While many forms of marketing have come and gone, email marketing is here to stay.
Even though the majority of millennials spend over 6 hours each day reading emails, most people from every generation use their email throughout their daily lives.
They use it while they are working, exercising, eating a meal, commuting, and everywhere in-between. By taking advantage of email marketing, your business can provide a reliable form of communication to customers wherever they may be.
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Does email marketing work?
That’s an easy question to answer. Yes, unquestionably!
Email marketing is a cost-effective solution that allows you to communicate with your customers on a consistent basis for a relatively low cost.
One of the best things about email marketing is that you can personalize your emails to show that you value them. As opposed to a billboard or commercial that caters to a broad audience, emails treat people like individuals, and customers appreciate that sentiment.
This is particularly true with companies people already do business with, 91% of US adults claimed they like to receive promotional emails. On top of that, email is nearly 40 times more successful than Twitter and Facebook combined in acquiring new customers.
The email marketing guide
After learning about all the benefits that email marketing has to offer, you’re probably anxious to start using it to drive sales and revenue for your business. Well, you’ll want to go through the proper steps to get up and running to ensure your email campaigns are a success. Let’s walk you through the process.
Choose an email marketing software. When choosing the right email marketing platform for your business, you should consider how it integrates with your CRM (Customer Relationship Management Software). Seamless integration will provide you with valuable content on customer data and key metrics to decide which messages to send to who and when. Considering how many people check their emails from their smartphones, it’s also a good idea to choose an email marketing tool with mobile-optimized templates and functionality. Also, depending on the size of your business, you’ll have to consider email response handling. Can you respond manually to 1,500 emails per month or do you need a software that can automate responses?
Building your email list. First, you’ll want to import your list of known contacts. However, before you upload these contacts, you’ll need to ensure you have permission to email those subscribers. To build your list from scratch, you need to start capturing email addresses – this is a vital aspect of building a scalable and cost-efficient email marketing program. You can offer valuable incentives with compelling content, first-order discounts, or free or express shipping upgrades to attract subscribers. You should also always use a call to action (CTA) on your website to encourage people to join by providing a form for them to import their email addresses.
Create content – message and promotions. Our attention span is, on average, twelve seconds, so structuring your campaign for easy reading is critical. You need to structure your emails to grab your audience’s attention and steer them towards your email’s call to action. You’ll want to use images and visuals to increase engagement, personalize your email campaigns, and make sure the emails are relevant to each subscriber by categorizing them into list segments.
Set-up email cadence. Cadence includes the number of emails sent out, when they are sent (or what triggers are used to send them), the amount of time between them, the type of content sent, and who exactly is receiving the emails. You’ll want to know how often your customers want to receive promotional emails and what type of content gets them to take action. Sending emails too frequently might scare them off, while weekly or monthly promotions could drastically raise engagement levels. It’s important to note that your cadence should NOT be one-size fits all but customized based on each audience segment and what message will resonate best with each.
How to Master Email Marketing:
Now that you have an idea of how to start email marketing, it’s time to choose an email marketing software that’s right for your business. We’ll help you decide which software is best for you by going over the features, pros, and cons of some of the most popular options.
Constant Contact Review
Constant Contact is an industry mainstay who offer modern, mobile-optimized templates and a drag-and-drop editor to make it easy to create, customize, and send professional emails that work for any type of industry. To add to their service suite, they’ve recently started tackling popular marketing channels like social media and media buying to provide a broader range of marketing solutions to their customers.
Features
Constant Contact offers an array of email marketing tools and features that SMBs can utilize such as basic eCommerce marketing and unlimited emails. They also include over 160 templates and a branded template builder that’s capable of creating emails to match a company’s website.
Pros
- Attractive and intuitive user interface
- Integrates social media campaigns
- 60-day free trial
Cons
- Templates aren’t very customizable
- A ceiling of 500 contacts for the basic plan
- Difficult to edit user records
Constant Contact Pricing
Constant Contact Recommendation
Constant Contact is a great fit for SMBs, but businesses with large contact lists might be better served by other solutions such as MailChimp. However, Constant Contact doesn’t have a cap on how many emails you can send a month, they have an array of marketing features (automation, personalization, segmentation, etc.), and they’ve integrated Facebook, Eventbrite, WordPress, Salesforce, and other partners so for the right sized business, they can be a very efficient solution.
Hubspot Review
Hubspot offers standard email configuration options that include, but are not limited to, the ability to customize your email subject, body, and sender based on your contacts from Hubspot or your CRM software. However, Hubspot is not limited to email marketing because they’re also a complete solution that incorporates inbound marketing, analytics, website CMS, and more.
Features
With Hubspot email marketing, you can create attractive emails without designers or IT, boost email engagement with the free Hubspot CRM, and schedule emails in advance. They also unsubscribe emails that get bounced in order to be CAN-SPAM compliant and keep your lists accurate.
Pros
- A lead nurturing tool that moves recipients to relevant segments and campaigns
- Targets communications based on lead campaigns
- Easy to use for beginners
Cons
- Cannot register or complete a form within the email
- Low deliverability rates (blocked by spam protection services)
- A dedicated IP address is an extra cost
Hubspot Pricing
Hubspot Recommendation
Because Hubspot is an integrated marketing tool, you can manage more than just your email marketing, which could be more than you need or seen as a huge benefit. However, even used solely as an email marketing solution, they’re excellent at tailoring email marketing campaigns to specific customer categories, nurturing leads, and converting leads through an intelligent, automated system.
GetResponse Review
GetResponse is a great all-around marketing platform and that’s because of its email marketing features. For software that is rich in features and has strong email marketing and automation tools, GetResponse is an excellent option for small and large businesses.
Features
While many email marketing solutions are imposing email sending limits, GetResponse is bucking that trend by offering an unlimited amount. They also allow you to import contacts from third-party address books such as Google, Salesforce, Zendesk, and more, which not all other services allow. You can also make use of their drop and drag editor (great for beginners) or HTML Source (for people comfortable with code).
Pros
- Simple to use interface
- An array of third-party integrations
- A/B tests to try different newsletter formats, subject lines, and other elements
Cons
- The free plan is very limited
- No 24/7 support
- No community group to share ideas
GetResponse Pricing
GetResponse Recommendation
GetResponse has powerful and diverse email marketing features compared to other email marketing solutions. They also get high marks for their A/B testing features that help you determine which email version is likely to perform better with a particular audience, which is a tool that Hubspot lacks.
MailChimp Review
Mailchimp is probably the most well known email marketing solution out there because of their clever marketing and charming monkey. Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform that includes marketing CRM, a website builder, analytics, as well as email marketing.
Features
You can use Mailchimp’s pre‑designed templates and drag-and-drop builder to create relevant and engaging emails fast and easily. Their newsletter service integrates with other tools and offers hundreds of integrations to both popular and niche applications (like Zapier and WordPress).
Pros
- Generous free plan
- Powerful autoresponders
- Continuously improving product offerings
Cons
- They prohibit affiliate marketers
- Plans get expensive after the freemium plan
- Lacks advanced automation features
MailChimp Pricing
MailChimp Recommendation
Compared to other newsletter tools, Mailchimp can be on the pricey side. However, they are fully-featured and easy to use, which could be great for small businesses getting started with email marketing. Though, if you’re an advanced marketer, you might consider bulkier alternatives such as GetResponse.
AWeber Review
AWeber is strictly an email marketing application that offers simple email marketing software specifically designed for small businesses. If you want email marketing without a lot of trouble, AWeber gives you an easy way to manage contacts and customize your own email templates.
Features
Some of AWeber’s features that simplify email marketing include an AI-powered template designer, a free template library to create emails with a drag and drop editor, automated personalized emails and campaigns, and pre-built analytics and reporting.
Pros
- Unlimited emails
- Great customer support
- Low-cost plans in comparison to competitors
- *NEW* Free Plan
Cons
- Can’t use Facebook pixels or Google Analytics
- Can’t import third-party address books
AWeber Pricing
AWeber Recommendation
AWeber isn’t the best product on the market but it does offer a product that is reliable and within budget for most small businesses, and includes most of the basic features you want from an email marketing software. Plus, they maintain a super simple interface which is great for the less tech-savvy user.