Hi! I've tried mailchimp but I'm finding it complicated. I'm actually very good with computers, I can design websites no problem but this has me chewing my fists in frustration!I suggest you try MailChimp. It's free to send up to a monthly limit and quite easy to customise templates, depending on how confident you get In using it (it's quite easy)
That helps quite a bit thank you!I've used Mailchimp as well as a few other platforms and it's certainly not the easiest (I chewed my fists too). But it is free, a big plus. This one is also very cheap but it's much easier to design a nice e-mail (or just use plain text for stronger personalisation). www.activecampaign.com. You can do a free trial then it's only $9US per month up to 500 contacts. Another easy one to use is www.convertkit.com. But it starts at $30 p/m.
In terms of content, you probably don't know it yet but you've got so much experience behind you that you can write about. Your clients come to you for expert help with beauty etc. So, tell them stories that they want to hear about. Profile a client, and how you've transformed them. Or teach a specific technique that they might find interesting.
Hope that helps
R
Can you try and re-import your mailing list from a .csv file? You just save an excel file in that format and upload it as one and it will automatically assign each field to the correct type. MailChimp support are very helpful if you can't resolve it.
We have a salon appointment sheduling system but it doesn't include email marketing unfortunately (yet) and I don't want to switch to another system ask we're very happy with the one we're using and it's free!I think this is a great tool to have at your disposal. I have tried mailchimp, but I just hate having 4 or 5 programs for different things at my shop.
Mailchimp was kinda complex, but I moved to overall salon management soft, which includes bulk messaging via text or e-mail. And just one program
Researching systems is what I recommend. If you don't, you end up paying for 3 or 4 different and less supperior systems
Free isn't always good I've learned that the hard way. Paid systems are not always good either, like timely, where their customer support was avaliable only on New Zealand time 
Well this is good information, thank you! I was wondering just the other day on the effectiveness of email marketing because personally, I hate 'spam' and I send the majority of it to my junk folder without even checking it, even from companies that I like and I'm sure most people are the same. Every so often I'll have an unsubscribe cull. The best advertising, in my opinion, is person to person, or word of mouth and the more blabby clients you can invite in to the salon the better your chances of growth are!My first job out of Uni was as a designer with an email marketing company
As suggested above, the best is probably Mail Chimp- and it's free up until a certain amount of emails (I forget how many, but it's a lot).
However, it (and most of them) can be a little daunting if you're not IT savvy (to an extent) or have a background in design.
MY BIGGEST advice would be to not bother doing any until you have lots and lots of people to email to.
The "conversion rate" on email marketing is pretty low to be honest (since spam filtering became more aggressive and frankly people have become more "used" to email spam and ignore it)
If it's something you're really keen on doing then spend lots of time "harvesting" email addresses before you even send your first one out.
Honestly? If you're not emailing a few thousand people. It's not worth it. You're best sticking to normal marketing and social media.
We use it, but we've been adding to our mailing list for over 7 years- it's still not the most effective way of marketing for us either. It's just a "bonus".
