Acumbamail Review: Easily Manage Email, SMS Campaigns, and Landing Pages

Acumbamail is a simple, super easy to set up and use email marketing tool that has a good foundation to integrate with  important platforms to reach your customer base.

Who is this for:

• Marketers who needs to send email campaigns to their list, with simple automation and segmentation
• Those who have a small to medium list and do not send out emails too frequently
• If you have a number of projects/websites and want to manage the email list under one roof

Who is this not for:

• Advanced email marketing wizards who wants to set up complex flows and automation. In that case Vbout would be more suitable for you.
• Ecom stores who need to send out regular email campaigns every day/every couple of days
• People with huge email lists (you get 100k emails/mo on the highest tier, that’s good for 3-5 emails/mo for a list of 20-30k people).

Email Templates

There are a ton of templates (861 at the time of writing) in different categories.

The Good

This gives you a lot of inspiration when creating visual rich emails (ecom brands, local businesses). You can tell they really focus on visual emails, and the template variations are great (not just swapping out the photos).

The Bad

I noticed 2 things:

• In preview mode: The elements in the template weren’t correctly aligned in some cases (buttons & logo mostly). No such issues when I entered the Edit mode.
• I’d love to see some more variation in text blocks/typography-focused templates (for editorial style, content focused emails). Say, for someone who runs a content site and want to send weekly/monthly recap of the top content.

Some examples from Klaviyo:

Note: There are tutorials in almost every step, but it doesn’t really help that they’re all in another language (especially the interface). I don’t think this should be a big problem though because:

• The UI is very intuitive
• It shouldn’t take them too much time doing the translation(?)

Most of the time, I can manage to find the English version of thing by scrolling to the bottom and switch the language, but the team should iron this out quickly.

Creating an Email Campaign

The Good:

👉  Most of the steps are pretty intuitive and should take you little time to navigate to the email builder.

👉  The builder itself is one of the best out there (I’m not just talking within the LTD space). It’s drag & drop, you edit an element by clicking on it and type to edit the texts. No unnecessary extra steps.

👉  The one feature I love is the built in GIF embed feature. Maybe other email builders have this too, but I’m used to Klaviyo and it doesn’t have it, so I’m happy that Acumbamail has this built-in.

👉  Some thoughtful features that are built-in to maximize open rate (more on this later)

👉  Customisable email link: On the first step, when you click on Show Advanced option, you have the ability to use your own subdomain, or a custom Acumbamail domain for email page (the link that “click here to view email” button would usually take the viewer)

The Bad

👉  Preview text field is hidden under Show advanced options. It really helps giving people a glimpse of what the email is about.

Campaign Types

There are a few campaign types: Newsletter, A/B Testing, Autoresponder and RSS.

With Autoresponder, you can set it up so the autoresponder is triggered when the subscriber:

• Opens an email
• Clicks on any link in an email
• Clicks on a specific link in an email
• Has been subscribed in the selected list

Extra features built-in to maximize open rate

On the last step, you have the option to turn on the following features (these are all included with all plans). I’m aware that a lot of other email marketing tools have these features too, but Acumbamail makes this pretty easy to understand and select with these highly visual blocks.

A few notes/suggestions for the team:

👉  Prioritize integrations with Pabbly/Intergromat. Without good integrations, this would create considerable friction for those considering using Acumbamail

👉  Configure DKIM and SPF for your email shipments (I think they meant campaigns, and that should be updated to avoid confusion). My thoughts is that this should be one of the first steps in the Getting started guide.

Email campaign stats

The Good:

👉  Email analytics are pretty good. The click map helps to visualize where clicks are happening, and there seems to be no lag in stats report (I clicked on a link, then the click stats are updated as soon as I refreshed the campaign report page).

👉  Easy to understand Summary page: with no. of monthly subscriptions, unsubscribe, open rate, click rate, etc.,

The Bad

👉  Custom date range not available

Click map

This is nice to see the click rates visually. In the first test email (on the left), I don’t believe these particular stats for my email to be accurate, since I only sent it to myself and I didnt click on all of these buttons.

Checking with the Acumbamail team to confirm this. The second email however showed the accurate stats, as I only clicked on the REVEAL YOUR DEAL button.

Subscriber Details

You get all the standard data here with the subscriber details.

Email Lists

The Good:

👉  You can set up to automatically export the audience list to Facebook audiences
Acumbamail comes with a few features to clean up your lists using preset rules

The Bad:

👉  The customer data in Acumbamail is currently quite basic. By default, the opt-in forms don’t have the seemingly obvious First name field, only the email field. Although you can add this manually, one would think this should be available in the first place.

👉  No location/timezone information, which is confusing, given that they already have the City and Country opened stats in the email campaign reports. In addition, there’s also the option to “Send to each subscriber at the most active time” before each campaign. So why isn’t this data made available already?

👉  I asked the support team, but the answer wasn’t leading anywhere “As you indicate we don’t store this data in our forms, but we do store it in our campaign reports.“

👉  No unified audience page where we can see the entire email list in your account. You can see the total subscriber count on the Home page under Newsletters but that’s about it. To be fair, I never really pay much attention to any other metrics anyway.

Email Segments

Acumbamail Segments is what you would expect from a email marketing tool.

However, comparing to the top email tools such as Klaviyo or Active Campaign, there are a few segment filters that Acumbamail does not currently have:

👉  If someone has done (or not done)

• Subscribed to a list
• Received SMS (SMS and email lists in Acumbamail are separated, at least for now)
• Any Shopify related actions, eg: Placed an order, Cancelled order, etc.,

👉  If someone is or is not within the EU (GDPR)

👉  Profile property filter, eg: if (custom property) Opt-tin origin was ___, AND answered ____ in the opt-in form (also custom property)

For reference, here’s the segment options available from Encharge, which notably includes segment by user activities on your website as well as email activities.

I hope Acumbamail continues to develop these option further to improve their segmentations, but since I’m not using it for any complex projects, what’s available currently is enough for me. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise for those who wants something simple to use and don’t need all the extra bells and whistles, so they won’t get distracted.

Email Automation

The Good:

Visual builder is very intuitive

Good conditioning, with option to send SMS available here

The Bad:

👉  I just realized the custom field (check box) where user check the box to receive my free Notion template, I was asked to provide a value (which I’m not sure what I should put in, since people either check the box or they don’t). I’ve sent Support a message so will wait for them to help out.

You can build automations with Triggers & Filters in a visual builder format (similar to Klaviyo/Active Campaign or Encharge).

With Triggers, there are 3 options:

• New subscriber on the list
• After date
• New subscriber on the segment.

SMS Campaign

The Good

👉  Easy to set up & add people to the list

👉  Clear message character count, SMS number, etc., to make sure you always stay within the limit.

The Bad

👉  No US, Canada, India or any Asian countries.

It says “You can now send SMS to mobile phones to almost any country with Acumbamail!”, but I think they mean most European countries. Below is the list of countries you can send the SMS campaigns to:

For your reference, if and when they add more countries that we need, the SMS campaign interface looks like this:

Landing Page

The Good:

I love love love Acumbamail’s landing page feature. Check out the video below to see why.

The Bad:

👉  Maybe I’m all hyped up, but sustaining brain damage going through Vbout’s landing page builder, I’m pretty certain that if every landing page builder was as easy as this to build and edit, there would be no FOMO over any of them.

Similar to their email builder, Acumbamail’s landing page builder is just as easy to learn and with the huge library of templates, you’d likely be able to create some great looking landing pages easily.

You can add UTM, custom scripts to your landing page, along with a few other options. 

Extras

Some nice Extras in the settings

Shopify Integration

Below are some of Acumbamail’s answers to some of my questions about Shopify integration. It’s important to note that they have confirmed that they will continue to make improvements to the plugin 🙌

Can you import tags from Shopify?

No, unfortunately, tags cannot be imported into Acumbamail email lists.

Can Acumbamail tell from the customer list import from Shopify who accepted marketing and do doesn’t?

Acumbamail automatically retrieves customers who have accepted marketing and includes them on an email list with the option of syncing buyers

Can we import Shopify order number and the complete order history of each customer?

No, unfortunately, this cannot be imported.

Can we send dynamic coupon codes?

You can do so if you include a dynamic image on your emails that includes the coupon.

• You add an image design block, upload your image, double click on it, and at the right, you will see a dynamic URL section.
• You can copy-paste your image URL and use a variable, e.g. {{couponnewcustomers}} next to the URL. It would look like this: https://img.example/?={{couponnewcustomers}}.
• This variable will be taken from a field on your email list, so you can have, let’s say, a coupon for new customers and another for recurring buyers. This is just a simple explanation, but please reach us at support@acumbamail if you need help setting it up. I still recommend you do a couple of test before.

Can we create browse abandonment email sequence?

You can do so by integrating your Acumbamail email workflows with our API  or Zapier. Here you have the detailed explanation to set up an abandoned cart email sequence with our API:

• You do the API setup using the Add subscriber option.
• You go to the list where your buyers are (it should be synchronized with your eCommerce using our API).
• On that list, you go to the “Fields” section and create a boolean field, something like: “They have made a purchase – yes/no”
  Next, on the very same list, you go to “Segments” and create a segment for buyers yes/no: “They have purchased a product equal to YES”
• Now, every time a subscriber from your email list abandons a chart, the value will change to NO, that way it can trigger an email workflow. You can use the “Until” module to set up that you don’t send them an abandoned chart email until the rule: they have purchased equals to no applies.

Flows & automations

Since Acumbamail doesn’t have a lot of flow & automation templates, you can check out the examples from Klaviyo & Vbout for some ideas.

Things you should set up at the beginning

Change Language (for the love of God, do this first):

• Go to My account → Preferences:
• Change default language to English, timezone

Improve email deliverability

• My account → Preferences, under Emails and Domains:
• Confirm your website
• Email
• Set up DKIM, SPF (for better deliverability)

Edit list name

There are internal & public names for every list and by default, they’re whatever you enter when you first create the list. I didn’t know this so I put down “my awesome peeps” at the beginning.

• From Newsletters → Lists → Settings → List name and Public subscribers list name

Set up Agency feature

• “The possibility of setting up an agency account is available for all 3 License Tiers without any additional costs. The only thing is that our support team has to activate your agency account. You can reach us at support@acumbamail.com and we’ll activate it for you!”
• Once that’s enabled, you can go in and add your subaccounts under My account → Preferences → Agencies
• After creating the subaccount, email Support again asking them to enable all features to those subaccounts (list out the login emails).
• Double check if the subaccount status now shows as Pro.

Conclusion

Ease of use: 5/5
Integration: 3/5
Automation/segmentation power: 3/5
Email builder: 5/5
Landing page builder: 5/5
Value for money: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

I really like Acumbamail.

I have a few projects that are perfect for this (Small audiences and I don’t send out newsletters frequently). The drag and drop builder for emails and landing pages make it super easy for me to whip up content or create an event page.

Although the segmentation and integration still have room to grow as they are fairly basic for now, and as much as we all want the car with all the bells and whistles, I feel that it more than meets the needs of a lot of people. Plus, it’s very beginner friendly so if you’re starting out or just getting your feet wet with email marketing, you wouldn’t be put off by the learning curve (what learning curve??).

I love what Vbout can do, but I just can’t get over the UI and how much I have to fiddle around to find out what to do next.

Acumbamail is pretty well known in Spain, and judging from my communication with them so far, they seem to be serious on improving those integrations including WordPress and Shopify, with Pabbly & Intergromat currently being discussed.

They also seem to be very focused on where and how they want to grow Acumbamail, and not trying to be an all in one tool (not that it’s a bad thing, just ask Vbout, but don’t ask Encharge). For now, I’ll hold off from moving my ecom mailing list to Acumbamail, but every other projects I’m working on have already been migrated.

With an already strong backbone, if it can integrate with Pabbly/Integromat and improve the WP & Shopify integration, I’m pretty certain that it can leap past a large number of other email marketing tools.