GetResponse Review & Pricing (2020) – Complete Email Marketing Solution
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “email marketing software”? Most people think of a tool that could help them manage email contacts, send email campaigns, and create autoresponders to keep their audience engaged. But what if a tool goes beyond traditional email marketing and becomes your complete marketing automation suite? What if you could track user activity, design event-based automation sequences, build landing pages, host webinars, and serve customized content that convinces your subscribers to take action – all with one tool? Well, that’s GetResponse for you.
It’s not as often discussed as ActiveCampaign, Drip, or even MailChimp, but it is one of the most feature-rich and powerful email marketing and automation tools available at a very reasonable price.
You can try its free 30-day trial (no credit card required) to explore its features in detail and determine whether it’s the right choice for you. But to make your decision easier, we’ll review GetResponse in detail, discuss its most powerful features, share its pros and cons, and analyze its pricing structure so that you know exactly what it offers. Let’s dive in. Sign Up Today for Your Free 30-Day Trial of GetResponse
What Is GetResponse? GetResponse, in operation since 1998, is one of the oldest and most well-known email marketing companies in the world. But old doesn’t mean outdated. GetResponse has continued to evolve over the years and offers a visually appealing and user-friendly interface along with advanced email marketing and automation features that are at par with any of its competitors. It’s a versatile tool that, in effect, is a combination of several different tools under one name. For example, you can host and run webinars in it, create landing pages, design opt-in forms, and set up complete off-site automation sequences. For many of those features, you’d need separate tools.
In GetResponse, however, you get all of them together. It was also one of the first email marketing tools to introduce advanced A/B testing features that help you determine which email version is likely to perform better with your audience. This is why it’s trusted by more than 35000 customers around the world including brands like IKEA and Hilton, and marketers like Neil Patel, Leslie Samuels, and Marcus Taylor. Let’s dissect the tool further to see what it offers.
The Key Features and Benefits of GetResponse The real strength of any email marketing software is determined by how much control it gives you in terms of audience personalization, targeting, and, email deliverability. GetResponse excels in all those areas (plus many other great features) ●
Manage Your Contacts With Tags and Custom Fields
GetResponse lets you manage your contacts using tags and custom fields.
Custom fields let you collect additional information about your subscribers and use it in creating more personalized campaigns. For example, in addition to the standard “First Name” and “Email Fields”, you can add fields like Gender, City, Currency, Favorite Movie or whatever information you want.
This information goes right into your contact database and you can use it when creating an email campaign. For example, you can use the “City” or “Gender” fields to make your emails sound more relevant to your subscribers. Tags, on the other hand, are keywords you assign to your contacts to identify them for certain behaviors or actions. For example, you can assign a “Likes Me” tag to any subscriber who regularly opens your emails and clicks on your links. How does this help? Instead of launching email campaigns targeting complete subscriber lists, you can create campaigns that are targeted towards the subscribers with certain behaviors (identified by tags).
You can also automatically assign tags to your existing contacts or new leads and add them automatically to different automation sequences. It all sounds very complex but it really isn’t once you start using it. ●
Use Advanced Segmentation for Better Targeting
Segmented marketing campaigns are proven to deliver more targeted messaging and better results. According to WordStream, segmented email marketing campaigns drive a 101% higher click- rate as compared to non-segmented campaigns. Thankfully, GetResponse gives you detailed segmentation features using which you can create campaigns tailored to the specific needs of your audience. You can create segments based on email open rate, last opened date, last clicked, location, completion of an email sequence, pages visited on your site, tags assigned, etc. To create a segment, simply run an advanced search in your contact list and save it as a segment.
For example, you can create a segment of subscribers who signed up to your list but never opened your Welcome Email. Or the ones that opened your Welcome Email but didn’t click on the link inside. You can also use a combination of different conditions to come up with more refined audience segments that can be targeted for different campaigns. ●
Create Complex Automation Sequences With Ease
Automation is among the key features of any email marketing tool these days. Companies like Drip, ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft, etc. have grown tremendously over the years on the back of their advanced automation features. GetResponse isn’t far behind either. It offers you all the tools you need to send fixed scheduled or activity-based autoresponders to your audience which are triggered by different actions/inaction.
For example, you can set up a simple sequence of emails that is sent to your subscribers automatically when they sign up to your list, download a content upgrade, or do not open a certain email. You can use this feature to create complete email courses that are automatically delivered to your subscribers or create autoresponder series to promote different affiliate products. ●
Use Advanced User Tracking To Maximize Engagement and Revenue
This is where GetResponse truly shines. Apart from traditional email marketing, it gives you powerful user tracking capabilities that allow you to target your subscribers based on their activities on your website. To start tracking, all you need to do is to copy/paste a simple script to your site’s HTML code that works in the same way as Facebook Pixel. It’ll track your website visitors and allow you to engage them based on their behavior.
For example, if a subscriber visits your product page but goes away without purchasing the product, you can immediately send a follow-up email asking them to buy the product. Or you could trigger a complete automation sequence if a subscriber reads a certain blog post on your site or downloads a lead magnet. You can also assign tags and segments based on the subscriber’s activity on your website. This feature gives you much deeper access to your subscribers and allows you to engage with them at exactly the right time. ●
Create Complete Marketing and Sales Funnels With AutoFunnels
AutoFunnels is a recent but powerful new feature in Getresponse that has turned it into a marketing automation powerhouse. With AutoFunnels you can create complete sales funnels, lead generation funnels, and webinar funnels in just a few simple steps. What is a funnel? In sales & marketing terminology, a funnel is a sequence of different steps using which strangers are converted into
subscribers, subscribers are turned into leads, and leads are turned into customers and brand advocates.
With AutoFunnels you can create optimized sales funnels that carefully nurture your leads at every step by sending them targeted messaging and ultimately converting them into customers. These are fully automated sequences that are based on advanced If-Then-Else conditions and respond to the different actions of your audience. You can build these automation sequences using the simple drag & drop sequence builder that makes it really easy to visualize complex funnel sequences.
In the right panel on the image above, you can see the different elements that trigger various funnel stages, for example, “Subscribed via URL”, “Link Clicked” etc. You can drag & drop these triggers and add them to your sequences. Using Yes/No conditions you can determine different steps that the funnel campaign would follow. It really simplifies the whole process of condition-based automation. AutoFunnels comes with a complete range of design templates and predesigned scenarios.
Each scenario comes with optimized copy scripts written by expert copywriters and tested for maximum audience engagement.
You only need to activate the scenarios depending on your business needs, and tailor them to your campaign. ●
Design High Converting Landing Pages Within Minutes
Apart from email marketing, you can use GetResponse as a really useful landing page designer as well. Landing pages come really useful when you’re launching new products, trying to build your email list, promoting special offers, or holding an event like a webinar or a live video session. It offers a complete landing page design library that has dozens of beautifully designed and fully responsive templates you can use to create, host, and launch high converting landing pages.
The thing I love about this is the drag & drop landing page designer you can use to either edit the predesigned templates or create one completely from scratch.
You can host your landing pages for free on GetResponse with a subdomain or configure them on your own website URL. The tool also comes with extensive split testing capabilities that help you improve your designs and use the most optimized version of your landing page for your campaigns. Additionally, you can integrate the landing pages with PayPal, Stripe and other major payment gateways to collect customer payments seamlessly. ●
Create, Host, and Manage Large Scale Webinars
Webinars are rated among the most effective ways to generate leads and acquire customers. B2B companies, in particular, use webinars frequently for different marketing campaigns. With GetRepsonse, you get a complete webinar management system that allows you to create host, track, and manage high-performance webinars with ease.
With Getresponse, you can broadcast your webinars live on YouTube or Facebook without any additional plugins. It also gives you the ability to share files with your audience, send/receive chat messages, use different calls to action during the broadcast, use interactive whiteboards, run split-screen webinars, or partially share your screen with the attendees. Once the webinar is over, you can allow replays, direct downloads, or sell them as paid products on a landing page. All of this comes with detailed analytics and audience insights that you can use afterward to further improve your marketing strategy. ●
Grow Your Email List With Smart Opt-In Forms
You can’t use email marketing unless you have subscribers. The more engaged and relevant your subscribers are, the more effective your email marketing campaigns will be. With GetResponse, you have the ability to create attractive opt-in forms on various locations of your website to turn visitors into subscribers. Its form builder has several predesigned form templates that you can customize and use on your website.
The pop-ups can be activated on fixed time intervals or when a visitor is about to close the browser tab. Forms can be connected with your email lists from where you can apply different automation sequences, add them to a funnel or send them to an autoresponder series. ●
Manage The Complete Customer Lifecycle With GetResponse CRM
For enterprise users, GetResponse also offers a complete CRM that seamlessly integrates with your email marketing system and makes it much easier to manage customer communication. The system lets you manage all your leads in one place, gives you the complete communication timeline, simplifies customer lifecycle management, and gives you a holistic view of your client base. These were just some of the key features that GetReponse offers in its different pricing plans.
But what exactly are those plans? Let’s explore the pricing structure in the next section.
GetResponse Pricing & Free Trial – How Much Does It Cost? With the number of features GetResponse offers, it’s pricing structure seems quite reasonable. The lowest plan starts from $15/month for 1000 subscribers. The rate goes up as your subscriber base increases which means you can increase spending as your business grows. And here’s the best part. There are no email sending limits in any of the pricing plans which is great for small businesses in particular. Here’s a quick look at the pricing structure.
You can save 18% on the total price if you follow an annual billing cycle and 30% if you pay for 2 years upfront. But things get even better. To get a taste of what each plan offers, you can sign up for a Free 30-Day Trial without any credit card or payment information. Play with the features, explore the tool, and see if it’s the right choice for you. In all the plans, you get access to basic automation, contact tagging, automated followups, 200+ email templates, 150+ landing page designs, and 5000 stock photos. However, advanced features like AutoFunnels, Webinar Funnels, Website Tracking, CRM, etc. are available only to the higher paid plans. Considering that any beginner level marketer would rarely need advanced automation and CRM this isn’t a major issue. Overall, you could call the pricing structure of GetResponse, affordable and scalable.
GetResponse Advantages – The Things I Love About It There’s a lot to like about GetResponse in terms of features, support, and accessibility.
Here are some of our favorite things about it. ●
A Wide Range of Third-Party App Integrations
GetResponse gives you more than 150 third party integrations with different payment gateways, eCommerce plugins, content management systems, inventory management apps, and many other useful services.
All the apps are divided into different categories can be easily linked/unlinked from your account. The payment and CMS integrations, like PayPal, Stripe, and Shopify, etc. are useful in particular since almost every marketer needs them. ●
Awesome Customer Support and Knowledgebase
GetResponse has one of the best customer support functions in the email marketing industry. For the Basic, Plus, and Professional pricing plans, you get 24/7 chat and email support. For Enterprise customers, there’s a dedicated relationship manager as well. But you’d rarely need support because GetResponse has a detailed customer training program and knowledgebase that covers almost everything you need to know. You can also enroll for free in a detailed video course on how to use GetResponse to grow your email list and make the best use of it.
On top of that, GetResponse has an awesome blog that regularly publishes detailed articles and tutorials about content marketing, email marketing, conversion optimization, customer success, and many other related topics. So there’s certainly no shortage of support for you as a GetResponse customer
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Great A/B Testing Features
GetResponse was one of the pioneers of split testing features in the email marketing industry. And it’s clearly still one of the market leaders in it. Whether it’s a one-time campaign or different automation sequences, you can run A/B tests to find out the best converting options. You can test everything from your subject lines, headlines, and body text to the design template, sending times, and custom fields. Split testing features also available for opt-in boxes, forms, and landing pages. ●
Ideal for Affiliate Marketers
Unlike MailChimp and some of the other leading email marketing tools, GetResponse is a lot friendlier towards affiliate marketers. Several leading email marketing tools strictly prohibit affiliate product promotions and suspend user accounts in case of any violation. GetResponse is different.
You can easily promote products from ClickBank, JVZoo, CJ, and other leading affiliate platforms to your email list using GetResponse and build a complete affiliate marketing business on it. You can also configure autoresponder sequences for different affiliate products, run contests, promotions, etc. This is why it’s an ideal platform for anyone involved in the affiliate marketing business. ●
A Flexible and Rewarding Affiliate Program
GetResponse itself has a pretty attractive and rewarding affiliate program for anyone who wants to promote it as an affiliate. It offers two kinds of commission structures – One Time Commission and Recurring Commissions
If you opt for the one-time commission program, you’ll get a flat $100 commission every time your referral becomes a customer. But if you choose the recurring commission program, you’ll keep receiving 33%, of the pricing plan your referral chooses, every month as long as they’re using GetResponse. Signing up as an affiliate is also simple and takes just a few steps. As an affiliate, you’ll also get access to detailed marketing material that you can use to create high converting affiliate campaigns.
GetResponse Disadvantages – The Things They Need To Improve GetResponse is a great tool but it has some flaws and potential improvement areas.
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No Community Groups
It was somewhat surprising to find that GetResponse doesn’t have any active official community groups on Facebook or any other platform where their customers can interact, share ideas, and resolve complaints. Considering the quality of their customer support (which is great) this is a slight let down since community groups are a really useful way to exchange ideas and understand new ways to use a product. ●
Design and Functionality Limitations in Forms
Some of the opt-in form template designs look a bit dated. In fact, since GetResponse has been around for so long, many of their form designs are so common you can easily tell if a site is using GetResponse. Plus, they currently do not offer Welcome Mats and Sliding Opt-In boxes which is a big let down. ●
No Refunds
GetResponse comes with a 30-Day Free Trial for all its plans.
But once you sign up and pay, there’s no refund in case you quit the service a few days after signing up.
Who Is GetResponse For? GetResponse is a complete marketing automation and email software that is ideal for a number of objectives. Typically it is best for. ● ● ● ● ● ●
Affiliate marketers Bloggers Small business websites eCommerce companies Online course creators Marketers who frequently use landing pages and webinars ● Non-profit organizations ● Complete beginners in online marketing
Who Is GetResponse Not For? There are a few things GetResponse is not meant for. You should stay away if you’re into any of the following ● Mass emailing campaigns to unverified contact lists ● Buying email lists and sending spam regularly ● Affiliates promoting adult or gambling products
● Anyone looking for advanced funnel creation options (ClickFunnels is a better option. Read our complete review here)
The Verdict – GetResponse Is an Email Marketing Powerhouse Despite being one of the oldest tools in the market, GetResponse is still a strong competitor in the email marketing industry. It offers all the mainstream email marketing options plus several advanced marketing automation features as well. Its webinar and landing page builders, in particular, make it an enticing option for internet marketers. And the fact that it encourages affiliate product promotions is another attraction for most online businesses. Overall, you can call it a complete package for any business that’s looking to grow its subscriber base. Plus, its affordable pricing and 30-Day Free trial make it a product worth trying. Because in case you don’t like it (which is unlikely) you can simply close your account without paying anything. So go ahead and sign up for your free GetResponse trial now.