What platform can I use for direct marketing, bulk emails, for newsletters, announcements, etc., without spending a fortune?

I have a question for all of you, but mainly the podcasters who’ve had some experience with this.

My podcast is fairly new, but I’ve managed to get a few thousand downloads, with very little marketing (at this point) and just with some grassroots tactics.

I actually have an email list with over 15K people who are perfectly suited for my “niche” audience, but I haven’t utilized it for direct marketing yet, because I wanted to make sure I had a little bit of content up and circulating first.

My question is, what platform can I use for direct marketing, bulk emails, for newsletters, announcements, etc., without spending a fortune?

MailChimp charges close to $190 per MONTH for an email list of that size and that’s just too much right now. Are there any other ways I can send email blasts to all my contacts, without spending a fortune?

To be clear, I don’t think all 15K people on my list will be into my podcast, but I know a good majority may - and even if only 10% of them listen, that’s still 1500 new sets of ears on my podcast… I just don’t want to lose that list and I really want to use it soon, as I know I’m sitting on a “treasure trove” of potential listeners.

Thanks in advance. Any advice would be helpful.

Joseph Carl posted to Marketing on about 5 months ago

GP

Garry Pucket

about 5 months ago

Cut your list and send in batches. Their free plan is 2k members at 10k sends a month. Send to 2k in month one, follow up with them a few times (2-3 emails total in a month). Rinse and repeat each month. (You will need to backup and delete the first 2k before your new metered period.) Hopefully by the end of month two you'll generate enough to up your list to 4k, then month three 6k, etc until you can sustain your whole list.
- JC
  
  Joseph Carl
  
  about 5 months ago
  
  Thank you, this is exactly what I was thinking, but I didn’t really have an understanding of how to go about it. I guess I can have separate lists and change out my database every couple of months - and weed out the unsubscribes… I guess now I just need to look at which plans I can do for relatively cheap (under $20 a month) or free and balance out the features along with the maximum names they’ll allow me to upload at one time.
- GP
  
  Garry Pucket
  
  about 5 months ago
  
  MailChimp has a free plan that can work if your list stays under 2k. However keep in mind that the trade off for that is your time (multiple lists, adding deleting lists etc) which is something you can't get back. Money can be replaced.
Dan Mayer

about 5 months ago

You can try Active Campaign or MailChimp Free services. As someone who also does email marketing, you can just do the email list segmentations so you won't have to pay premium, also by doing so, you can clean your list, strategize your next step and test who are the warm leads for your podcast audience. All the best Joseph!
TC

Tommy C

about 5 months ago

Call me old school…Have to spend money to make money or have an abundance of time that is worth less than the amount you are spending on marketing.
- JC
  
  Joseph Carl
  
  about 5 months ago
  
  I can appreciate what you’re saying, but making money isn’t as important to me as growing my audience, organically is. Because of the nature of my podcast, I’m more interested in having a real “following” before I even think about commercialization or monetization. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to someday see my show become something that can sustain my living expenses, but I’m not looking to have money be the focus.
Pamela Nolan

about 5 months ago

Mailchimp is free. Send out the announcement and then cut your list by engagement. If they don't engage trim them off and you can get to your 10%.l better.
- Annie Allen
  
  about 5 months ago
  
  This is not true. I've been using MailChimp for close to 10 years. They used to have a free plan, and if you had it when they changed their policies a few years ago they might have grandfathered you in at a lower rate but at no point could you send to a list of 15k for free. Edit: Clarification: the free plan used to scale. They still have it, it just doesn't function the same as it used to.