How to Choose the Right Email Marketing Platform for Your Business

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways you can share your message, sell your services, and build a relationship with your customers.

In fact, companies who send automated emails are 133% more likely to send relevant messages that correspond with a customer’s purchase cycle. Over 75% of email revenue is generated by triggered campaigns, rather than one-size-fits-all campaigns. Automated email campaigns account for 21% of email marketing revenue.

In short, email marketing is a big deal, and if you're in charge of engaging with existing customers or new prospects, you need an email marketing tool that will help you effectively manage your lists, connect, campaign.

Read on to find out the key factors you should consider when choosing your email marketing platform and our recommended email marketing solutions.

What to consider when choosing email marketing software

As we know, email marketing isn't about sending random promo emails to people, hoping that they'll become profitable conversions overnight. It's about communicating with people in a humanized fashion, using targeted content to deliver your message.

That said, using an Excel spreadsheet coupled with Outlook to manage your lists and send emails no longer cuts the mustard. In the modern age, you need something far more efficient.

According to a recent survey, 60% of marketers state that email marketing is producing a significant ROI and 32% state that it eventually will. That means that choosing the right email marketing software for the job is crucial to your efforts.

When choosing your platform, these are three things you should consider...

Integration

When you work in digital marketing, your CRM (Customer Relationship Management Software) is your best friend. Updating lists and sending emails manually is time-consuming, so choosing an email marketing platform that integrates seamlessly with your CRM will provide you with a hassle-free solution for managing valuable content and customer data, as well as providing you with an overview of key metrics (open rates, click-through rates) to see which campaigns are performing the best.

Reading and Viewing options

43% of people now check their emails on their smartphone every single day.

In today's world, fewer and fewer people are opening their emails from a traditional desktop setting, which means choosing an email marketing tool with functionality and mobile-optimized templates is essential. If someone opens an email on their mobile device and it can’t display correctly, they'll bounce immediately, and your efforts will be redundant.

Response handling

Whether your business is small, medium or colossal — email response handling is of vital importance. If you are part of a smaller business sending out a newsletter or email series to around 1,500 people per month, you'll require less sophistication regarding automation and response handling, and you'll be able to handle some of the work manually. But, if you're handling mass amounts of emails, choosing email marketing software that will allow you to send automated responses or aggregate customer responses into tickets will be beneficial.

Email marketing options

Now that you understand what you're looking for in your email marketing software, let's look at the some of the best tools available for the job.

1. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most accessible email marketing platforms in the world today, with around seven million users worldwide. For small to medium-sized business managing weekly or monthly newsletters, alongside regular campaigns, with a strong social media focus, this tool is ideal. Regarding Analytics, MailChimp integrates with the likes of Salesforce, WordPress and GA. The platforms also work seamlessly with Hootsuite, Facebook, Twitter Pinterest and Instagram.

The platform allows you to automate templates, customise emails, and add designs with ease. Although effective and visually pleasing across all platforms, if you're looking for a tool that allows for a little more backend development, MailChimp is somewhat limited. According to a recent benchmark report, MailChimp shows an average open rate of around 22% across all the key industries.

2. GetResponse

GetResponse is a scalable email marketing tool which offers an excellent return on investment as your price plan will depend on the size of your company and how many contacts you have at the time of sign up.

With 500 pre-designed templates powered by user-friendly editing software plus intuitive list-building tools, it's possible to create fully-integrated, interactive campaigns with limited technical knowledge. GetResponse has some of the best Salesforce integration software on the market and has been praised for its 24/7 customer report and tutorial user seminars. If you're building campaigns based on assets from some sources, GetResponse will allow you to export files from several formats and offer in-built statistics including best-performing emails and cart abandonment rate.

3. SendinBlue

For an e-commerce business, SendinBlue is particularly effective. The platform offers user-friendly email design tools as well as plenty of backend scope for developers looking to add extra functionality to your email campaigns. One of the most useful features of SendinBlue is the fact that it allows you to synchronize contact lists from most major platforms, meaning if you're dealing with a broad target audience, you can manage your content with ease.

Detailed analytics include insights on where emails have been opened as well as device type, and the transactional email options are more advanced than most email marketing tools available. These functions include targeted SMS messages that work in conjunction with your emails, in addition to tailored messages to customers including 'make a purchase', 'remember your password, and 'you left items in your shopping cart'.

A little technical know-how is needed to open up SendinBlue's full potential, but with a little internal collaboration, this could well be a powerful asset for your e-commerce business.

4. ActiveCampaign

The ActiveCampaign drag and drop interface is a great way of building content rich email campaigns with speed and accuracy.

The platform boasts a range of sophisticated market and sales automation features as well as a huge library of free stock images, image hosting, and real-time analytics so you can monitor campaign performance as it’s happening.

One of the main selling points for larger or more active businesses is its A/B testing tool. The functionality is easy to setup and coupled with the real-time analytics; it can prove very effective for optimization of campaigns that will offer maximum ROI.

Choosing the best email marketing tool for your needs can be tricky, but by asking yourself the right questions, setting clear measurable goals, and taking the time understand your options, you’ll be sure to make the right decision.

Ultimately, one of the most important elements to any campaigns is planning and content. If you want to strengthen your digital skills, our Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing will provide you with a strong foundation in the core concepts of digital marketing.

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