’ve recently added is “And/Or” expressions to custom fields. This allows for a lot more customisation in terms of defining triggers. Custom fields don’t have to be just one thing any more! If this seems a bit like gobbledegook to you now, don’t worry. It’ll all become clear as you learn the ropes and create your first email automation.
I have my automation set to greet new subscribers with a Welcome Email that first asks for a secure double opt-in. They are then sent the first piece of bonus content (in my case, a free chapter from my debut novel that was culled and then turned into a short story) and then more free content on a regular basis.
Another thing I offer them is occasional notifications about special deals and promos from other authors whose works I admire. These, I simply send manually in just a few minutes. I can’t automate these as the offers are usually time-sensitive.
You don’t need to know how to write a single line of code. You can quickly master a deep set of email automation features that include:
- Rich tracking, reporting, and analytics
- Click heatmaps
- Five types of subscription forms
- Direct SMTP service
- Cart abandonment (Useful if you plan on selling your books from your website)
- Embed product blocks in newsletters for shoppable emails
- Mobile responsiveness
- GDPR compliance
- Native integrations with WooCommerce, Salesforce, WordPress and dozens more top products
The Moosend free forever plan, which is capped at 1,000 subscribers, comes with many of the best features. For additional subscribers, you’ll need a Pro plan, and that starts at $8/month, which is way below prices charged by other tools. By the time you need that, though, $8 will seem like chicken feed.
The exact price you’ll end up paying eventually will depend on the number of subscribers you need to accommodate. For example, 25,000 subscribers is $100/month. The Pro plan maxes out at 200,000 subscribers ($608/month), with custom plans available to reach an audience of any size.
One thing you can be assured of is that Moosend has to be the best value email management system, bar none. It has features comparable to many competition products with much higher price tags.
How long will it stay like this? Is this just an introductory offer? Yep, I wondered that too. Well, Moosend has been around since 2011 and looks like being with us for the long haul, so don’t let that bother you in the slightest.
“What if I already have a different autoresponder and want to change?”
All well-designed email management systems allow for simple import/export of existing mailing lists. I won’t go into details, but trust me, that is all taken care of within the program.
Compared to other, more expensive options, Moosend is much easier to use even compared with many seemingly more sophisticated systems. Don’t just take my word for it, though—try Moosend for free and see for yourself. You won’t regret it one bit.
