You’ve heard thousands of time – the money is in the list. And everyone advises you to build an email list.

It sounds so simple, but you don’t know where to start.

I know how you feel because that’s exactly what I went through. When I decided to build an email list, I had no idea about any email marketing platforms, creating campaigns, sending newsletters etc.

To make things easier for you, I am going to share a detailed post on ‘How to Get Started with GetResponse on 2019’.  GetResponse is an easy-to-use email marketing platform that allows you to create mailing lists with a variety of advanced features.

If you are planning to start building an email list – this guide is for you.

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Signing Up for GetResponse

Signing up for GetResponse is very easy. At first, you need to choose a plan.

GetResponse offers variety of plans. The least expensive plan is $15 per month for 1000 subscribers. The most popular plan is the $25 per month which lets you contact up to 2500 subscribers. The plans offer up to 100,000 subscribers for $450 per month. You can pay month-t0-month basic or you can go for the annual payment that offers 18% discount.

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Once you’ve chosen your plan, click on ‘Continue’.

Then provide your account & billing information and GetResponse will send you an activation email. Once you click on the activation link, your account will be activated.

Creating a Campaign in GetResponse

Once you’ve signed up for GetResposne, it automatically creates a campaign for you using your email username as the campaign name. It might not be the proper name for your campaign. So you can create a new one.

Creating a new campaign is very easy. Just follow these simple steps.

Under the navigation bar, you can see “Your current campaign”. Click on it and it gives you the option to create a new campaign.

Then give a name to your current campaign with no space and special characters. Click on ‘Create New Campaign’.

Now your campaign is created successfully. Before doing anything else, you need to edit campaign setting.

On the next page, you’ll get 3 tabs – General, Profile, and Permission.

In General tab

Edit your campaign name & campaign language. Enable ‘Subscribe via Email’ if you want new people to join your list. Set the Email id that should receive mail sent by subscribers and notifications. Edit postal address if needed.

In Profile tab

In this tab, you edit campaign title, Category, Campaign description, RSS Feed etc. You can also preview Confirmation page, Unsubscribe page, Unsubscribe success page, Newsletter directory.

In Permission tab

In this tab, you can enable confirmation opt-in. You can also customize confirmation message. If you are planning to offer any ebook or free downloads, you can add a custom confirmation page by providing custom URL. Or you can simply add a ‘Thank You’ page like this one.

Once you’ve done your editing, it’s time to create email list.

Adding Contacts to GetResponse

If you have any existing contacts or subscriber list, you can easily add your contacts list to GetResponse. It has 2 options to add your contacts to your campaign.

1. Manual Add Contacts. (One by one)
2. Import Contacts. (Copy & Paste, Upload File, Another Service)

Manual Add Contacts is pretty easy forward. Just click on ‘Add Contacts’ under ‘Contacts’ from the menu bar.

Select campaign and enter Name & Email address, click on ‘Add contact’ button.

If you have a big list, you can import your contacts. GetResponse has 3 options for importing contacts.

• Copy & Paste: Just copy the contacts and paste it to the proper place.
• Upload File: Download your existing contacts list into a CSV/TXT/VCF/XLS/XLSX/ODS file and upload it.
• Another Service: Use a third-party service such as Salesforce, Google docs to import your contacts.

Once you’ve done it correctly, it will show a success message with number of contacts imported.

 Creating a Sign-Up Web Forms in GetResponse

A web form allows your visitors to subscribe your newsletter from your blog.

All they need to do is, provide their email address and other optional information you want to collect.

GetResponse makes it extremely easy to create a web opt-in form. It has hundreds of designs. You can customize it with images, text, colors etc.

To create a new web form, click on ‘Create New’ under ‘Web Forms’ from the menu bar. And make sure to select the proper campaign from the top right.

Watch the below video to see how to create a web form.

Creating Newsletter in GetResponse

Newsletters are email messages sent immediately or scheduled time to your subscribers.

To create a Newsletter, click on ‘Create Newsletter’ under ‘Messages’ from the main menu.

Then you will get the option to choose between ‘New Email Creator’ or ‘HTML Source Editor’. If you are like me who don’t want to deal with coding, select ‘New Email Creator’.

On the next page, you need to enter Message Name, Subject, From address, Tracking, Sharing and A/B Test. Click on ‘Next Step’.

Then you will be landed on the templates page. Here you’ll get thousands of predesigned templates. I personally prefer ‘Start from scratch’ option.

Newsletter Editor is very user-friendly. You can easily set up your newsletter by using drag and drop from the right side.

You can also see a preview of how your mail will appear on mobile devices on right-hand side.

There is a ‘Test message’ function on the upper right. You can send a test message to your email from there. You can also see the ‘Inbox Preview’ for different email providers and devices. Check ‘SpamScore’ and keep it as low as possible to get a better delivery rate.

If everything is OK, click on ‘Next Step’.

Then choose the Subject lines for A/B testing if you’ve enabled A/B testing.

Then select campaigns or specific emails where you want to send your Newsletter. You can decide if you want to send the message right now or it can be scheduled for specific date and time.

Over to You

Hope this guide helped you to get started with GetResponse right way. If you need any help regarding GetResponse, feel free to ask me via comment.

If you are still confused whether GetResponse is the better choice for you or not, I’d suggest you to try GetResponse free for 30 days. (No Credit card required)

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