Best Practices For Changing Your Email Marketing Provider

Whether you are using Managed Hosting products or Managed Application platforms, now may be an optimal time to look into switching your email provider to a different service.

MailChimp changed in early 2019 to become more of a marketing platform, accompanied by a pricing increase in their plans. If you haven’t already changed services due to this change, you may want a reliable option as a replacement. This article considers three other services which may be a better alternative:

• EmailOctopus
• Moosend
• MailBuster

EmailOctopus and MailBuster offer robust and stable features and are well-priced for all list sizes. EmailOctopus and MailBuster also use AWS SES (Amazon Simple Email Service) to send out emails, which means emails are sent reliably. The primary focus will be EmailOctopus.

 EmailOctopus Setup

To use EmailOctopus, you need to sign up for an account. You can sign up for a starter plan, which includes up to 2,500 email subscribers. After signing up, you will follow the steps to verify your account. The first step is to create a new list in EmailOctopus.

Next, login to Mailchimp. To export contacts from MailChimp, you have to export each list:

1. In your Mailchimp account, click Audience.
2. Select the Current Audience drop-down and click View audiences.
3. Select the name of the audience you want to export.
4. Click Export Audience.
5. From the Audience exports section, click Export As CSV and save the file.

After downloading the export, extract the zip file. It will contain two different CSV files; one for subscribers and one for unsubscribed people. The CSV file you want to upload in EmailOctopus will be the subscribers' CSV file.

After you have selected the correct CSV file to upload into EmailOctopus, map the fields in the original CSV file to your new list.

Once your subscribers’ list has been imported, the next step will be to create your campaign in EmailOctopus.

Additional Configuration

Since both EmailOctopus and MailBuster use Amazon Simple Email Service, you must sign up for an Amazon SES account. Once you have the account set up, follow the steps outlined in the EmailOctopus tutorial.

As an added benefit, the Amazon Simple Email Service includes up to 62k free emails a month. This advantage saves you from having to incur additional costs to use this service. EmailOctopus also includes a setup wizard to help you easily connect your Amazon SES account, which makes that process even more convenient.

Now that you have imported your existing subscribers, you can replace any/all generated forms on your site using an embedded MailChimp form. You can also create this new form via the Design option in EmailOctopus. If you are using a WordPress plugin for Mailchimp, EmailOctopus also conveniently has a WordPress plugin you can use.

Ninja Forms and Gravity Forms have EmailOctopus integrations that are useful on your site. These options allow minimal modification to the existing forms on your website. The only change needed is slightly modifying the current form, so the submissions go into the EmailOctopus list, not Mailchimp.

If you were already using Zapier for your site form integrations, EmailOctopus includes several existing zaps to make things easier. The other combinations that EmailOctopus has available are covered here.

If you currently have automations set up in MailChimp, similar options also exist in EmailOctopus. After you have tested that your forms are working correctly, you can now close your Mailchimp account.

Moosend and MailBluster also include several site form integrations and incorporate a WordPress plugin.

Final Thoughts

This information helps you easily migrate your existing subscribers from MailChimp to EmailOctopus without experiencing any gaps between the mail services connected to the mail forms on your website.

Our sales team stands by with real-world information that reinforces your business development needs. Solutions such as our VPS Hosting, Cloud Dedicated Servers, and Dedicated Servers can run WordPress and provide control of your hosting environment. With an intimate knowledge of these and other technologies, we can assist in getting you set up and configured to utilize this info better to improve your overall Web TCO.

Contact us today to speak with one of our knowledgeable advisors right away!