Squarespace officially rolled out their new email campaign feature on Wednesday.
Up until then, users have had to use a third-party platform (like Mailchimp or ConvertKit) and sync it up to their website either by a form block or a piece of code.
But not anymore!
Squarespace now offers beautifully designed email campaigns that are easy to create, edit, and automate. It’s just one more way that the website builder is helping people create a beautiful online presence.
This new feature will be beneficial for a lot of Squarespace users. But is it right for you?
Before you ditch your current email marketing platform, consider these pros and cons.
Advantages
Beautifully designed layouts
In keeping with their gorgeous website templates, Squarespace’s new email campaign feature includes 30+ beautifully designed layouts for all types of emails, including:
Promoting a product
Announcing a new project
Announcing a sale
Sharing a blog post
Saying thank you
Asking for support
Sending an invitation
Writing a newsletter
For newcomers and seasoned business owners alike, these eye-catching templates will make your business appear professional and create a stunning first impression with subscribers.
They’ll also keep you from wasting time and energy trying to create a well-designed email from scratch.
Easy access to your content
Squarespace’s new campaign feature allows you to quickly import content that already exists on your website.
Products, blog posts, social icons, logos, and mailing lists are only one click away, meaning less time and fewer errors.
You no longer have to hunt down images, links, and information. Squarespace pulls them right from your website and into your email campaigns with the click of a button.
User-friendly editing
Squarespace’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface is one of the key features that sets it apart from similar website builders.
It’s user friendly; there isn’t a huge learning curve involved for creating and customizing your online home base.
So it’s no surprise that creating, editing, and managing email campaigns doesn’t take much time to figure out in Squarespace.
Adding text, changing colors, and adding call-to-action buttons is straightforward and very similar to the interface of the Squarespace’s website builder.
And you can access it on the go!
Squarespace allows you to create a campaign, edit drafts, and check analytics from any device.
Email automation
Do you want to send an automated email welcoming someone to your list, offering them a discount, or thanking them for purchasing your product?
Squarespace allows you to streamline your process and build relationships with your audience through automated emails.
You can learn more about email automations in this helpful Squarespace article.
Disadvantages
Inability to organize subscribers
At the moment, Squarespace doesn’t provide a way to organize your email subscribers.
Unlike other email marketing platforms like ConvertKit, you aren’t able to add tags, create segments, or see how a subscriber joined your list.
These are all valuable pieces of information for marketing your products and services.
They allow you to understand the interests of your audience and provide content that will appeal to them, which leads to better engagement, retention rates, and conversions.
If you’re just getting started and want to keep your list simple, this won’t affect you much.
But if you want to implement more sophisticated email marketing strategies in the future, you’ll be very limited if you stick with what Squarespace is currently offering.
No A/B split testing
This is a seemingly small disadvantage, but the subject of your email can make a big impact on how many people actually open it.
Other platforms like ConvertKit allow you to A/B split test the title of your email.
Here’s a brief summary of how it works:
You come up with two subject lines.
One subject line (A) will be sent to a small percentage of your list and the other subject line (B) will be sent to another small percentage of your list.
The one with the greater amount of opens during a 2-4 hour window will be sent out as the subject line to the remainder of your list.
Squarespace doesn’t offer this feature at the moment.
No sequences
Squarespace does offer automated emails, but it doesn’t offer sequences.
If you want to send one welcome email to your subscribers, you can do that with Squarespace. But if you want to send a welcome sequence that contains more than one email, you’re out of luck.
This is another limiting feature for those who are interested in implementing more involved email marketing strategies and funnels.
The jury’s still out on deliverability
Unlike other email marketing platforms, ensuring deliverability doesn’t seem to be a top priority for Squarespace.
Their templates (while beautiful!) contain a lot of images and features that some providers might flag, leaving your emails in the spam folders of many of your subscribers.
If you do plan to use Squarespace email campaigns, be sure to follow these guidelines for avoiding spam filters.
It costs extra
The Squarespace email campaign feature isn’t included in your Squarespace subscription; it’s charged in addition to it.
Depending on which email marketing platform you’re currently using, this might save you some money (so it may not be a disadvantage after all!).
But for those of you who thought that you may be able to cut out another business expense completely, you might be a little disappointed.
Are Squarespace campaigns for you?
Yes, if…
Brand consistency and great design is important to you
You have a simple email marketing strategy
You value an easy-to-use interface
No, if…
Organizing and understanding your subscribers is important to you
You have in-depth funnels and marketing strategies
Either way, Squarespace allows you to test out this new feature for free! Take it for a test-drive and try it out for yourself.
What do you think about this new feature? Are you going to give it a try?
If not, which email marketing platform are you currently using to send campaigns and organize your list and why?
