Many of us were or currently are members of at least one forum or an online social media group. There are plenty of platforms to choose from. You can find groups related to your hobbies and likes, and even your work industry or a specific niche. This time, I’ve decided to have a peek at a few email marketing forums and related newsgroups. Forums and groups should be important to any marketer, as many of your clients might be using them too. View them as a free source for knowledge, trends, and insights. There are some great email blogs that you can follow.

Email Marketing Forums

Here’s my short Warrior Forum review. Right. The Warrior Forum is probably one of the most widely known email marketing forums out there. You can browse through numerous threads and find some good ideas or, at least, help someone in need of information.

But. There’s always a but, right?

If you decide to read through the existing reviews about this email marketing forum, you will get plenty of opinions voicing serious concerns about it. Many are calling it a big scam, a money-making machine for the owners. Moreover, many say that the moderators are there to try to sell things to you, going as far as deleting good answers and pushing their products instead.

To be honest, we shouldn’t forget that they have a paid email forum option called the “War Room”, promising lots of amazing stuff in there. In search of information and knowledge, I decided to try it out. To my disappointment, I found it really far from what they are advertising.

I didn’t find that never-ending well of [paid] resources and information. And, as usual in such cases, getting your money back is really hard. Therefore, don’t jump into these “special offers” that will give you that amazing deal for a great price right that moment. And yes, they are everywhere you look. Save your money and look for free sources outside the Warrior Forum first. Don’t forget there are other email marketing forums out there too.

Verdict: If you filter out the boring spammy threads about buying lists and making millions [the Warrior Forum is full of these], you might actually find some useful, interesting discussions and opinions. Just a warning, ignore everything you need to pay for.

I have found another email marketing forum that is supposed to be dedicated to email marketing, and it is called MailerForum. After registering to this email forum, I found a some good questions that I was willing to answer and help a few fellow e-marketers out. Registration was quite easy. However, it didn’t and still doesn’t let me post, saying I have “insufficient privileges to reply”. I was looking for rules or FAQs on how to earn those great privileges that would let me actually get involved in the forum, but, to my disappointment, I couldn’t find anything.

To be honest, that’s quite annoying. After some analysis, it seems that many of the posts are quite old, and the engagement isn’t what it used to be. It looks like there was a change of management a few years ago and a lot of members were looking forward to the revival of the forum.

I don’t think they were very successful as it still seems awfully quiet in there. If more people got engaged, or at least, were allowed to post, it could be quite a nice place for e-marketers to hang out. Maybe you’ll have better luck than me.

I guess most of us are familiar with Litmus and what they do. But not all of us use their community space. It’s not one of those typical email marketing forums. Though you will find some of the usual questions there, but they seem to have attracted members with technical questions. So if you’re looking for an email hack, dev help or encountering rendering issues, this is the place to be.

Ah, and let’s not forget they have free email templates! You can select from several categories, and work those HTML skills in the Litmus Builder. I’d say it’s a good bonus for all the members. Ultimately, I recommend joining it if you are or at least would like to be a serious email marketer.







Forums with Email Marketing Category

If you look around, you can find forums that have at least a separate category dedicated to email marketing. For example, the Moz forum has a few great discussions about email marketing, and there are several in-depth answers. So, there is potential!

The biggest disadvantage of such forums is the limited number of users interested in the field, whether it is the newbies looking for answers or experts sharing their opinions. And that will naturally result in lower engagement. But, if you’re looking for an online place to hang out and find like-minded individuals, don’t write such forums off straight away, give them a try.

Facebook Groups

Ah, the search for fellow e-marketers pulls me into Facebook. And yes, there are some great groups out there. I’ve tried a few created specifically for email marketing.

What annoys me the most is that 99 posts out of 100 will be about buying lists and scammy schemes promising hundreds of dollars a week. It brightens up my day if I see someone actually sharing a post to an article.

But all is not lost. This time, I will give a shoutout to one Facebook group recommended by another great email marketer (you know who you are!). It’s called Women of Email.

If you one of the ladies enjoying email marketing, I would strongly recommend joining the Women of Email community. Their Facebook group is very active, informative and has a cool positive vibe. I guess that’s what I miss the most in the forums. The support for each other. You can become a member for free, so do try them out.

To try and create a safe space for e-marketers to share info, promote their blogs and look for ideas, I’ve recently created the Smart Email Marketing Facebook group. So join in and let’s grow it together. It’s not one of the usual online web-based email marketing forums. I think Facebook might even offer a better, more convenient, and very familiar interface.

LinkedIn Groups

Let’s not forget LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great place to grow your network. Besides, their groups are very useful too. I’ll give a shoutout to one of them – Email Marketing Gurus. Email Gurus is a safe place to discuss email-related topics with the email marketing experts and practitioners. To be honest, I like this group. It’s active. Many experts at least try to answer the questions that are asked. Not a lot of spammy selly stuff, but decent, real questions. A place to raise your GDPR concerns, get recommendations about tools and much more. Go for it and try it out.

Last but not Least

If you have found a great group or forum, share with me and I will give it a try and maybe add it to the list. Send me a message here or connect via social media. And don’t forget to subscribe to our emails.

Author: Adele Baltuoniene, May 2018