Welcome to the Small Business Big mindset podcast, where we dive into tactical strategies to grow your business. And to make an impact on this world. A huge part of success is keeping your mindset and vision on track. So this is a major part of our process. And this podcast, let's do this. Hey, Erin here, welcome to the Small Business Big mindset podcast. It might surprise you to hear this, but you don't need a fancy website and logo to get your business going. Nor to grow it substantially. Honestly, creating your email list is one of the most important things to do early on, grabbing an email service provider and then creating a landing page or to one with info about your offer another to gate your lead magnet to collect email addresses of those in your ideal targeted community. By the way, I'll be doing a separate podcast episode regarding the technical and content side of lead magnets. But that's really the biggie, it's to have those landing page about your offer and a gated page for your your lead magnet. So you kind of have one talking about you and your your business and another one for the lead magnet that you're offering. You could even do one page and put them on one. But I kind of like to keep things clean. So I looked at over 60 email marketing platforms. Even I was surprised at how many email marketing platforms are out there and whittle the list down to six for you to consider and I'll put those links on the Show page. So in this episode, I'm going to go over some soft and hard skills that your ultimate choice should have. Okay, so you can kind of do a checklist of what to consider when you're looking at email marketing platforms. Now, I'm only going to go over a few in this episode, because in my digital course online business on ramp, I really go into a lot more kind of soft and hard skills that you should make sure that your email platform has. So for data analytics also. So I'm going to go over ease of use customer service pricing structure and segmentation. And I'll make a little note here that for Data Analytics. For more than that you can jump into Episode 58. The three email metrics that matter. Okay, so for ease of use, listen, you're not going to use a tool no matter how amazing it has been for others in your field. If it's confusing and feels clunky to you, as many if not all, email marketing platforms offer a free trial period. Take them up on that, why not sign up for three to five and organize a trial calendar. Put dates on your calendar of when each free trial ends, so you know when to cancel before getting charged. Then based on these dates back into a schedule of which service you will test out when make sure to write down notes as you go and leave yourself a day or two to review all of your notes. So that you can make the best decision of which service fits you in your business best customer service. Okay, so have questions about the platform or platforms that you're considering. Great test out each of their customer service options, hop on their live chat, log a ticket, send them an email, maybe even give them a call if they offer phone support. If you're not sure what to ask, you can start by asking them to explain one of the services they provide. It's a great way to test their customer service and knowledge so you know the level of support you will most likely be getting if you sign up for their service pricing. So take a close look at their pricing structure. Many based on the number of subscribers that you have, which I'll also get into in the content marketing course I'm coming out of you want to scrub your list and make sure you only have a gauged people there that want to be there because if you're paying for this large number of subscribers, but the vast majority are even opening your emails, you're spending money that you don't need to. So if the price drastically jumps early on, or if the features you want aren't included unless you purchase one of their pricier packages, it might be time to move along and consider another platform. But there's ones like MailChimp, I believe MailChimp is free until you have 2000 subscribers. That's usually one that I recommend for people just starting out. But again, there's a few of those that I recommend and I'll put the links on the show notes page segmentation, so segmenting your list is a huge tool to leverage from your email marketing platform. So an example of segmentation would be I had a quiz as one of my lead magnets, so dependent upon the quiz results, right so people take the quiz they put in their email address or on my email list. Depending upon what their quiz results were. I can segments the list and send Like more advanced business content to a portion of the audience, and more beginner content, so the other etc. So you can retarget a segment on your list based on emails I haven't opened or where they fell off in your marketing funnel. So there's a lot options there. So in addition to these, like I said before, and my digital course online business on ramp, I outline each email marketing platform to 12 critical requirements, the plan options, templates, scheduling, a B testing, segmentation, integration options, automation tools, how simple and user friendly it is the performance analytics, innovative tools, they might have customer service and a guides and tutorials that they might offer. So some of the email marketing platforms to consider are listed on the page. But they are MailChimp, flow desk, ConvertKit, Active Campaign SendGrid, and kartra. So if you want an all in one tool kit to starting your online business, including choosing a business formation, choosing a website platform, email marketing platform, project management platform, setting up a business bank account and managing a business alongside life, check out my digital course online business on ramp. And I'll also put a link to that in the show notes. So hope that's helpful for all of you guys out there wanting to start your own business. You can also send me an email at Hello at muscle creative.com. I love talking about that stuff and answering your questions. So have a great weekend. We'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in to the Small Business Big mindset podcasts. To keep the fun going check out our Facebook group start and scale an online business For even more free trainings and resources from fellow entrepreneurs. If you haven't already, head on over to muscle creative calm and click subscribe to join our email list for weekly updates. And if you've enjoyed this podcast episode, check us out on your favorite podcast platform to follow us and give us a review. As always be authentic, bring an insane amount of value and keep crushing it