Transform Your Business
Email Hasn't Gone Away
Email remains one of the more potent marketing tools for reaching customers, both new and old.
While it’s often disregarded by new businesses in favour of social media and pay per click advertising, there’s no doubt that marketing professionals still see it as a durable option. If you have a good mailing list and the right strategy, email is capable of delivering exceptional ROI and significant results.
According to Social Media Explorer:
- Email has the potential for as much as a 4,000% uptick on ROI compared to other marketing approaches.
- Customers who have built a relationship with a brand prefer to be contacted by email.
- The average engagement rate for social media is around 0.6%. With an effective email campaign, you can expect opening rates as high as 22.86%.
What to Look for in an Email Marketing Tool
7 Must Have Features
- Mobile responsive templates.
- Automation to reduce workload.
- Campaign tracking and testing tools.
- An easy to use interface.
- A range of plans to suit different budgets.
- Good customer support and online tutorials.
- A range of templates and email building software.
Here we take a look at some of the best email marketing tools available today. These platforms have the potential to transform your business, bring in more customers and make more sales.
When searching for a suitable email marketing tool, your business is going to need to look at several options as we have outlined above. The first two should be how easy the tool is to use and its functionality. The second is the ability to automate
Email marketing, done well, is going to be time-consuming. Active Campaign offers a decent level of automation as well as a wide-ranging set of tools such as content management, segmentation, CRM and lead scoring.
This allows you to send tailored messages to customers throughout the sales funnel and develop different marketing campaigns. While it can be difficult to learn the basics, with advanced reporting and plenty of technical support included Active Campaign ticks all the right boxes for businesses of all sizes.
Constant Contact provides a fully digital business marketing platform including email, website and ecommerce setup as well as social media engagement tools. The aim is to provide a service that delivers everything small and medium-size businesses require to compete in today’s market.
Their email marketing allows you to customise messages with added automation to make life easier. There are tools for building email lists and options for segmentation that allows you to tailor messages to specific sets of customers. Tracking tools let you see who is opening emails and how they are engaging with your business.
Drip is another multi-purpose platform which includes email and is aimed primarily at ecommerce businesses such as online stores. The visual email builder gives you the chance to create personalised messages that help to increase conversions. You can reach out to customers who have abandoned their shopping cart, for example, or send new product notifications to fans of your brand.
There’s also the opportunity to add social media advertising that backs up email outreach, delivering an integrated marketing approach that can certainly help build your customer base more effectively.
The more you can automate your marketing activities while still maintaining strong results and delivering great ROI, the better. Autopilot is configured around high-quality automation which means you can create emails for a wide variety of circumstances.
For example, you can set times for content to be sent out as well as produce mailshots for follow up messages, lead generation and product announcements.
With a range of templates, the platform makes it easy for absolute beginners and doesn’t require any coding experience. With detailed reporting and A/B testing, you have everything you need to create powerful email marketing campaigns.
Mailchimp is perhaps one of the oldest and most well-known email services and still has a lot to offer businesses that want to focus on this type of communication for marketing. The platform is often the first choice for start-ups that need to watch their marketing budgets and the company have recently added website design to their portfolio to boost their appeal.
Compared to other platforms, Mailchimp offers a free, basic service that is aimed at new businesses that can’t afford to spend big on marketing. This includes basic templates and marketing CRM. The more expensive full-service option adds in advanced segmentation and a high level of testing.
Aweber aims to give you the full email marketing experience from developing mailing lists, creating engaging messages and building effective landing pages. Their smart designer makes it relatively easy to create inspiring content with little or no technical experience. Drag and drop facilities and an extensive template library provides everything small or medium-size business needs.
There is plenty of scope to tailor emails to different demographics and automation takes away a good deal of the heavy lifting for new businesses with limited marketing resources. With split testing and ample data reporting, Aweber provides the basic toolset that means you can quickly understand how your email marketing campaigns are working and develop a focused approach.
Summary
If you are searching for a marketing approach that continues to deliver a strong ROI, email marketing is certainly worth your time and effort.
The good news is that most email marketing campaigns are not only highly affordable but effective too. Most companies offer some form of free, trial period. That means you can easily try them out to see if they fit your business operation.
Email marketing is a great way to take your business to the next level.