We all love MailChimp Forever Free plan, don’t we? MailChimp’s Forever Free Plan allows you to keep up to 2,000 subscribers and send up to 12,000 emails per month. What happens when your MailChimp account has more than 2,000 subscribers?
Here’s what I can guarantee you: Headache.
Most of us love anything that doesn’t require us to pay for it (for whatever it is). But when we hit 2,000 email subscribers on MailChimp, we panic. We understand that we would need to start forking out money monthly just to maintain the email list.
Read this before you go down that rabbit hole …
The first thing is you should do right now is start cleaning up your email list. This means that you should remove all your email subscribers who have not interacted with you for some time.
You need to start identifying those inactive subscribers by creating a segment on MailChimp (fastest way).
Once that is done, you need to add conditions to further discover email subscribers who are low in ‘value’.
Due to MailChimp’s limitation, you can only choose a small portion of options as seen above. I use the last five campaigns as that would give me better stats and results.
Once that is done, the second step is to re-engage with them for one last time before you ultimately remove them from your list. I often send a super personalized message with an urgent email title to ensure that the open rate is high. Don’t be afraid as it is common for them to unsubscribe themselves!
If they fail to open the email within three days, you can proceed to remove them from your list. By now, you would have a smaller list and probably save you some space.
IMPORTANT: I recommend you to continue reading the below as it will come in handy real soon!
You should be making money using your email list and here’s why
When you have more than 2,000 email subscribers, you should already be monetizing your email list. Wait, what?
Yes, you heard me right. 2,000 email subscribers is not a small number and this means that you can be doing a lot more to generate revenue from your email list.
Let’s say you take an example of promotion WP Engine on your email newsletter.
- Revenue per successful WP Engine affiliate sale: $200
- Open rate for your email: 50% (2,000 email subscriber x 50% = 1,000 email subscribers)
- Click through rate for your email: 20% (1,000 email subscribers x 20% = 200 email subscribers)
- Successful conversion (buying): 2% (200 email subscribers x 2% = 4)
Total revenue earned: 4 x $200 = $800 per email campaign
No, I’m not kidding you.
You see, I’m putting a super low figure in all the calculation above and the reason is simple. I want you to understand that even with the lowest count, you can make a lot more money through email marketing.
And yes, you can start making money NOW.
Wait, I still have 2,000 email subscribers on MailChimp and I am not sure what to do!
I’m glad you asked. I have gone through that road before and I was puzzled. I have no idea what I should do and my geeky brain told me to do the calculation (see above).
I understood that I could earn a lot more money in a long run if I continue building my email subscribers. Thus, growing beyond the 2,000 email subscribers limit on MailChimp.
What you need to do now (which we are going to discuss below) is this:
Decide on an email marketing software to proceed with your email marketing.
Before moving forward, take a quick moment to ask yourself this question.
How much is the lifetime value of your email subscribers?
Take a look at this infographic done by KISSmetrics.
In short, lifetime value of your email subscriber is often determined if they are going to repurchase in the future.
How to decide the best email marketing software once your MailChimp has more than 2,000 subscribers?
1. Upgrade your MailChimp account
You should go for MailChimp if:
- You have a low lifetime value of an email subscriber (under $5)
- You are not actively selling anything of high value to your email subscribers
- Lead generation isn’t a top priority for you at this point in time
- Segmenting your audience is not important for now
On average, you are going to pay anywhere between $25 to $30 a month with 2,000 email subscribers on paid MailChimp plan.
MailChimp is best when you are a small business or blogger which email marketing isn’t the most important thing for your business. Therefore, sticking to MailChimp is not going to hurt you in any way since you will be making more than enough to sustain.
2. Move to ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a good MailChimp alternative because of its pricing model. ConvertKit thrives ahead of MailChimp, especially with their subscriber’s centric model.
Using ConvertKit, you will not be charged multiple times if the same subscriber subscribes to multiple lists. Compared to MailChimp, subscribers can be calculated multiple times which is based on the number of lists they are following. Not so good.
You should go for ConvertKit if:
- You are looking for a robust email marketing automation but as easy as MailChimp
- You want to increase conversions with automated emails that feel personal
- You need to organize and understand your subscribers
- You need landing pages (this is a killer, ladies and gentlemen!)
ConvertKit’s pricing is very flexible and it is one of the best deals in the marketplace. You can check out the ConvertKit pricing and the pricing starts at $29 per month.
3. Move to Drip
Drip is dope and I’m using it for my business (including this blog). Drip is really powerful because it allows you to take automation to whole new levels.
[clickToTweet tweet=”If you are using email to sell online products and courses, you need to consider Drip today!” quote=”If you are using email to sell online products and courses, Drip does it better than any other email marketing solution. Period.”]
Drip is also the main reason how I can sell thousands of dollars worth of affiliate marketing products every month!
BONUS: Want to know how to make MASSIVE money through affiliate marketing? Learn more for free.
You should go for Drip if:
- Automate anything and everything (tagging, list cleaning etc.)
- Selling online courses or products
- Inbuilt different types of forms (slider, pop up, exit-intent)
- Workflow technology (that brings automation to whole new level)
I would say Drip works as powerful as Infusionsoft but just at a cheaper and lower pricing scale. If you are an advanced marketer, consider using Drip as it is guaranteed to grow your list. Don’t take my word for it. Click here to head over to Drip’s demo!
Summary: What do you do when you hit 2,000 MailChimp email subscribers?
You have three options right now; upgrade to MailChimp’s paid plan which will save you more money, migrate to ConvertKit if you want to start segmenting your email subscribers, or upgrade to Drip to take email marketing to whole new level and ultimately, make your email subscribers fall in love with you.
Do you have more than 2,000 subscribers on MailChimp? What do you do? Tell me all about it in the comments below!
