In the following article, we explore email marketing tools, platforms, and services. You will find the definition of what email marketing is, along with the exploration of how to select an email marketing instrument that perfectly suits your business need. You will learn what four types of email marketing are always at your disposal. Besides, we share five steps of an effective marketing campaign that can be implemented with all the tools mentioned in this article. After that, there is a selection of dozen+ email marketing tools, including Mailchimp, Mailjet, ActiveTrail, and others. You will also discover the key parameters to compare email marketing services. In addition to that, we describe the advantages of email marketing, share tips on how to build your email marketing list, and shed light on what email marketing automation is.
Table of contents
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a process of using emails in marketing campaigns to advertise a company’s goods and services and to reward repeat client activities. Customers on your email list can be informed about new products, deals, and other services through means of email marketing. Educating your audience about the benefits of your brand or keeping their interest in between transactions can be a more subtle way to maintain the awareness of your business.
Email marketing is one of the most common and successful methods available when using technologies for marketing campaigns. And it always relies on particular instruments or systems. To obtain the most return on investment from your marketing program, the best email marketing services and tools are at your service. They help you design, develop, and optimize your email marketing. Before exploring the most proverbial solutions, let’s look at four email marketing types.
Four Types of Email Marketing
The four prominent forms of email marketing campaigns are described below. You will discover how to use each one to advance your brand and its products or services. Note that most email marketing tools and platforms let you implement the corresponding campaigns based on each email marketing type.
Newsletter
Email newsletters are among the most frequent and well-liked email marketing tactics. Even a small business might utilize an email newsletter to spread the word about its brand and share useful information with its readers. Create interesting material, and incorporate thought leadership, how-tos, and news about new services/products to enrich the content your subscribers receive. If your newsletter’s content fosters relationships with readers, boosts reader retention and engagement, and fosters a sense of loyalty among readers, congratulations! You may consider it effective.
Acquisition
Acquisition emails can assist you in acquiring subscribers who have chosen to receive your emails but haven’t yet become buyers of your goods and services. You may demonstrate the benefits of becoming an active customer with the help of the best e-commerce tools and services for email marketing. Make individuals on your email list know the advantages your brand delivers by generating compelling offers and educational content. Acquisition emails are a terrific method to target customers who have shown some interest in your organization, drive additional revenue, and accelerate how leads move through the conversion funnel.
Retention
Consider retention emails for your business a very efficient instrument if you have some experience with email marketing campaigns. In a nutshell, they are plane reminders for those clients who forget about you. With their help, you can maintain touch with subscribers who haven’t interacted with your brand or email campaigns recently by sending them a note asking for feedback or making an offer. You can keep your hard-won consumers by using the effective email advertising tactic known as retention emails.
Promotion
Promotional emails deliver a fantastic approach for your business to increase sales and signups and inform your prospects about new product offerings. Promotional emails contain discounts and other incentives to persuade your target audience to purchase a new good or service. Use promotional emails to drive new items or services to subscribers, reward engaged subscribers with special offers, and cross-sell products to your clientele.
Five Steps of Effective Email Marketing Campaign
- Recognize and categorize your audience. One method to improve the match between your email marketing and your subscribers is to make your email segmentation more sophisticated. The ultimate objective is to increase profitability while maintaining ROI. Therefore, the segmentation model needs to be effective enough to reflect sizeable, viable groups.
- Identify your objectives. The next stage is to consider your goals, which will determine the types of campaigns you send and their frequency: obtaining SMB prospects’ attention, increasing service upsells, distributing engaging content along with “thank you” emails to keep and satisfy existing clients, etc.
- Make sign-up forms and collect data. If you don’t have many subscribers, it may be difficult not only to segment your audience but even to send emails to the audience big enough. Implementing diverse methods of email address collection is, therefore, an essential component of a successful email campaign marketing plan. Many marketing firms have previously considered or are planning to import data from sign-up forms and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Gather enough information to segment your mailing list and achieve your objectives, such as client interest in particular products or services, their name, country, city, and other detail.
- Consider campaign frequency. Take into account how often you run campaigns. Recognize your clients’ preferences for email frequency as well as your own ability to brainstorm, produce, design, and test emails. All of your email marketing efforts could be destroyed by sending messages too frequently or insufficiently. Even if you produce top-notch content only.
- Schedule your emails at the right time. Although it will take some trial and error to determine the ideal moment for you to send emails, keep in mind that the highest open rates occur at 4 a.m., whereas the highest click-through rates occur at 6 a.m. At the same time, Friday is considered the best day when you can send opening emails, while Tuesday is the best part of the week for click-throughs.
Email Marketing Advantages
An email remains in the inbox until it is read, deleted, or archived. It is a reason why email marketing has become such a common strategy for companies. However, email is also one of the most reasonably priced technologies out there. In fact, a 2015 study by the Direct Marketing Association discovered that email had an average return on investment (ROI) of $38 for every pound. According to this study published a year ago, the situation is a little bit worse, with an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent.
Email marketing can help you establish a connection with your audience and increase traffic to your blog, social media accounts, and other points you want people to visit. To ensure that consumers are only receiving the messages they wish to view, you may even segment your emails and target users based on demographics.
By employing email marketing software, you can do A/B tests on a subject line or call-to-action elements to determine the best-performing message. To learn more about the email marketing possibilities and advantages, look at the following services and their features.
Best E-Commerce Tools And Services For Email Marketing
Now, when you are familiar with what email marketing is, what its types are, and what steps to consider to bump efficiency, we’d like to introduce you to the best e-commerce tools and services aimed at email marketing. After that, we will once again return to some theoretical aspects of email marketing.
Mailchimp
You’ve probably heard of Mailchimp, one of the best email marketing solutions available. It is considered the king of email marketing tools, not for nothing. Its smart recommendations function, which gives you useful audience insights to maximize your marketing efforts, is what makes this an excellent email marketing tool. You may create and schedule emails as part of their basic email marketing services, which are included in their free plan.
Another strong advantage of Mailchimp is associated with Content Manager. Utilizing this tool, where you can save your images and files for fast access, makes designing emails on the platform simple. With the Mailchimp email marketing platform, you can send out welcome emails, order confirmations, reminders about abandoned carts, and other communications. Furthermore, the daily routine associated with email marketing can be dramatically simplified by automating your emails at key points in the customer experience. Visit the platform’s website for further information.
ActiveCampaign
The Active Campaign email marketing platform lets you grow your business with customer experience automation. In addition to abundant email marketing functionality, the system also delivers feature-rich marketing automation and CRM tools. Thus, Active Campaign offers instruments tailored for each stage of the customer journey. It enables you to utilize precise targeting so that you can easily discover the right prospects, growing your audience in a while. The platform covers the following areas:
- Website Tracking;
- Email Marketing;
- Email Segmentation;
- Subscription Forms.
Thus, you cultivate your relationship with your existing and potential clients by providing tailored guidance via marketing automation, event tracking, and dynamic content. Individual audience members get specific treatment with well-timed calls. Take the next step in your relations with customers via specific landing pages, sales automation, lead scrolling, pipeline automation, attribution, etc.
To prepare you to be able to delight each customer by knowing what they want, ActiveCampaign delivers tools for conversations and split testing. You get the ability to leverage predictive sending and content along with web personalization.
As for the platform’s particular email marketing functionality, it lets you send the right emails to the right recipients. ActiveCampaign empowers you to build email newsletters, create campaigns, and reach your prospects with what they want to see. The email marketing functionality includes:
- Email broadcast. You may occasionally need to address everyone at once. Anyone on your list can get one-time email campaigns from you.
- Prompted emails. Send emails in response to purchases or other on-site activities automatically at times when your contacts are most engaged.
- Specialized emails. Ensure that the appropriate person receives the proper message. Create segments for your audience based on any variable.
- Autoresponders. Contact your clients straight away by sending automated welcome emails or lead magnets.
- Email reminders. Emails can be scheduled for a particular day and time. This functionality is perfect for celebrations, special occasions, birthdays, and sales teams.
Campaign Monitor
You may run effective email marketing campaigns with the help of Campaign Monitor, expanding your business. Create eye-catching, high-impact emails quickly and easily using the platform’s drag-and-drop functionality. Choose from a variety of email templates or enter the URL of your website to have your brand’s colors and logo imported automatically. Create a truly branded email campaign that enthralls your audience by customizing every element.
The best strategy to strengthen your relationship with your audience and increase return on investment is to combine SMS and email marketing. Campaign Monitor makes it simple to start your efforts in this direction. Utilize the client information you already have to create highly targeted segments and send emails that are highly customized and catered with each recipient’s unique interests in mind. Thus, Campaign Monitor offers the quickest method to boost conversions and create lasting connections.
Keep your relations with prospects from being broken by a broken link. Campaign Monitor lets you send links in emails without hesitation due to Link Review. The Link Review feature scans your emails automatically and highlights any links that may be obsolete or broken.
You can also dramatically simplify your email marketing routine by automating email sending. The platform lets you send out emails automatically in response to interactions your audience has with your business, such as product purchases or a store visit. You can make sure your transactional emails are consistent with your brand and just as highly optimized as your normal marketing emails by using Campaign Monitor.
A complete analytics package provides you with an overall picture of the effectiveness of your emails, taking into account things like geography, campaign-level acquisition, and interaction. You’ll receive practical information that you can use to enhance your plan and demonstrate the effectiveness of your email campaigns.
You can easily link your e-commerce platform, CRM, or website with Campaign Monitor, thanks to its seamless connections to hundreds of pre-built apps and integrations. Because you succeed when all of your data flows are combined and integrated.
Mailjet
You may create successful email marketing campaigns using the tools provided by Mailjet, which are also user-friendly and collaborative. The system lets you create adaptable emails by customizing any of the pre-designed templates to wow any recipient regardless of the device they are using. The platform’s real-time collaboration function, which enables seamless cooperation, would be appreciated by team workers.
You can also include dynamic content with this email marketing tool to produce emails that are tailored to the individual recipients. This enables you to significantly improve the outcomes of your email marketing campaigns. Additionally, you can effortlessly manage your email list through a single dashboard, connecting with the rest of your tech stack right away. Select from a broad and well-curated collection of third-party integrations that function flawlessly with Mailjet. You can completely tailor your email program to meet the specific requirements of your brand, ranging from CRM and CMS to marketing and e-commerce platforms.
Watch, measure, and study the effectiveness of your email deliverability and consumer interaction. Utilize Mailjet’s Statistics Dashboard to make informed decisions regarding the strategy for your email campaign. To learn more about your clients, use Mailjet’s Click Maps feature along with the Campaign Comparison tool.
The following professional email marketing features for your most effective communications are at your service:
- Personalization. Promote targeted and individualized messages. Use Dynamic Sections to deliver a single campaign that, depending on the recipient, displays a different message.
- Segmentation. To send communications that are tailored and personalized, group subscribers based on their shared interests and activities. Gather more detailed information with each new email.
- Automation. Automatically interact with your subscribers at key touchpoints. Automate welcome and onboarding emails as well as date-based emails to save time.
- A/B Testing. By conducting tests on elements like the sender name, subject line, or visual content, you can send the messages that are most effective. Up to ten variations may be tested.
- Contact Control. Manage your email lists, change the details of each contact, and make subscription widgets.
- Verifications. Boost open rates, steer clear of the spam bucket, and verify that the email addresses on your list are legitimate.
Drip
Drip, which was created specifically for e-commerce, provides all the automated marketing tools, knowledge, and expertise needed to transform pop-up ads, emails, and shopping experiences into profitable data streams. The segmentation superhero is designed to remove the cream of the data and include it in each email, leading to additional sales. The platform’s analytics go well beyond static lists to uncover important facts. Utilize your data to deliver email content based on client activities to boost engagement and sales. This is known as next-level segmentation. Every client is different. Drip enables you to email them as though you already know them, taking responsibility for personalization in the manner recommended by the top experts.
As a user of this email marketing service, you can utilize the following features:
- Popups and Forms;
- Segmentation Reports;
- Email Marketing Automation;
- Insights & Analytics
With fully tailored email marketing, sales increase. With drip, you can implement your best marketing efforts with ease. Spend less time “doing emails” and more time developing the kind of connections with customers that can help your e-commerce shop expand its income.
You can quickly create eye-catching emails that are consistent with your brand. Select an email template from the collection of pre-built ones, and then use the point-and-click visual editor to make your brand stand out. And don’t forget to use the HTML builder to its maximum potential in your email design.
Hiver
Hiver claims to provide you with a simple path to customer delight. But what exact features does it offer?
Hiver improves Gmail so you can effortlessly provide each customer with excellent, individualized customer service on top of the almighty platform. You don’t need to learn another system because it integrates with Gmail and is made to be simple. The process of onboarding a new member is simple.
Hiver gains strength as your business grows, offering user-friendly collaboration tools, automation to boost productivity, and advanced analytics to keep you on top of your KPIs. A team that is always working toward your success, 24/7 assistance regardless of how much you spend, and a 9.3 rating on G2’s Quality of Support scale are other important aspects of this email marketing solution.
Other features that are worth your attention include:
- Shared Inbox Administration. With a single click, manage shared email accounts and distribute emails. Within Gmail, you may classify emails, collaborate with colleagues, and keep track of whether emails are open, pending, or closed. Increase accountability, track email status, and collaborate more quickly with coworkers.
- Reporting. Discover information about workload distribution, SLA violations, and team performance. Create unique reports to track business-specific metrics. Determine areas for improvement, raise agent output, and gauge client happiness.
- Workflow Automation. Automate monotonous chores that reduce your team’s output. With rule-based automation and round-robin assignment, you can concentrate on what’s really essential.
- Chat live. Your staff will thrill clients with contextual, incredibly quick responses by combining email support and live chat right inside Gmail.
HubSpot Email Marketing
HubSpot, which is arguably best known for its marketing automation platform, delivers a free email marketing solution that may meet many of the transactional email requirements of any business.
HubSpot can send “thank you” emails after purchases, kickback emails from lead offers, or messages promoting current initiatives. The ease of use of this instrument is one of its best features. A convenient drag-and-drop visual editor and pre-made templates are included!
Naturally, the native integration of HubSpot Email Marketing with other HubSpot solutions, including CRM, is what sets it apart. Once you register an account, you have access to both tools, allowing you to manage and track email performance as well as construct a consolidated contacts database and organize it into lists.
Use the HubSpot Email Marketing platform to create effective email campaigns that look great on all devices. Choose from dozens of free templates in the marketplace that are known to convert or get started with one of the platform’s goal-based email templates. Then, alter the layout, calls to action, and branding with the drag-and-drop editor.
When you customize your emails for each user, you can increase average email open rates. Use a contact record’s lifecycle stage, list membership, or any other information to automatically offer up the most pertinent subject lines, links, attachments, and CTAs to email subscribers. Then, regardless of time zone, schedule your campaign and be confident that every recipient will receive your email at the ideal time.
ActiveTrail
In order to enhance your sales, ActiveTrail aims to give you the most cutting-edge marketing solutions that are specifically suited to your requirements. You get the most skilled and committed service, whether you send thousands or millions of emails every month. Because ActiveTrail has strong relationships with internet service providers all around the world, you can consistently and hassle-free deliver emails to your clients’ inboxes.
This email marketing system offers the following features:
- Automation. With ActiveTrail, you can create customized, visually appealing customer journeys, automating your interaction with clients at warriors touchpoints.
- E-commerce. With this platform, it is possible to connect your online store to your e-commerce storefront to get more data and reach visitors there.
- Landing Pages. Make expert landing pages that convert leads more effectively with the ActiveTrail email marketing platform.
- SMS. Send online SMS messages to your leads, customers, and staff.
- Templates. Create eye-catching, mobile-friendly email campaigns with ease.
- Surveys. Get timely, trustworthy, and insightful consumer feedback with the help of surveys.
Sender
One of the top free email marketing tools available, Sender has capabilities to guarantee deliverability and outstanding email marketing campaigns. It enables HTML-illiterate users to produce visually appealing newsletters. Simply select a template and add components like photographs, videos, and text to make it your own. To make an even greater effect, you may even make your emails personalized for each reader. Along with that, if you need to code a completely custom email template, it’s a breeze to do that within the HTML editor.
Sender gives you all the resources your business needs to increase sales. Enterprise-level ecommerce marketing is now possible without being overly complicated or expensive. Its deep automated abandoned cart emails can boost sales. You can identify the appropriate subscribers via segmentation, while Product Wizard makes adding products to your mailing simple. On top of that, this email marketing tool empowers you to increase your audience quickly with attractive pop-ups and forms.
One of the main reasons Sender is worth your attention is because of its powerful analytics function. You may use it to keep track of things like who opened your emails, when they were opened, and who clicked on the links. It even enables you to create precise buyer profiles based on the behaviors of your subscribers, enabling you to improve your current email marketing approach and create offers that are appealing.
Sendinblue
A platform for marketing communications called Sendinblue includes tools for email marketing in addition to other features like building landing pages and managing client relationships. Sendinblue’s email design features make it simple to produce a beautiful email with their selection of over 70 design templates. Additionally, each of these templates is responsive, and you can examine the results before publishing to be sure your design will appear as you intend it to on any screen size.
After creating your email, you can use tools like A/B testing and segmented recipient lists to eliminate the guesswork and human labor involved in campaign optimization and audience targeting.
The list of Sendinblue features contains the following characteristics:
- Email marketing. With slick email messages that you can create in no time, Sendinblue helps you spread the word and increase sales.
- SMS marketing. For urgent messaging or limited-time deals, speak with clients more directly.
- Chat. When customers are viewing your website, be available to them right away if they have any questions.
- Inbox. With a shared inbox, you can keep your staff organized and never again lose track of the email history of your clients.
- CRM. Maintaining a central database of consumer information will help you cultivate stronger ties.
- Marketing Automation. By automating your segmentation and marketing communications, you may save time and improve results.
- Transactional Emails. The design, engagement, and deliverability of your transactional email messages should all be improved, and Sendinblue offers the best way to achieve this goal.
- Segmentation. Sending your marketing communications to a more focused group will increase engagement. You can divide your prospects into categories more precisely with this email marketing platform.
- Landing pages. Dedicated pages for each of your campaigns will help you provide a more focused user experience.
- Signup Forms. Utilize bespoke forms that you can incorporate into your website to expand your email contact list.
- Facebook Ads. To retarget contacts or reach new audiences based on your contact data, launch Facebook Ads straight from your account.
Omnisend
All of your communication platforms can be integrated into Omnisend, a smart ecommerce marketing tool. Only email is included in its free plan, but it is more than enough to support small and medium enterprises’ email marketing needs. It enables you to effortlessly time your communications based on the convenience of your customers and automate email distribution using behavioral triggers.
You can send out more pertinent email marketing campaigns by utilizing its thorough audience insights. Use time-saving tools like the Product Picker, which allows you to choose all the products you wish to include in your email to create eye-catching newsletters. To further improve the effectiveness of your emails, you can also include gift boxes, scratch cards, and discount coupon codes.
With the help of Omnisend’s collection of templates, it’s simple to produce attractive, expert emails in a matter of minutes. Each of our templates may be readily modified to reflect your brand and reused for future campaigns. If you running a number of stores, Omnisend lets you share the templates you’ve used with the associated stores to save even more time.
The drag-and-drop Content Editor makes it simple to develop campaigns with dynamic content blocks created exclusively for ecommerce if you require something more than generic email newsletters. You can make use of particular discount coupons and product recommendations in addition to Product Picker. Utilize customer profile information, purchasing patterns, and other filters to create audience segments that may be added to or omitted from your campaign targeting.
Other Utilize features for optimization to raise your outcomes. A/B testing and campaign boosting are at your disposal. With accurate sales monitoring and attribution, keep an eye on the success of your marketing activities. Recognize the best-performing emails by knowing how your audience interacts with them, how many sales each campaign generates, and how they are engaging your audience.
Constant Contact
With manager-oriented features, create email marketing campaigns like a pro. Regardless of your level of expertise in digital marketing, Constant Contact promises to provide you with a simple-to-use platform that will enable you to achieve your goals. From a single location, you can increase sales, engage your audience, and track what is effective. With hundreds of branded templates, you can create email campaigns like a pro and stay in touch with your audience while accelerating sales.
From a single location, you can create social advertising, monitor the progress of your social campaigns, post updates, and reply to comments, mentions, and messages. Utilize landing pages, SMS, and other methods to quickly expand your consumer base. Get audience analytics as well, which will aid in ongoing optimization.
The basic set of customer list growth tools includes website sign-up forms and Facebook ads integration. Google ads integrated, text message sign-up, and lookalike ad targeting are among additional instruments. Other features include:
- Email Marketing with 300+ email templates;
- Automated emails with the ability to send abandoned cart reminders and birthday/anniversary greetings;
- Contact management with the ability to store, organize, and view records;
- Auto-generated customer segments;
- Post to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and/or LinkedIn all at once;
- Real-time reporting with such highlights as list growth, views, and clicks;
- Conversion and sales reporting
- Award-winning live phone and chat support.
SendPulse
Although SendPulse promotes itself as a multi-channel marketing platform, email marketing is still among its most widely used functions. There are numerous expertly designed email templates included with it, and a drag-and-drop editor makes it simple to alter them. On the basis of user behavior and other factors, you can configure these tailored emails to be automatically sent out at the appropriate time. SendPulse, like many competitors, provides the ability to develop and apply event triggers to your campaigns.
And its subscriber rating feature is a great tool for determining which of your subscribers are worth the most. The feature enables you to examine each subscriber’s open and click rates as well as their read and unread rates. You may also specify replaceable text fields to add such details as name, gender, age, work title, and date of birth to your emails.
Successful email marketing with SendPulse is based on the following pillars:
- Email Editor. A drag-and-drop email editor does not require technical skills or HTML knowledge.
- Automation 360. This feature lets you set up email send-out, web push notifications, and SMS flows. You can use variables, events, and the actions your users take to configure it precisely.
- Tags. The SendPulse email marketing platform uses tags for better organizing your contact lists and sending emails to your subscribers.
- Subscriber Rating. By analyzing the activity of your subscribers, the system segments your mailing list, enabling a personal approach to each category.
- Email Personalization. Due to variables, you can address your customers by name and insert any personal information stored in your database.
- Subscription Forms. You can customize subscription forms to follow your brand identity.
- Statistics. Get information on the number of opens and clicks to improve your email campaigns.
Benchmark Email
A rich feature set with integrated automation is available from Benchmark Email, designed to support any size organization. A simple yet effective email marketing solution was created to make it easy for you to plan and send effective campaigns. Benchmark Email is a fantastic alternative for an email marketing solution of your choice. It even lets you alter images straight on the platform if you need to include them in your email as an attachment.
Benchmark Email tools for customer engagement can assist your company in guiding clients through their customer journey. Signup forms that automatically fill any available area on your website will draw visitors. Follow-up tools that are automated and prompted to keep in touch with your subscribers.
As we’ve already mentioned, Benchmark Email delivers robust tools aimed at visual improvements of your emails. To effectively convey your message, you can add effects, stickers, and text using the email editor.
You can select from a huge selection of pre-designed templates. They are divided according to the type, industry, and occasion. If you are more knowledgeable about HTML, you can create emails from scratch using the code editor. The dual view feature makes it easier to create emails by allowing you to see your email design while you update it.
MailerLite
MailerLite stands out from other free email solutions available on the market because to its sophisticated features like the pop-up customizer and landing page builder. The tool has a powerful text editor and an integrated photo editor in addition to the essentials like the drag-and-drop email builder, allowing users to produce eye-catching emails.
Your chances of generating conversions will increase if you design responsive landing pages that go along with your emails. To determine which iterations of your email generate the most clicks and conversions, you can perform split tests on them. Additionally, MailerLite gives you access to a thorough campaign report that includes vital data like click rate, unsubscribe rate, open rate, and more.
Utilize MailerLite’s email marketing solutions to expand your company. With MailerLite’s sophisticated email marketing features, you can grow your subscriber base, improve client interactions, automate workflows, and make money off of your audience:
- Make stunning campaigns. Choose one of three editors to produce persuasive campaigns.
- Get your viewers to pay. E-commerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, or Stripe should be integrated.
- Streamline workflows. Create complex marketing workflows using the user-friendly automation builder.
- Send specialized campaigns. Sending tailored material to every subscriber is the secret to successful marketing.
- Manage subscriptions and campaigns. Manage your email list and campaigns using the desktop or mobile app.
- Continually enhance your campaigns. Keep an eye on campaign results to determine what is most effective for your company.
Moosend
The fantastic email marketing solution Moosend allows you to automate routine processes and save time. Based on the data and/or activities of your subscribers, you can create behavioral email campaigns. Its sophisticated segmentation tool enables you to send incredibly precise emails to every recipient, boosting open and click-through rates as well as ROI.
This tool gives you a thorough campaign performance evaluation so you can understand exactly how to tweak your efforts for even better outcomes. Even some of your favorite apps can be integrated with it to provide seamless information transfer between platforms. Also, note that Moosend is one of the few free email marketing platforms that won’t insert its logo into your emails.
This email marketing platform is associated with the following advantages:
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- Advanced Personalization. “First name” personalization is no longer enough. With Moosend, you can personalize your emails due to highly precise segmentation based on your customer’s behavior, including previous purchases and abandoned items.
- Automation. Moosend simplifies your marketing tasks and helps to reach your goals at the push of a button due to advanced automation features.
- Segmentation. This email marketing service empowers you to create countless condition combinations and break down your audience into numerous segments, following behaviors on your website.
- Testing. The platform lets you measure engagement with A/B testing that covers everything from subject lines to videos.
- Data Analytics. Track opens, clicks, social shares, and unsubscribes to construct effective strategies and enrich engagement.
EmailOctopus
A straightforward email marketing solution called EmailOctopus utilizes the Amazon SES network to deliver the best email marketing opportunities. Pay heed to the fact that its free plan allows for a lot more emails per month than most of the other free email marketing tools on the internet. Even though it doesn’t offer as many capabilities as some of the systems mentioned in this article, it may be a trustworthy option if you look for a free alternative. You can use as many email addresses as you want to send an unlimited number of emails. It is, therefore, the ideal choice for a small business with a tight budget. Additionally, EmailOctopus connects with third-party programs like MailOptin, WordPress, and Zapier to allow for easy data transfer across programs.
The set of email marketing functionalities that EmailOctopus offers is pretty much the same as the other similar solutions offer:
- Expand your audience. Along with forms that you can customize for your website, you can import current subscribers and keep expanding. You might also design beautiful landing pages to draw in additional subscribers.
- Create eye-catching emails. Utilize the simple email editor to add your own customizations to a pre-designed template. Also, create your own designs entirely via HTML.
- Automate email marketing campaigns. With an automated welcome series of emails, you can save time and connect with new subscribers when they’re most interested.
- Personalize your emails. Use insights to divide your subscribers into target audiences and send emails that are highly targeted.
- Analyze the outcomes. With simple campaign reporting, keep track of your open, click, and bounce rates. Take a quick look at what’s functioning or explore additional specifics with past activity for your contacts.
- Pair up with your preferred applications. Integrate EmailOctopus with your preferred applications, such as Shopify, Gravity Forms, and Squarespace to easily add new subscribers.
What is Email Marketing Automation?
As you can see, software solutions for email marketing and automation serve a variety of functions, including better conversions and more efficient lead generation. They let you send emails and monitor metrics like click-through and open rate. Setting conversion targets and then automating many processes associated with an email campaign are made possible due to steps similar to the following ones:
- Sending “thank you” emails after a customer completes a purchase;
- Collecting data necessary for further improvement and automation;
- Sending special offers, such as discounts or free shipping, depending on provided parameters;
- Collecting data necessary for further improvement and automation;
- Sending reminders for abandoned carts, etc.
While this algorithm may vary a lot depending on a particular business case, it is clear that marketing automation software is more complex than conventional email marketing because it can track every digital interaction a lead has with your company. However, you have probably spotted that most of the email marketing tools described above more or less deliver marketing automation features. Today, being a simple email marketing platform that offers only manual campaign management is no longer enough to provide businesses with the competitive advantages they require.
For instance, lead scoring is an important component of email marketing automation. Although not all of the tools from this article provide this functionality, most of them are associated with the corresponding instrument. In a nutshell, this process boils down to assigning a value to leads to represent a stage in a conversion funnel. Consequently, you get a more targeted marketing effort that incorporates not only customer segmentation but also the particular stage of the interaction with your brand. With this feature on board, your email marketing software becomes more attractive.
By guiding folks on your email list through the entire marketing journey up until the desired action is completed (in other words, a conversion takes place), automation fosters a sense of connectivity and relation to your audience. Inbound and outbound marketing strategies are the final ways to conceptualize it. While traditional email marketing is associated with outbound strategies since it limits businesses to sending email blasts and gathering minimal data in response, automation, on the other hand, conveys a different message and creates an inbound environment where two-way contact is not only desired but also embraced. What can we say about the email marketing platforms mentioned earlier?
Well, all of them provide adhere to basic automation principles. Even the most simple software solutions can help you reduce headaches associated with repetitive actions and create two-way communication. However, the depth and sophistication of the corresponding functionalities vary a lot from platform to platform. So, how to choose a reliable email marketing software?
How to Compare Email Marketing Software?
Now, when you are familiar with top-notch email marketing tools and services, let’s focus on a few key elements to be on the lookout for when selecting an email marketing software solution that perfectly suits your needs:
- Templates. It’s best if an email marketing solution offers both pre-designed templates and an intuitive editor. If there is an additional HTML editor, it is even better. Note that your templates should be responsive.
- Segmentation. The more precise your segmentation is, the more efficient your email marketing campaigns are. Keep it in mind while looking for a new tool. Your software solution should divide your customers into groups following numerous parameters.
- Personalization. A reliable email marketing platform delivers exceptional personalization. Note that “First Name” personalization is no longer enough. Therefore, your tool should understand how your customers interact with your brand to deliver a unique, individual message.
- Automation. Since email marketing is associated with tons of repetitive tasks, a robust email marketing instrument should help you avoid them via automation. The more aspects of your campaign you automate, the more time you have for other really essential tasks.
- Lead Scoring. As we’ve just mentioned above, this feature makes your highly precise marketing efforts even more precise.
- Testing Tools. It is vital to test each campaign to understand how successful it is. If you don’t do that, your interactions with clients won’t evolve. Testing tools can help you become better with each new campaign.
- Advanced Analytics. The ability to keep track of your open, click, and bounce rates is a must since it provides you with more in-depth insights into how effective your email marketing campaigns are.
- Third-Party Integrations. Often, integration with a third-party system, such as CRM, can dramatically change the way of all things in the business. Connecting your email-marketing tool to a third party may enrich it with lacking data, leading to unexpectedly high results.
- Ease-of-use. Of course, the email marketing service of your choice should be easy to use and understand. For instance, a drag-and-drop interface may dramatically simplify your campaign preparations.
- Price. Last but not least, the financial aspect is also worth considering when selecting an email marketing solution. A robust instrument can drastically drain your budget, while a free solution may lack some vital features.
How To Build Email Marketing List?
There are a couple of ways to create an audience of individuals to email them in the first place as part of your internet marketing campaigns. They all revolve around serving your customers correctly while keeping in mind marketing best practices.
- Never purchase an email list. Sending to purchased lists is forbidden since many email marketing providers (most of them are listed above) have a rigorous, permission-based policy when it comes to email addresses. Instead, focus on using lead magnets to persuade your potential customers to choose to receive messages from you. When customers subscribe to your email list using a unique signup form, you might give them a discount on their initial purchases or provide other ways to engage them. You could also give new subscribers free shipping on their subsequent purchases, or you could give them a chance to win a prize when they subscribe to your list.
- Be cautious of email policies. When sending automated emails, be sure to go by any legal requirements and relevant local legislation, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the US, the Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL), or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU. The proper handling of personal information is vital if you don’t want to get in trouble. You must be aware of the laws that apply to you and your clients because they depend on both your location and the locations of your subscribers.
- Use email to communicate with your clients. Email is a fantastic marketing tool, but it also has other benefits for your company. It not only gives your audience a chance to offer you insightful input but also enables them to learn more about your brand. However, it is essential to send emails only when you really need to. The act of providing an email address implies that a person shows trust in you and your brand. Don’t abuse that trust because you won’t get it back, losing customers’ interest along with that.