Getresponse – The Easiest Email Marketing Software on the Market

I had a look at GetReponse right when I started out setting up my first email newsletters, at the time it wasn’t a sound fit for me, but I decided to have a look at GetResponse one more time to see whether things have changed.

It’s important to understand that I love functionality and beautiful design combined. They have to work together without lacking any usability on the user end. I’ve heard some good things of GetResponse in the past few months and that some bigger companies were moving their lists over, so it sparked my interest.

The first thing I noticed, was that they were offering a 30 day free trial for you to test the software. This makes it clear that the company believes in their product and that they would support it for free, no risk involved on your end.

So I signed up…

Functionality is great

One of the first things I’ve noticed since trying out GetResponse way back when, was that their interface is so easy to navigate and understand. Not only do they provide me with helpful guides pointing the way for my first time use, but the general getting around navigation is super easy. Sections are clearly marked and accessible. You don’t really get lost like you do in other service provider interfaces.

Took me 3 minutes

It literally took my 3 minutes to setup a new list, import some contacts and start setting up my first campaign. I didn’t have to look for tools or pages to help facilitate the process, they were all directed my way, if I could put it that way. Their importing functions work well and looks solid.

Guided Training

From the start, they offer you to attend their live training daily webinar where they will teach you tactics of growing your list from 0-100,000. It’s offered on a daily basis and looks super helpful for people just starting out with newsletters.

Auto Responders are easy

Often times auto responder setups can take time and needs you to sit down and think of the dripping time frames. In this case, GetResponse made it super easy to setup your auto responders. It’s a beautiful interface that guides you through the process, spelling out all the details until the setup is complete.

Survey integration

It’s not often that you find survey tools integrated with your email marketing, even though surveys are an important part of any business’s long term growth. GetResponse has done a beautiful job of integrating surveys with their software, you can create your surveys right in your dashboard and send it to whom ever subscribes to a certain link you publish. It beats having to sign up for extra survey software!

Easy subscription form creation tools

I gotta say, everything about GetResponse to me spells, “easy.” Getting into an often times complicated creation process of producing signup forms have been done neutralized due to the software’s easy creation tools and guided cues.

You have the ability to choose from over 200 pre-designed form templates, or to start from scratch using their beautifully structured form creator. It really works like a charm.

New Landing Page Integration

Say what? Yes, that’s right. GetResponse has introduced landing pages into their suite of tools available to you. It’s amazing to see that an email company takes intuitive to bring together different tools to make a completed package that can serve millions. Even though the landing page creator is still in beta, it serves as a powerful tool to capture new leads for your business.

You get to choose from a lot of pre-designed templates readily available to you to setup your landing page, it’s really simple to create something that could take you a lot of time usually.

What Neil Patel has to say about GetResponse

For those of you who don’t know Neil Patel, he is an authority figure in the world of online marketing, having built two successful companies, Crazy Egg and KiSSmetrics and blogging about his progress at QuickSprout, let’s hear what he has to say about GetResponse.

My overall view of GetResponse

I gotta say, after playing around with the software, doing different tests and tasks, I love it. It’s simple, elegantly designed, fast and responsive. The pricing plans look great for what you get. Just testing out the software has convinced me to make the switch to GetResponse. Will you be doing the same?

Getresponse – The Easiest Email Marketing Software on the Market

My Top Web Apps and Software of 2014

Two years ago I posted about my best apps and software of 2012, and so I thought I would revisit my list to see what has changed in 2014.

I won’t go over in detail the software that I am still using from my previous list. Suffice to say, I am still using almost all the apps on a regular, if not daily, basis. Here’s what I have added to my core toolbox in 2014.

LastPass

What’s it for: Password management

I was probably using LastPass back in 2012 too, but I thought I would call it out as is it so essential to my online life. I rely on its Firefox and Chrome browser extensions to manage my many online account logins. You are using a password manager, right?

Firefox Extensions

What’s it for: Adding browser functionality

On the subject of browser extensions, I try not to have too many installed as I worry about them slowing down my aging PC. With that in mind, here are the ones I use most regularly (excluding obvious ones like Firebug and the Web Developer tool which I’ve been using for years).

• FireGestures – for mouse gestures.


• ColorZilla – for choosing and checking colors online.


• LightShot – my preferred screenshot tool. Easy to use and you can instantly upload screenshots and get a short URL for sharing.


• NoScript – because it keeps me safe online (I think).


• Thumbnail Zoom Plus – lets you view full size images without clicking on a thumbnail and has saved me thousands of mouse clicks. It’s great for browsing Google image search results.

Hemingway

What’s it for: Writing content

I write a lot of content for the web, and so it is very handy to have a tool like Hemingway to show you very clearly where your writing can be improved. The app highlights sentences that are hard to read or have words that could be made simpler or removed. I also find it very useful for editing other people’s content, as it makes it clear where I need to focus.

Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool

What’s it for: Optimizing meta data for SEO

While there are lots of these types of SEO tool available, I have settled on the snappily named Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool. I use it for writing my meta titles and descriptions in order to ensure I don’t go over word counts. I also like that it has several display options so that you can see how your snippet will look like on a search results page.

Copyscape Compare Tool

What’s it for: Checking for duplicate content

I manage multiple websites and often need to write content on similar topics for each. Copyscape’s compare tool checks how similar two pieces of content are and is a great tool for reducing the risk of creating duplicate content.

Kraken.io

What’s it for: Optimizing images

Image compression seems to be one of those web-related best practices that most people don’t do very well. Which is why it’s great that there a service like Kraken.io which can reduce file sizes by an unbelievable amount without sacrificing image quality. Never upload an image to your site without running it through Kraken.io first.

Placehold.it

What’s it for: Adding placeholder images to HTML prototypes

When I’m building out an HTML prototype for a page, I don’t want to worry about what images to include. That’s why I use Placehold.it to insert placeholder images. Simple and easy. On a similar, and slightly more fun, note there is also placekitten, which lets you use images of cats for your FPO images. However, I’ve found it to be a little too distracting for stakeholders to use for work.

Open Site Explorer

What’s it for: Researching websites for SEO strength

A decent portion of my time is spent looking at competitors and reviewing their sites from an SEO perspective. Open Site Explorer makes it easy to view up to five sites side-by-side and get a quick overview of their SEO strengths and weaknesses.

On a related note, I also like to see what web technologies competitors, and sites that I admire, are using. BuiltWith lets you see a whole raft of infrastructure-related information, such as web server technology, JavaScript libraries, ecommerce platform, analytics services, and even third-party widgets. If I’m thinking of using a new web technology or service, it’s a great tool to see how popular it is and who else is using it.

PageSpeed Insights

What’s it for: Analyzing web page performance

I always want my sites to run faster, and so I use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to see where I have the greatest opportunities. The service is simple to use and the prioritized recommendations are easy to follow (or, assign to your development team).

On a related note, for more detailed site performance information, I use WebPagetest to see in detail how pages are loading and where bottlenecks are occurring.

JotForm

What’s it for: Creating online forms

I’ve been using this service for years, but I’m not sure that I’ve mentioned it before. JotForm is one of the easiest ways to create web forms that I know. It’s also very affordable. The form-building tools are very user-friendly and quite powerful. I’ve even used it to process payments.

There you have it. This is a selection of some of my favorite online tools and software, both large and small. Check back at the end of the year to see how my preferences have changed in 2015!

My Top Web Apps and Software of 2014