MailerLite

affordable, simple yet powerful email marketing

(Yael's preferred choice of "starter" email marketing software)

mailerlite email marketing software OVERVIEW

Known for its ease of use, MailerLite is a fantastic choice for any small or online business starting out with email marketing.
Not only does it provide all the essential email marketing functionality, but it does it at a fantastic introductory price including a Forever Free Plan.

(Note: While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy of the information on this page, technology is constantly changing so make sure to double check all features and pricing with MailerLite directly first)

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Drag & Drop Email Builder

Create beautiful email campaigns easily with their drag & drop builder - using a range of easy-to-use content blocks. Just add your brand elements and watch your emails come to life.

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Simple Automations

Easily & intuitively build automated workflows to deliver the right emails to the right subscribers at the right time. Your welcome series, abandoned carts, onboarding emails and more can be created in just minutes.

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Subscriber Organisation

Create groups of subscribers based on the actions they have taken, what they have purchased or details they have provided. Only sending emails to those who actually are interested.

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who is mailerlite for?

MailerLite is a fantastic choice as a starter email marketing software or for those who only have basic requirements. Unlike other entry level products, you still get access to the most important email marketing features like automations (with no limits on the action steps you can take).

SERVICE PROVIDERS

Easily set up different groups of subscribers so you can send tailored emails based on their stage of working with you—whether they are a subscriber, a lead, a client, or a past client.

This allows you to customise the emails they receive, such as sending newsletters exclusively to subscribers while sharing important updates with clients.

You can also create welcome experiences to generate leads, onboarding experiences to ensure ultimate client support and offboarding for that all important retention.

Note: MailerLite does not directly integrate with any calendar booking software. However, this can easily be setup using Zapier.

ECOMMERCE

MailerLite integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, Squarespace Ecommerce and BigCommerce for your most essential e-commerce needs.

Combine this with list building and welcome series', you can have quite a powerful setup.

Basic purchase information is synced but not at an individual product level. Additionally, you can create easy Abandoned Cart and Post Purchase automations.

However, the e-commerce features are limited (e.g. no dynamic product blocks), so I only recommend it to those starting with just a few products or to those where ecommerce sales are secondary to their primary business model.

For more advanced e-commerce email marketing, I recommend going with a software designed specifically for this purpose such as Klaviyo.

DIGITAL CREATORS

MailerLite integrates directly with cart software like ThriveCart and also offers the ability to sell digital products directly through its platform (available on paid plans).

List growth is made easy through the ability to create multiple forms, lead pages and delivery sequences. Then you can nurture those subscribers through welcome automations or sales funnels.

Program and membership delivery is also made easy through the easy setup of groups for each "round", and then customising the onboarding experience and regular email updates.

mailerlite pros & cons

PROS

The Price - MailerLite hands down gives the most range of features on their Forever Free plan (1000 subscribers). However, it is definitely worth investing that little bit more in the Growing Plan which starts at only US$9/month.

Simple to use - It’s hard to describe without experiencing it for yourself but MailerLite is really simple to navigate around. You can create beautiful campaigns with their drag and drop builder and the automation workflows are visually simple.

Groups - you don’t have separate lists and you don’t have tags. But you have a feature called "Groups" which is the best of both worlds. I love how you can assign a group for almost anything and then email specific groups (OR exclude certain groups too).

Deliverability - MailerLite has consistently performed in top 2 of deliverability tests.

CONS

Landing Pages – MailerLite does have landing pages but the design is really tricky to use and it always does some funny little things that you can’t figure out how to fix. And you can be really limited by their templates. So normally I’d recommend creating a landing page on your website and embedding a form. However, if you are stuck you can still use this feature – just don’t expect as much design flexibility as you may like.

Limited with date based automations. While you can trigger an automation based on the exact match or anniversary of a date you cannot use date fields as delays to “wait until” or you can’t update date fields from within automation to be current date. This can provide limitations for things like service reminders.

Reporting - While most of the data is there, you need to do a lot of manual clicking around to get it.

No support on the free plan and no way to grant an agency access without giving them your password. To enable both, you need to be on a paid plan.

my favourite feature - surveys!

This powerful content block that can be added to any email means you can ask your subscribers anything! Plus on the backend you can use the information to update custom fields or add them to different groups.

Also a handy work around for doing a one click add to waitlist or opt out of promo campaigns.

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How to get the most out of MAILERLITE

Start with SETTINGS

Make sure your essential settings are in place like your address, branding and social links. Plus authenticating & verifying your domain.

Then when creating your first email template, go to the master brand settings and use that as your starting point from there on. That means you don't need to constantly be changing colours & fonts.

(Pro tip: Star your most used content blocks!)

CREATE A GROUP FOR EVERYTHING

And use a naming convention.

So one for each lead magnet (LM: Name), one for each category of client or even one for each type of call.

Then use the same name as the group for your forms and your automations so you know exactly what goes with what.

Separate your lead magnet and welcome series automations

In most scenarios you'll want your subscribers to be able to get your lead magnets or opt in confirmations more than once, but your welcome series only one time.

And if you have multiple lead magnets, the last thing you want is for subscribers to get the welcome again and again and again.

The easiest way to manage this is to add a "welcome" group to trigger off the same welcome at the end of each lead magnet delivery automation. And then at the end of the welcome add them to a "newsletter" group so they don't get your other emails while going through your welcome experience.