As with the ever-changing digital marketing landscape, marketing trends and channels evolve over time. And so do the Tools For Email Marketing.
Well, while some trends come and go quickly, email has remained more or less the same since its inception. It has stood the test of time and proven itself to be a highly effective communication method.
That said, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for businesses of all sizes. Considering that email marketing sees an average of 4400 percent return on investment, the right marketing service can significantly impact the success of your business.
That’s why you need to pick a reliable email marketing service.
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If you are on the fence trying to decide what marketing strategy to use, email marketing might be your best choice. As long as you are using it right, it is one of the most valuable and reliable ways to reach your audience.
In this post, you will learn more about email marketing and the features you need to look for when choosing an email marketing service.
Let’s start by understanding email marketing.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing refers to the act of sending commercial emails to, typically, customers on your email list and potential customers.
In other words, it is the use of email within your marketing efforts to promote the products and services you offer while developing relationships with potential customers or clients.
Digital marketers and small businesses use email marketing campaigns to distribute content with the aim of accomplishing a specific goal. The first goal is to get your email open and that will take the right headlind.
That said, effective email marketing does an excellent job of helping businesses nurture leads or start a lasting relationship with customers and prospects.
The most exciting thing about email marketing is its cost-effectiveness – very cheap with an excellent return on investment. It offers an inexpensive way to advertise your business together with its products.
Important Tools For Email Marketing
The purpose of email marketing goes beyond pitching an offer. With effective email marketing, you can build customer loyalty and trust, brand awareness, nurture leads, and increase direct sales.
That said, choosing the right email marketing service is integral for keeping your audience engaged and increasing your customers’ lifetime.
Here are essential features that an email service should offer.
A freemium product to get started
First off, going for a freemium product doesn’t always mean you like free things. With that in mind, the best email service provider will offer a freemium product, allowing you to have a test of their basic features before you can subscribe for a premium service.
Thankfully, most email marketing service providers offer a free version of their email marketing software. For instance, picking up on the financial anxiety of small businesses, AWeber and MailChimp, among other email service providers, have rolled out freemium products for beginners to get started with ease.
Automations
Email message automation is one of the most powerful features your email service provider can offer. It is all about combining data relating to customer behavior with personalized journeys and on-brand content to deliver the right message to customers and prospects at the right time.
The feature allows you to set up automatic sequences of almost everything from welcome messages to order confirmation emails and generating feedback reports.
Marketing automation offers a reliable solution for sending better, more targeted emails at a scale. It plays a simple yet indispensable role in ensuring optimized workflows, bringing you closer to reaching your goal of keeping customers engaged and happy.
The best email service provider will offer a simple-to-use but powerful marketing automation solution for you.
Landing pages
Another essential feature to look for when hunting for an email service provider is landing pages. So, why are they essential?
Landing pages allow you to capture more leads, grow your audience, and connect the dots across your web tools.
Instead of sending leads to your website hoping they will find the information they want, this feature allows you to create a great impression with pages that are specifically designed for your leads and prospects.
Landing pages tools allow you to engage your customer based on whether they are pre-, mid-, or post-purchase.
Overall, this feature lets you give your customers the fluid experience they crave and answer their questions appropriately, leading to purchase.
Pre-built email Templates
If you are not a designer, finding an email service provider that offers pre-built emails templates to get started is an absolute must. After all, not everyone is good at designing emails tailored to the recipient’s needs.
Thankfully, most email marketing platforms offer a rich selection of email templates, relieving you of the hassle of creating emails from scratch. Without these email templates, it would mean that you will be creating your emails from scratch, which can be hectic.
Before choosing an email marketing service or software, ensure the provider offers a vast selection of freemium products.
The templates should be simple with elegant design and highly customizable so that you add dynamic content and personalization to make them relevant to customers and prospects.
Also, check to ensure that there are templates to serve different marketing purposes, like newsletters, announcements, and promotions.
A drag and drop builder to customize email
Even with pre-built email templates, you may still need to tweak a few things to better your mailing content. Whether it is adding a block of text, an image, or more buttons, you need a drag and drop builder to do this with ease.
Basically, email marketing services should offer an intuitive, easy-to-use, and powerful email builder with simple drag-and-drop functionality to allow you to adjust any templates so you are happy and contented with the final result.
An email service provider that offers templates and email builder lets make changes to your campaigns without the need for designer halpe.
Tracking and Analytics
As with most business solutions, you need to track and measure the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns to spot anything that needs improvement.
That said, the right platform for you should offer rich statistics and insights. That way, you have an easier time measuring the success of your email marketing efforts and tracking the growth of your business.
At the bare minimum, you should have a way to track deliverability, open rates, click-through rates, conversions, unsubscribes, and devices used by recipients.
Free Stock Images
In order to stand out in the competitive environment, one of the things you need to include in your website and marketing campaigns is high-quality images.
Relevant images add to the visual appeal of your emails while making the content richer.
Considering that humans process images 60,000 times faster than text, it is imperative to find an email service provider who offers free stock images.
That way, you will not only have images to share with your customers and prospects but also save on acquiring the right to use the images.
Email signup forms
Every business needs new customers, and every business is constantly looking for new leads, even if it has the longest email list. Email signup forms offer an easy and sure way to get subscribers as long as you are sharing content.
In this regard, you should find a reliable email service provider that offers email sign-up forms that you can add to your website. The forms should be intuitive and customizable to allow you to create forms standard for your business or industry.
Social media integration
If you are already using a variety of apps and subscription services, you definitely need an email marketing platform that fits into your existing technology stack.
The best service will offer social media integration, allowing you to engage your audience through social media, and convert them with email marketing.
Seamless integration with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other pages makes it easy to expand your reach. For example, you can invite your mailing list to like our pages and ask followers to opt-in to your subscription for one marketing solution.
Segmentation
We cannot speak about targeted emails without mentioning segmentation. Segmentation is about organizing your customers based on different criteria like location, interests, and browsing behavior. Ultimately, this makes it super easy to automate messages depending on consumer action and refine email content to suit the interests of different segments to improve engagement.
Content Management System (CMS) integration
Email marketing is just one of the essential pieces with a larger marketing technology stack, and it should easily integrate with a variety of other business solutions. Considering that many people use CMS to build and manage websites, it is imperative to find an email service offering CMS integration.
By integrating CMS, you can make your email marketing campaigns hyper-targeted, personalized, and more relevant based on your offers.
Good customer service
Even with the best features and integration capabilities, you will need help with your email marketing service from time to time. When that time comes, you want to be sure that your email service provider is there to help.
That said, before you purchase a premium product, make sure to check how long it takes for your provider to respond to email or phone, address troubleshooting issues, and help with common problems.
Conclusion
Email marketing service is a necessity in today’s competitive business landscape. Well, while there is no perfect email marketing service provider, it is imperative to find a platform that offers a host of essential features listed above.
To save you from the hassle of comparing many options, we have included some of the best email marketing tools you might find useful.