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Christian Stern
Christian Stern

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Moosend 2024 Review— Is it the right Choice For You?

Moosend represents a robust email marketing automation platform boasting top-tier features, cutting-edge automation sequences, and tools for lead generation, enabling businesses to thrive while benefitting from an award-winning, all-in-one interface.

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Moosend’s Most Important Features
Drag and Drop Editor: Moosend uses the same user-friendly editor for building emails, landing pages, and forms
Email Templates: Choose from over 75 pre-made email templates to get your campaign started. Templates are clean and modern-looking.
Marketing Automation: Flexible automation options backed up by an excellent workflow editor.
Automation Workflow Templates: Ready-made to help you quickly set up email automations.
A/B Testing: Create campaigns with different content and compare how they perform.
Integrations: Connect your Moosend account directly to 42 third-party services. Or use Zapier to sync to all CRM, eCommerce, or lead generation software you use.
eCommerce: Pre-made blocks pull product listings from your web store into emails.
Web Tracking: Syncing your website means you can track subscriber journeys in depth. This includes seeing how many sales come from your campaigns.
Moosend Review: Email Marketing, Automation, and Lead Generation Platform

Upon signing up for Moosend, a guided setup through a wizard is initiated, starting with the connection of your website. This step allows Moosend to track your website’s activity comprehensively. By monitoring a customer’s journey, conversions, and sales, you gain insights into the monetary impact of your email marketing campaigns.

This integration elevates Moosend’s capabilities in automation, segmentation, and reporting. Now, you can segment based on customer behavior, such as tagging users who view specific products or assessing site visit frequency as a lead scoring metric. This empowers you to create targeted contact groups likely to make purchases, enabling the delivery of tailored follow-up campaigns.

Leverage Moosend’s marketing automation to send personalized product recommendations and exclusive offers. Additionally, you can utilize this feature to address abandoned carts, enhancing your customer engagement strategies.

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Moosend Review: Sending Emails

Moosend simplifies the process of sending your initial email blast with its Campaign Creation Wizard, offering five campaign options:

  1. Regular Campaign: This is the default choice for standard newsletters and promotional emails. Later, I’ll delve into automations.

  2. A/B Split Test Campaign: Allows testing of three key elements: sender name, subject line, and email content. The focus here is on comparing different versions of the campaign to assess performance.

  3. Repeatable HTML and RSS Campaigns: These options generate email blasts from existing online content. RSS Campaigns specifically utilize feeds common on blog or news pages to automatically convert updates into newsletters. The unique aspect of the repeatable HTML option is its ability to perform similar actions for non-RSS pages.

Moosend’s A/B testing feature allows comparison between two distinct versions of the same campaign, enabling variations in design, text, images, and calls to action. These differences significantly impact the performance of an email blast.

Moreover, Moosend offers a tool called the “real-time personalized subject line enhancer,” which recommends subject lines for campaigns to enhance deliverability and open rates. Interestingly, this tool improves its suggestions based on the frequency of campaigns sent — the more campaigns, the more refined and effective the recommendations become.

One particularly impressive tool is the Spam Test offered by Moosend. Prior to sending out a campaign, you have the option to conduct a test that assesses its likelihood of being flagged by spam filters. The test provides a percentage score: a 100% score indicates that your campaign meets the necessary criteria to land in the inbox, while a 0% score signifies a high risk of being relegated to the junk folder.

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Email Templates in Moosend

When it comes to designing your campaign in Moosend, the process kicks off with template selection. There are more than 75 pre-designed email templates available, covering a wide range of categories. However, the extensive variety doesn’t always streamline the search for the ideal design. Thankfully, you have the flexibility to create a library of favorite templates and save edited versions for future use.

Moosend’s template designs lean towards a clean and professional aesthetic rather than being exceptionally creative. While they may not be the most innovative, they certainly aren’t the worst either.

Importing your own templates is also an option with three choices available:

  • Import from an online source using a link

  • Paste HTML code from an online source

  • Upload a template file directly from your computer.

Additionally, for those inclined to create their own templates from scratch, Moosend provides an Email Editor tool for this purpose.

Moosend Email Editor

Moosend, like many email marketing platforms, offers a drag-and-drop email editor, and I find its design quite appealing. It’s highly visual, featuring vibrant colors and intuitive icons that facilitate navigation. Overall, it’s user-friendly and straightforward.

The editor in Moosend incorporates various modes accessible from the top-center of the screen: edit, preview, code, history, and comments.

Editing options are neatly categorized into three sections:

  1. Structure: Used to modify the layout of the email.

  2. Items: Consists of content building blocks for your email.

  3. Settings: Customizes the behavior of each element within the email.

The editor allows for flexible layouts, enabling the addition of different row structures, including up to four columns. For eCommerce businesses, there are ready-made layouts tailored for showcasing products and more.

The Helper Grid is another useful layout tool within Moosend, indicating where elements can be dragged into the design. Once a structure is chosen, it displays all the available elements for that specific row. This visualization aids in the design process, making it more efficient. Additionally, the built-in zoom feature ensures precise design adjustments down to the pixel level.

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Within Moosend’s layout options, there are 11 elements and content blocks that you can integrate:

  1. Images: Moosend links to the Unsplash stock image library, offering a vast selection of free images. Additionally, you can upload images from Giphy, Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox.

  2. Text Box: Versatile for both headings and text paragraphs.

  3. Buttons: Formats links into visually appealing icons.

  4. Articles: Pre-formatted blocks enabling text pairing with images.

  5. Social Share: Buttons enabling contacts to share your email on their social media accounts.

  6. Social Follow: Buttons allowing contacts to follow your social media accounts.

  7. Spacer: Adds padding between elements for layout adjustments.

  8. HTML: Provides a space for coding your own elements if you have the coding expertise.

  9. Video

  10. Countdown Timer: Ideal for showcasing time-limited special offers.

  11. Product: Specifically designed for eCommerce stores, importing product listings directly into an email.

In Moosend’s editor, numerous customization options for each element are available under the “Settings” section in the right-hand menu. Editing text within this pane is made convenient with features like spell check, autosave, history, and redo functionalities, ensuring stress-free text editing.

For personalizing email content, Moosend utilizes “Personalization Tags,” allowing the inclusion of merge fields similar to other email software. These tags, inserted from a dropdown menu, are replaced with the correct subscriber data during sending.

Dynamic content, termed as “Conditional visibility” in Moosend, offers personalized newsletters through custom field selections, match types, and set values, displaying content based on specific criteria.

“Product blocks” enable the inclusion of dynamic content such as cart abandonment or product recommendations. These blocks, indicated by a red frame on hover, require website tracking to function optimally.

For personalized dynamic images, creating custom fields with unique values for subscribers and incorporating HTML blocks with these fields as image sources allows for individualized image displays.

The editor allows saving preferred layouts or items for future use, which is particularly beneficial for banners, headers, or footers.

Additional settings in the Moosend editor focus on ensuring design consistency, such as adjusting newsletter width, setting default fonts, modifying default image positions, and incorporating design tools like background image positioning and item shadowing to enhance email aesthetics.

For assistance, a yellow question mark in the top-right corner of the editor grants access to relevant help articles if any issues arise during editing.

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Moosend Automation Features

Moosend excels in marketing automation by offering a balance between simplicity and sophistication, catering to both novices and seasoned marketers.

The strength of Moosend’s marketing automation lies significantly in its workflow editor. Similar to the email editor, it boasts an intuitive design, visual appeal, and clarity, making it a pleasure to work with. Its attractiveness isn’t just about looks but also about its operational efficiency.

Each workflow created within Moosend comes with a summary outlining its functionalities. Below that, there’s a series of task prompts guiding users through the setup process, making it particularly helpful for those new to marketing automation. These prompts assist in setting up your automation seamlessly, ready to go live.

Moosend offers an extensive array of 32 automation triggers, a significantly larger number compared to most competing email marketing services. Beyond these triggers, users can employ custom fields, events, and tags to activate automations, allowing for intricate combinations. Furthermore, the capability to include multiple triggers within a single workflow broadens the scope of possibilities significantly.

The effectiveness of many triggers in Moosend hinges on web tracking, aligning automations closely with subscriber behavior. This feature serves as a potent marketing tool, enabling the triggering of targeted emails based on specific web page visits by subscribers.

Moosend employs “Filters,” categorized as Control Steps, which act as conditions determining the workflow’s direction. If a condition is met, the workflow follows one path (the “Yes” path); otherwise, it proceeds down another path (the “No” path). Moosend’s filters come in three types:

  1. Filter for: This type of filter conditions the workflow based on subscriber behavior or attributes.

  2. Filter delays: These filters introduce time delays within the workflow.

  3. Filter Actions: These filters direct the workflow based on actions taken by subscribers, such as email opens or clicks.

Moosend’s conditional criteria are remarkably versatile, offering around 30 distinct criteria for filtering purposes. These encompass a broad spectrum, including subscriber details, behavior, device type, browser, and more. Additionally, many of these conditions allow users to set their own specific values, and the capability to add multiple conditions within the same filter further expands the range of possibilities.
Moreover, Moosend provides the ability to filter based on weather conditions in a contact’s location, enabling personalized targeting based on weather parameters.
The “Split Flow” feature randomly divides subscribers based on a user-defined ratio. This split directs one group down one pathway within the workflow while the other group follows a different path, allowing for diversified automation strategies.

The “Split Flow” function in Moosend doubles as an A/B Test, enabling the division of contacts based on meeting specific conditions to evaluate which path yields superior results. For instance, it allows for variations in the timing of follow-up actions for different groups to determine the more effective approach.

Within Moosend’s interface, the color coding of green for “Yes” and red for “No” signifies the pathway chosen based on whether a condition is met or not within the workflow.

Yellow for wait: Wait is another type of control step. It sets a time delay before your chosen action is taken. You can wait for a specified period of time or set a specific time and date.

Blue for action: Actions are the responses to the triggers and conditions. There are 11 possible actions.

The actions cover sending out a communication, list management or changing contact details. You can also trigger another automation.

For example, you could set a condition for opening a specified number of campaigns. Anyone who goes down the ‘No’ path then receives a re-engagement campaign.

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Save time with workflow automation templates
All automation workflows you build can be saved as templates to use again. Moosend calls workflow templates ‘recipes’. You don’t even have to make your own. There are 18 ready-made recipes to start with.

Moosend offers a variety of pre-designed marketing automation sequences termed as “recipes,” each tailored for specific purposes:

  1. Sending birthday or anniversary emails.

  2. Welcoming new subscribers with dedicated emails.

  3. Re-engaging customers who have abandoned their shopping carts or haven’t interacted for a while.

  4. Sending survey emails to gather feedback.

  5. E-commerce funnels, such as up-selling, cross-selling, or reminding about special offers.

  6. Behavior-driven automations leveraging web tracking and contact data as triggers.

  7. Lengthier automated sequences focusing on loyalty programs and customer onboarding.

These recipes, akin to the workflow editor, are user-friendly for beginners yet robust enough to satisfy experienced marketing professionals. Each recipe is entirely customizable to suit individual needs.

Some recipes stand out for their innovation, especially those aimed at optimizing online sales, such as weather-based recipes. For instance, there are recipes for re-engagement and up-selling/cross-selling that leverage real-time location data to assess the weather in a contact’s location and subsequently make relevant product recommendations.

These weather-based automations prove helpful in avoiding errors, like promoting swimwear during rainy weather. Moreover, if sales data indicates weather influences purchasing behavior, this feature allows for tailored campaigns based on weather conditions.

Moosend Landing Pages & Forms

Designing a landing page in Moosend mirrors the process of creating an email, promoting consistency and ease of use. Unlike many other email marketing services, Moosend’s landing page editor aligns seamlessly with its email editor, ensuring a consistent experience. This similarity allows for smooth transitions between designing emails and building landing pages.

With 38 landing page templates available or the option to create a custom page from scratch, Moosend’s landing page builder offers clarity and visual appeal similar to its email editor. The flexibility in layouts stands out as a highlight, allowing for versatile design options.

A noteworthy feature is the ability to resize images within the landing page editor after they’ve been added. This differs from some other platforms where image sizes must be predetermined before upload, which can hinder alignment on the page.

While the landing page editor impresses, a couple of minor issues were noticed. Text wrapping occasionally cuts words at line breaks, and once a structure and content are added, there seems to be a limitation in changing the layout within the same structure. For instance, transitioning from a single-column layout to a two-column layout might require starting anew with a different row.

However, these minor drawbacks aside, Moosend offers an excellent landing page builder with a user-friendly interface and versatile design options.

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After creating your landing page in Moosend, here are several actions you can take:

  1. Social Sharing: Share the landing page directly on Facebook and Twitter, particularly useful if your page contains a form and you want to enhance sign-ups through social media.
  2. Tracking Setup: Utilize tracking functionalities to monitor link clicks and form submissions. Advanced tracking options include integration with Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel for more comprehensive analytics.
  3. Publishing Options: Choose from various publishing methods such as hosting the page on the Moosend domain or directly on your own domain or WordPress site. Regarding signup forms on landing pages, Moosend provides diverse form types to suit different needs:
  4. In-line Forms: Integrated as an element within the landing page.
  5. Standalone Subscription Forms: Designed separately and added to other pages. These forms come in various formats:
  6. Pop-up Forms
  7. In-line Forms
  8. Floating Bar Forms: Discreetly hover at the top or bottom of a page as visitors scroll.
  9. Floating Box Forms: Remain visible while visitors scroll.
  10. Fullscreen Forms: Occupy an entire webpage.
  11. Promotional Popups: Contain buttons redirecting visitors to a landing or offer page without forms.

As with emails and landing pages, Moosend uses the same editor to create forms. And the templates all have a similar look and feel to the email and landing page templates. I love the consistency. By the time it came to playing with the signup form builder, I had already felt halfway to being an expert. There are 11 form templates, all named after classic songs if you’re into that kind of thing! These have the same look but different layout based on the form type. The only exception are promotional popups. There are 18 promotional popup templates.

A nice touch in the form and landing page editor is the wheel of fortune. Add a wheel of fortune (WOF) to spice up your forms and increase conversions. You can edit the wheel size and add any offer you want. Customize it with labels, colors, and coupon codes. Select win or lose slices and define the probability for each slice.

Every signup form template starts with a default field for an email address. To add more data fields, you have to click Edit Custom Fields. This gives you the option to collect whatever information you like, including creating your own data fields.

Code mode is available in the landing page and form builders, too. Get a read-only view of the HTML of your forms or pages. Copy the HTML code, download them in JSON, or upload JSON templates.

Moosend Pricing and Plans

Moosend stands out for its exceptional value in marketing tools, with pricing starting at an incredibly affordable $7 per month for 500 contacts when paying annually. This pricing is remarkably competitive and offers a great deal for an email marketing tool of this caliber.

The simplicity of Moosend’s pricing structure is also commendable. There’s a singular paid plan, the Pro tier, providing access to all features, with pricing scaling according to the number of contacts.

For larger organizations seeking additional benefits like an account manager, Moosend offers a custom-priced Enterprise plan. While there’s no Free plan available, users can explore the platform without limitations for a 30-day trial period before committing to a subscription.

Moreover, Moosend has generously extended an exclusive offer of an additional 10% discount for our readers, which can be combined with the existing 20% discount for annual payments. Additionally, senders managing 100,000 or more contacts receive extra perks like a coffee mug or T-shirt. Sign up today to avail of these benefits.

Moosend Pros and Cons

Here are the standout aspects of Moosend that I love:

  1. Unified Editing: The consistent drag-and-drop editor across emails, landing pages, and forms simplifies the design process.
  2. Enhanced Marketing Tools: The incorporation of web tracking significantly elevates Moosend’s marketing automation, segmentation, and analytics.
  3. Versatile Automations: The open-ended nature of automations provides flexibility and customization options.
  4. User-Friendly Tools: The intuitive workflow editor and automation templates make navigation and setup effortless.
  5. Value for Money: Moosend offers excellent value for the features provided.
  6. Responsive Customer Support: The live chat customer support is quick and responsive.
    Areas for improvement:

  7. Free Plan Availability: While the free trial is beneficial, having a free plan would be an added advantage.

  8. Editor Glitches: Although the drag-and-drop editor is user-friendly, I noticed a few minor glitches that could be improved.
    Moosend Review: Is it the Right Email Marketing Tool For You?
    Wrapping up my Moosend review, here’s the verdict:

For small online businesses seeking an affordable yet robust email marketing solution, Moosend is an ideal choice. It offers exceptional value, user-friendly interface, and impressive advanced features, particularly in web tracking and automation.

Final Ratings:

  • Ease of Use: 4 out of 5

  • Value for Money: 4.5 out of 5

  • Editor and Templates: 4.25 out of 5

  • Functionalities: 4.5 out of 5

  • Email Automation: 4.5 out of 5

  • Customer Service: 4.5 out of 5

Overall Score: 4.5 out of 5

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