DEV Community

Start an email list, right now, this second

Autumn on May 29, 2019

You need an email list. If you create content on Dev, Medium, your personal blog - you absolutely cannot survive without an email list. With the ...
Collapse
 
antonrich profile image
Anton

I want to start a newsletter where a user can choose which one he/she wants. What service can provide that functionality?

Collapse
 
brandonskerritt profile image
Autumn

Hey! Convertkit does this really well. You can give a user a survey such as:

[Click here to subscribe to newsletter A](link)
[Click here to subscribe to newsletter B](link)
[Click here to subscribe to newsletter C](link)

When the user clicks a link, Convertkit will tag them as having clicked it. Now you know that the user is interested in that newsletter and can receive it :)

Collapse
 
antonrich profile image
Anton

I checked out convertkit. They don't have a free tier. So I googled alternative to convertkit and found emailoctopus. I'm gonna try and see if I can do it there.

Thread Thread
 
brandonskerritt profile image
Autumn

Mailchimp has a free tier :)

Collapse
 
andrewbrown profile image
Andrew Brown πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦

I remember AWeber but looks like there is a really good one called Active Campaign in terms of feature set.

If CovertKit can't do A/B testing that is a deal breaker for me.
SMS is super powerful and Active Campaign can do it so that's a strong consideration to utilize Active Campaign.
Active Campaign doesn't come with a landing page so that's sad, but I know how to build my own I suppose.

marketingautomationinsider.com/awe...

Hard for me to say since I do already have a way to make a form using AWS Lambda collect them in DynamoDB and then use AWS SES. But there we go where I have to do the work. AWS PinPoint is for engagement but I have yet to make use of it.

Hard call.

Collapse
 
brandonskerritt profile image
Autumn

CK can do A/B testing on titles, they're working on A/B testing of content right now :)

Collapse
 
lautarolobo profile image
Lautaro Lobo

I really wanted to get into some blogs newsletter... but they didn't have one! And I'm not going to download an rss reader or something like that. So yes, if you want to increase your audience, create a mailing list (I'll premiere mine soon)

Collapse
 
terabytetiger profile image
Tyler V. (he/him)

Any article recommendations about what to do once you have the email list set up? (Preferably targeted to a beginner)

Collapse
 
brandonskerritt profile image
Autumn

backlinko.com/list-building
All of Backlinko's articles are superb!

Collapse
 
brandonskerritt profile image
Autumn

Hey! I have some notes here:
notion.so/How-to-write-a-blog-post...

I'll link you some more articles once I'm home in an hour or so 😁

Collapse
 
nataliedeweerd profile image
𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐚π₯𝐒𝐞 𝐝𝐞 π–πžπžπ«π

Just ensure you're GDPR compliant with your mailing list for us Europeans!

Collapse
 
adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett πŸŒ€

I find them slightly annoying but I can't unsubscribe, I might miss something. So for that reason and mentality, you are spot on.

Collapse
 
renegadecoder94 profile image
Jeremy Grifski • Edited

Just going to take this opportunity to shamelessly heed your advice.

Collapse
 
brandonskerritt profile image
Autumn

Signed up! You might want to remove first name / last name fields. People in tech are very wary of other people owning their data, you don't want to cause them too much friction :)

Collapse
 
renegadecoder94 profile image
Jeremy Grifski • Edited

Thanks for the tip! I believe they’re optional. Only there to personalize the emails.