Best Email Services for Comic Creators

Every service has pros and cons, so figure out what works best for you

Hey!

Today we’re going to discuss the BEST email services to use as a comic creator. In our previous newsletter, we talked about what KINDS of emails you can send in order to achieve success. Now that we know what types of emails we can send, we now need to pick the email service that will enable us to send those emails.

Also, sorry for the two-week delay! I’ve been extremely busy with drawing THE GIRL WITH THE MEGA FISTS Volume 3 for the upcoming Kickstarter campaign in February, and my kids have been relentless at night not letting me sleep!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/the-girl-with-the-mega-fists-vol-1-3

Now, this newsletter is not going to talk about EVERY email provider nor go into massive depth into each one.

The biggest point of contention for each of these will be how much they COST and that is typically assigned by how many subscribers you have in your email list. Most are FREE until you reach 1000 subscribers, and after that you need to pay. It also means that you might have limited features.

To save you the time and hassle, I’m going to discuss the top 2 that I think you should consider, and then discuss some other ones you might be interested in.

SUBSTACK

Substack is what I am using right now. Substack is FREE and gives you unlimited subscribers to your newsletter. As well, it gives the opportunity to create a PAID portion of your newsletter. It also houses all of your newsletters in a very user-friendly page so that people and go to past newsletters and get the information you’ve written.

My biggest problem with Substack however is that there is no way to segment an audience or tag email subscribers. What this means is that if you have 100 people on your list, all 100 people will get the same email. In contrast, most email providers allow you to split these subscribers into groups and you can send them emails based on what THEY want. For example, maybe only 20 people on my list are creators and want how-to newsletters, and the other 80 are comic readers and want updates on the books. Sending an email to everyone will make the separate groups eventually all unsubscribe, but if you were to be able to send an email to the 80, and send one to the 20 with different content, the retention would be better. This is where ultimately Substack falls short.

How I get around this is I have TWO Substack newsletters, one for my Draw and Talk Comics people, and one for creators which is this one, Breaking the Panel.

I see TWO uses for Substack for creators.

1. Sending email BLASTS. If you don’t remember what those are, read the previous newsletter by clicking here. This is ultimately what Substack is good for.

2. Creating a Paid Portion of your newsletter to send out your comics, kind of like a Patreon. You could send an email to people with the first 2-5 pages of each comic you produce, and if they want to read the rest of the book, it would be locked under a pay wall.

MAILCHIMP

Mailchimp has all of the features that Substack has and even more. The con of Mailchimp is that you have to pay a monthly fee after your first 1000 subscribers, and it can get expensive quick. However, the features that Mailchimp has is amazing. I honestly would recommend Mailchimp to the creator who is making a living off of their comics.

With Mailchimp, you can create a landing page that gives you the opportunity to collect emails, and in turn give the subscriber a digital reward. This is the best and fastest way to grow an email list, and it’s a feature that Substack doesn’t have.

Like I said earlier, Substack does not have the ability to segment an audience but Mailchimp does which makes housing your entire list easy because it’s all in one convenient place.

The analytics that Mailchimp gives you as well is amazing and it can really help you tailor how you make your emails and how you judge if they are successful or not. These metrics will be discussed in another newsletter here soon. Mailchimp also has a lot of eCommerce features where you can sell digital products, and they integrate with almost every major eCommerce site on the internet.

Mailchimp is great for getting your first 1000 subscribers, but unless you’re making a living off of comics, it’s use cases can be iffy due to the amount of money you have to spend per month.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

These are services that I have used in the past or have knowledge about. I will write what they are and will give a pro and con of each one.

Privy: I use this for my full-time job. Its integration with Shopify is what makes it handy. It’s very expensive however. Like…very expensive.

Klaviyo: Same as Privy.

ConvertKit: Probably the strongest Email Marketing Software. Because of this, it can be complicated for someone not educated, and it is very expensive.

MailerLite: This is a cheaper alternative to Mailchimp and has similar features. It’s definitely a great platform I would recommend to someone who has the ability to pay monthly for the features.

Attentive: I’ve only used Attentive for SMS marketing, but I can only imagine that their email service is just as good, due to how powerful their SMS platform is.

Awesome! Hopefully, you learned something! Next week we’re going to talk about the Acquisition vs Retention of an email list, and the metrics that you can use to see if you’re good at sending emails.

If you haven’t yet, make sure to check out the pre-launch link to my Kickstarter which launches in February!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/the-girl-with-the-mega-fists-vol-1-3

Have a great week!

Tyler