You do not find these problems when using Keap Pro. You don’t have to be tech-savvy to use Keap Pro. The visual campaign builder is easy to use. You can create a simple campaign to capture leads and deliver a lead magnet with ease, and then build on that for more complex automation. The ability to be able to run a complete customer journey from capturing the contacts name to engaging with the lead, to taking the order and delivering the goods means that a solopreneur can use Keap Pro to control and react to that customer journey. 

Keap Pro’s quotes function allows you to build and customise your quotes. It's very simple to use and looks great. Customers can review and accept quotes all with the click of a button.

Conclusion

To conclude, I believe MailChimp is a good piece of software, but only when using it to send out emails, and at best, very basic automation. It lacks many features that are needed for businesses to streamline their processes. Because it lacks these certain capabilities, it's understandable why the price is so low. Appointments, quotes and invoices are essential for any business.  And as mentioned earlier, these external pieces of software come at quite a hefty price. If you are looking for a piece of software that has all these capabilities built in ready to go out of the box, then Keap would be an understandable choice.

On the other hand, Keap has excellent marketing automation capabilities. Keaps marketing automation comes to fruition because of their campaign builder. Keap has a flowchart-style campaign builder which makes building email campaigns more enjoyable than you might imagine, and it’s extremely satisfying to know that on any given day thousands of consumers are all being interacted with in a custom-made way, while you focus on more important matters. Its elegant drag-and-drop interface is perfect for pulling together complex marketing workflows that would otherwise need drop-down menus and tabs. Campaign workflows are created in graphical form so you can clearly see each step and branch. Communication and action methods have symbols (e.g., an envelope for email and a phone for click-to-call) that you can drag and drop into position along the marketing funnel. To link one step of the chain to another, you draw a line with your mouse from one icon to the next, which tells the system that the previous step’s completion triggers the following action. You can double-click any icon to explore or alter the stage of the campaign should you need to make on-the-fly changes. 

The good thing about campaign builders is that its ‘goal oriented’, which urges business owners to think less about what cool automation they can run, and more about what they are trying to get their prospects and customers to do. This type of thinking is important when you’re using complicated tools to map things out.

What is Constant Contact missing?

Yes, Constant Contact has all the things you would expect a good marketing automation system would have, email marketing, websites, social ads and third-party integrations being a few. However, I do believe they lack the necessary tools to turn this good system into a great system. For example, how would you send quotes to potential clients? Set up appointments with potential customers? Send invoices to current customers? These are all capable with third party applications, but these said applications can prove costly.

Acuity scheduling is a good automatic appointment booker that syncs with any calendar of your choice; however, you need to pay for this. You can buy the business version of Acuity for £20 a month, on top of your normal Constant Contact bill. Keap Grow and Pro both have an amazing appointment system included, which allows you to send a link to the potential customer, they can then book into your calendar at a time that fits both of your schedules. 

The ability to send quotes to potential customers is another function that is completely necessary for any business to be efficient and professional. Unfortunately, Constant Contact does not have the in-house capabilities to provide this. A piece of software like quoteroller is needed to provide this service, but again, at a cost. The monthly price to use quoteroller is around £40 a month, on top of your normal Constant Contact bill. Keap Grow and Pro both include a great quote function, allowing you to quickly and simply create personalised quotes to send to your customers. 

Invoices are also very important to the success of the business, because in effect, this is how you will be paid. A business needs to get paid to run. Unfortunately, Constant Contact does not offer this capability out of the box, therefore meaning you will need to go elsewhere to be able to unlock this function. Keap Grow and Pro both include an invoice function, allowing you to send invoices quickly and easily. If you did need to look elsewhere for your invoicing software, QuickBooks is a great example, amongst other things. But again, it comes at a cost, roughly £20 a month. As I’ve stated, these functions are achievable, but only using third-party applications. Just these three functions would increase your monthly bill nearly £70. Now why am I talking about this? Good question.

When talking about Marketing Automation, Keap opens many doors which will allow you to do some pretty cool stuff. In contrast to Aweber, Keap allows you to trigger automation based on many different triggers. Some of these include paying for a certain product, failed purchase, pipeline staged moved and quote status.. A cool thing you could do with product purchase goal is send follow up emails about that certain product. If you have many different products, Keap allows you to customise a unique email to each unique product. If the product requires more support, you can add more emails and support. If the product is simple or easy to use, then it allows you to tailor a campaign especially to that product. It saves you sending generic emails or spending time writing and sending unique emails, allowing you to look professional and a real expert on that product or service.

Aweber Landing Pages

What are landing pages and why are they so important? A landing page is a web page that lets you capture a visitor's information through a lead-capture form. A good landing page will target a particular audience, such as traffic from an email campaign promoting a particular ebook, or visitors who click on a pay-per-click ad promoting your webinar. The reason they are so important is that they are great at generating leads. Potential leads fill in their details on these pages, giving your sales team's potential sales.

Unfortunately Aweber does not have built in Landing Pages capability, so to access this function you would need to pay for a third party application. Unbounce is one of the most popular landing page editors out there, but because it's not already included in the package, you would need to pay $99 (£75.85) per month to use this software. It is a good piece of software, but the high price may steer away small businesses from using Aweber.

Keap offers a landing page builder within the application. They’ve made it easier to create gorgeous custom landing pages that will help you capture more leads. It’s free, easy to use, and comes with a gallery of templates to achieve your goal. New Landing Pages works in tandem with your email campaigns and paid ads to generate interest and easily manage the new leads you capture. 

Aweber as a CRM

CRM is an abbreviation for customer relationship management, which is a piece of software that not only allows you store data of all your potential leads and customers; it also allows you to keep track of all the dealings that you have made with them, alongside helping you manage follow-ups. 

AWeber offers the same kind of functions as a CRM in terms of contact management, but it does not have the lead generation and sales functionality that you find in most CRM systems. It lacks functionality like appointments, quotes, invoices and appointments. All functions that enable your business to make sales. To gain access to these functions, you will need to pay external companies for these services. 

Keap Grow and Pro provides a really great quote function already included. When leads request a quote, you can immediately send them a personalised quote specifying your services and costs. Instant quoting makes it simple for clients to choose you for the job. If using Aweber, you would need to pay an external company to access this function. Quoteroller is a good choice, however, you will be paying £40 a month for this additional service.

Keap Grow and Pro already have a great appointment function built in. This works by sending a link to your customer, that allows them to see when you’re available and then book in at a time convenient to them. It automatically connects with your Google Calendar, and Keap takes into account the times you are unavailable. When your lead books in, your Google calendar automatically updates. You do not need to have long conversations about availability, allowing you to spend the extra time improving your business. An appointment function is not included with Aweber. A good application named Acuity is available, but to gain access to this, you would need to pay a monthly fee of £20.

Keap invoice function works a lot like the quotes function, and is available for both Grow and Pro. Is it very simple to use and looks great. It allows you to build a personalised invoice quickly and easily. These are just a few of the extra capabilities available. These features are available to Aweber users, but only through external software, not Aweber itself. Invoice Ninja can be used, which costs £7 a month to run.

Lets Compare the Costs

How much will you be looking to pay? Unfortunately Aweber only has pricing in US dollars, but I will convert the price into GBP on the day I write this article (16/01/2020) and put the result in brackets next to it. So, the first option they have is the option that allows you up to 500 contacts. The price for this is $19 (£14.55) per month. Their next option is up to 2,500, and you will be looking to pay around $29 (£22.21) per month. The middle tier is up to 5,000 contacts, and the pricing for this is $49 (£37.52) per month. To get up to 10,000 contacts, you will be paying $69 (£52.84) per month. Their last option available on their website is up to 25,000 contacts, costing you $149 (£114.10) per month. If you have more than 25,000 contacts, you would need to contact Aweber for a quote. These are the prices just for Aweber, it does not include all the additional integrations you will need to have a really great CRM and marketing automation system.

Let's assume you are a business coach with 3500 contacts. What you need is a solution that allows you to market to existing and new customers. You need a great landing page which attracts new leads. You need the ability to set up appointments with new leads or existing customers. You need the ability to send quotes and invoices to hot leads. You also need a sales pipeline, to see where all your sales opportunities are. And you also need to be able to take payment for your services or products if they are accepted. You will need the middle tier option which is $49 (£37.52) a month. The first thing you need is landing pages. Aweber does not have these included, but Unbounce is a good solution, costing £75 a month. Now, you need to set up appointments, meaning you need to pay for Acuity - £20 a month. So the appointment went great, and you need to draw up a quote to send to the customer. Quoteroller is needed, therefore a payment of £40 a month to them is needed. The customer then accepts the quote, meaning an invoice is needed. Invoice Ninja can be used for £7 a month. Because you have many quotes and invoices out, you need to keep track of these. Pipedrive is a good choice, but you will need to pay £25 a month for this. The final price for the whole package monthly, it will cost around the £200 mark. It also means you will be dealing with six different companies, which can get quite confusing. As you can see, it is possible.  Keap Pro would be a sufficient application in this scenario, costing £79. 

An important aspect of Awebers pricing strategy is that every subscriber on your lists counts toward your subscriber quota. Though it makes sense that active subscribers count toward this maximum, people who have unsubscribed from your lists also count toward this limit as well. Not only that, but Aweber also counts duplicate subscribers (the same subscriber on multiple lists) towards your limit. For example, if you have one subscriber who is subscribed to six lists, that subscribe counts as six subscribers instead of one. Both of these would be very annoying to any business owner and it means you constantly have to work at pruning your lists of unsubscribers and duplicates which can take valuable time and effort.

The pricing of Keap depends which kind you want. There are two editions, Keap Grow and Keap Pro. Keap Pro is the higher priced package with a few extra capabilities like sales pipeline, campaign builder and recurring billing. Keap Grow is £39 per month, whereas Keap Pro is £79 per month.  If you need additional contacts, up to 1000 is £19 per month. Up to 5,000 is £99 per month. Up to 10,000 is £149 per month and then up 25,000 is £189 per month. In our scenario of the business coach needing 3500 contacts Keap Pro would cost £99.

Conclusion

To conclude, there are a few things the business owner will need to take into account when deciding between the two. How advanced do you need your automations to be? Do you need any other capabilities other than email sending? If all your business needs to do is send out generic emails based on basic goals like subscribe to list or email opened, then Aweber would be a good choice, as these are the only two options available. Also, if all you need is to send emails and nothing else, then again, Aweber would be a good choice. However, if you need more advanced automation, or other features like appointments, invoices, quotes or payments, then Keap would be more suited to your business needs.

Mailchimp – it’s often the first port of call for small businesses who want to do some marketing.

And it’s not hard to see why – it’s super quick to get started, and if you’re just sending occasional emails to one list, then it’s easy to use.

The question is: if MailChimp is that popular, why is it that small businesses tend to switch away from it as they start to do more marketing?

In the words of Smart Business Trends: “I found that the service was lacking in many ways. They haven’t been innovating as rapidly as their competitors and many prominent bloggers and marketers were switching away from MailChimp to other services.”

The reality is that while MailChimp does a few simple things well, it simply isn’t capable of doing what most ambitious business owners need it to do.  There are a few reasons why which we’ll explore in this article. 

Automation?  Sch-mautomation…

One of the single most significant reasons why business owners switch away from MailChimp is because it doesn’t do something they want it to do.

And one of the most common limitations is around MailChimp’s automation ability.

Yes, you can send a series of automated emails after someone joins your list, but that’s where it ends.

There’s no ability to automate communications based on the way that your contacts interact with your emails, nor do you have the option to promote different products or services based on contact behaviour.

In short, you can send your contacts one, linear campaign spaced out however you want, but MailChimp won’t do anything more complicated than that.

No one to market to?  No marketing…

You can come up with the most stellar and imaginative marketing campaign in the world, but if you don’t have anyone to send it to, it’s not going to be successful.

That’s why a key feature of any piece of email marketing software needs to be its ability to capture contact information so that the contact can continue to be marketed to.

MailChimp does this well enough, but many MailChimp graduates have come to the realisation that the form builder that MailChimp offers you is too elementary for advanced marketing use.

There no sophisticated design options, and while you can create custom fields that help you collect more customer information, that isn’t really what the tool is set up to do and consequently it isn’t that effective.

Some MailChimp users opt to use an additional lead form builder, but this obviously comes with another price tag attached, which isn’t ideal – having to pay twice because your initial provider isn’t quite up to scratch isn’t what most people want.

Landing page limitations

In recent years, MailChimp have added a landing page builder into their offering, but many users have found it to be somewhat basic – it’s difficult to build the kind of good looking, user-friendly pages that most businesses want.

“One size fits all” CRM

Whilst MailChimp has worked hard in recent years to present themselves as an all-in-one marketing solution, adding in “audiences” and other forms of segmentation, the reality is that rather than being a one-stop-shop for your customer records, it’s an email marketing tool that’s attempted to add that functionality.

Consequently, the customer record side of things feels very “one size fits all” – it’s hard to find useful information about your customers, and because it’s not really a CRM, it’s also difficult to input the information you actually want to store.

No custom or proper segmentation

Perhaps the biggest factor in businesses switching over from MailChimp once they’ve been marketing for a while is the lack of proper segmentation.

MailChimp hasattempted to solve this problem by moving away from “Lists” and towards “Audiences”, but the truth is that this has only served to muddy the waters.

Now, it is highly complicated and un-intuitive to “segment” your audience, and even when you have segmented it, it’s not straightforward or simple to select the segment you want to send to.

Worse than that, because the segmentation is manual, rather than automatic, it still relies on manual tasks in order to slice up your audiences into something usable.

For businesses that want to market at scale, it just doesn’t do what it needs to.

Here’s what Venture Harbour said about the software:

“If you only need to fire out the occasional round of emails, MailChimp is a good option. It’s mostly a very intuitive platform, and the drag-and-drop email builder, in particular, is a joy to work with. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer the kind of advanced segmentation and automation features you’re going to need if you want to do email marketing at scale.”

No proper UK support

One of the biggest bugbear among MailChimp users, and often the straw that breaks the camel’s back is the serious lack of support from MailChimp.

Once you’ve got an account, you’re pretty much left to get on with it, with only a few online articles to help you if you get stuck.

Price

Like lots of pieces of software, MailChimp starts out free, but when you get over a certain threshold of subscribers, you need to start paying. 

The price quickly escalates, so if you’ve got a decent-sized database, you can end up spending a lot of money on it every single month, which has led business owners to wonder if they can get more value for the kind of figure they’re shelling out for MailChimp each month.

MailChimp isn’t “bad”; it’s just often used as a square peg in a round hole…

MailChimp isn’t a bad system.  Not by a long chalk.

If you’re just looking to send some emails to your audience and nothing else, then MailChimp will do the job.

But the principal reason why so many people are shifting away from MailChimp is that it is, ostensibly, an email marketing sender and nothing more.

Yes, MailChimp has worked to try and broaden their scope over recent years, but the truth is that customers have been largely unconvinced by these innovations, and consequently have switched to software that does more of what they need it to.

Which, when you think about it, makes sense.

After all, if you can enjoy all the functionality that MailChimp offers, plus proper automation and a fully functional and intuitive customer relationship system for a similar price, then who wouldn’t switch?

Why ambition business owners are ‘trading up’ their email marketing software…

If you’re a Mailchimp user and you’re reading this article, then you’ve either already discovered the problem with Mailchimp and you’re looking for a solution, or you’re eager to understand what potential problems there might be with the software.

But first, an introduction:

What is Mailchimp and what is it good for?

As you probably know, Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing systems in the world.

And for good reason, for pure email marketing, it really does do its job very well.

Not only is it free to get started and send your first email, but when you’re starting up in business, the chances are your database will remain relatively small, and consequently, Mailchimp remains an inexpensive option, up until the point when you house more than 2,000 contacts in it.

Email broadcasts is where Mailchimp comes into its own, with ‘autoresponders’ also built into the offering.

The email broadcast function makes it pretty easy for you to send one-off emails to groups of people within your database,  while the autoresponder function allows you to capture prospects’ data through a Mailchimp form, and automatically send them a few emails after they’ve ‘opted in’.

Once you’ve used Mailchimp for a while, and you’ve done some marketing, you’ll likely be in a position where you’ve got a list or series of lists of email addresses that you can send emails to.

The long and short of it is this: Mailchimp is a good email tool.  But that’s where it ends.

Where most businesses come unstuck: the danger of using Mailchimp for all your marketing.

As we’ve established, when it comes to sending emails, Mailchimp has pretty much all of the boxes ticked.

But that’s where its usefulness ends.

What we tend to find is that business owners and marketers start off with Mailchimp because of its ease of use and email functionality, but then grow to a size where they need more marketing capability from their “CRM” than Mailchimp allows.

And - in true square peg round hole - style, they’ll soldier on, trying to get it to do things that it just isn’t designed to do.

It’s when you go beyond just sending emails that you realise that Mailchimp really isn’t a marketing all-rounder:

Yes, it’s got opt-in forms, but it doesn’t have a proper landing page builder, which necessitates purchasing another tool to help you collect prospects’ data.

Yes, you can send content in your emails, but if you want to send your prospects anywhere else, you’ll either have to buy another tool or get your web company to build pages for you, at considerable expense.

Yes, you can pique interest in your product or service, but Mailchimp doesn’t provide you with the functionality to dynamically communicate with each prospect on a personal level, understanding where they are in the customer journey and providing the correct communication as a result.

Here’s the thing: as soon as you press send, Mailchimp has hit its ceiling.

The reality is that almost all marketing is with the purpose of creating a sales conversation and then selling to the prospect.

But as soon as you’ve hit the send button, Mailchimp plays no other useful part in that process.

It doesn’t help you book meetings or telephone calls, it doesn’t put your prospects into a specific multi-media campaign.

It doesn’t help you take the money when you’ve sold something, or send invoices to collect money.

And, in conversations with lots of Mailchimp users over the years, one of the biggest concerns is the lack of support.

With Mailchimp, you really are on your own to figure out the software, how to design emails, which campaigns you need and how to get forms on your web pages.

There’s no support on this front, aside from a few unofficial Facebook groups. If you only want to send emails, and you don’t need any support, then you’ll probably be okay.

But what if you want and need more?

Mailchimp sends emails.  That’s great.  But where can you get the rest of what you need?

Emails are important.  Of course they are.  But are they the be-all and end-all?

Not by a long chalk.

When you think through every element of your customer journey, what’s clear is that email broadcasts are not the only thing that drives a business forward.

There are a number of different puzzle pieces that turn a prospect into a customer, and a customer into a raving fan, and although Mailchimp does a couple, it pales in comparison to other marketing software options out there.

And whilst Mailchimp is a great place to start, most serious business owners realise at some point in their journey that it is just too limiting to really allow them to do the things they need to succeed and meet their goals.

When Mailchimp users come to us and ask what the next step after Mailchimp is, our answer is a simple one:

Is Keap® Pro for you?

Is Keap® Pro for you?

In short, if you use Mailchimp and you’d like to do more than just send emails, Keap® Pro will be a big upgrade, without a significant increase in price.

When you come on board as a Keap® Pro user, you’ll pay a similar monthly subscription to Mailchimp, whilst also accessing scores of additional features that will save you money, reduce admin and create more time in your business.

With better, more organised marketing, your customer acquisition process will end up being unrecognisable.

- Your emails will be attractive, personalised and bespoke to your prospects’ interests

- Your follow-up will be consistent, specific and comprehensive

- Your customer and prospect communications will be highly organised, systemised and based on real data, as opposed to guesswork.

- Your software bills will be reduced, since Keap® Pro allows you to do everything in one simple-to-use tool.

What happens when you get more consistent and more effective and systemised marketing out into the world?

More leads.  Better leads.  More qualified prospects.  More sales.  Better customers.

Less stress.  Less kneejerk marketing when business is slow. 

A steady flow of qualified prospects is a business owners holy grail, and with Keap® Pro, it’s not pie in the sky - it’s highly achievable, at a highly affordable price.

Keap® Pro will improve your business, your marketing and your sales, giving you less stress and time back to spend growing your business.

How much does Keap® Pro cost?

Keap® Pro is an investment of just £79 a month, which is comparable to most email marketing tools out there - you really are getting a lot of functionality for that price.

But since you’re reading this, you qualify for our ‘Mailchimp Migration’ offer.

For a limited time only, here’s what you can benefit from:

50% off for your first three months - for your first three months as a Keap® Pro user, you’ll pay just half of your subscription fee, meaning that by the time you pay full price, you’ll be making it pay for you.

Free migration service - you might not be the techiest person in the world, but you don’t need to worry about how you transition over from Mailchimp.  Our expert technicians will take care of that, moving over all live autoresponder sequences from Mailchimp to your new Keap® Pro applications, as well as all your contacts.

Keap® Pro Kick Start for just £1 - our award-winning Kick Start training comprises of three 1-hour screen share calls with a member of the team, helping you to set up Keap® Pro, get to grips with it and quickly start leveraging the software.  Usually an investment of £225 + VAT, you’ll get your Kick Start for just £1.

30 days of EXELA Assistance Programme FREE - Our Assistance programme is designed to help you to get the very best out of the software, providing you with unlimited live training tickets and unlimited email support, as well as 50% discounts on specific coaching and technical work.  Usually an investment of £25, your first month will be absolutely free.  After your first 30 days, you’ll simply pay £25 a month, which you can cancel anytime.

As you can see, when you take action on our Mailchimp Migration offer, you’re getting a significant amount of value for very little cost, and as you’ll understand, we can’t offer this promotion forever.

That’s why this offer is dependent on you taking action in the next 48 hours - click the button below to take advantage now.

Remember - if you’re using Mailchimp already, and you know that you need to take your marketing more seriously, Keap® Pro really is the perfect next step - with everything that you can do on Mailchimp included, as well as scores more features and benefits, Keap® Pro is the ideal choice for the business owner or marketer looking to take their communications to the next level.

If that’s you, click the button below and let’s get started now.