With the global pandemic came a changing and evolving business environment. Some businesses were closed temporarily (unfortunately, many businesses had to close permanently, too), capacity levels reduced while consumer fear increased, keeping many people indoors and away from others. Many of us moved our purchasing habits online for everything we possibly could (Amazon has made a killing!). It is more important now than ever for your business to have a digital presence.
With the potential ROI of 4400%, what is more powerful than email marketing? The key is using email marketing effectively. The rise of unsolicited spam emails may have given you a negative outlook on email. While we don’t disagree with you in that regard (all of these spam emails can be aggravating!), you need to look past the spam and see the full potential of email marketing.
The fact is, there is no better platform to nurture your leads and boost customer loyalty than email marketing. Did you know that 99% of us check our email at least once a day? It’s true, making email a great way to get in front of your audience (leads and customers).
Email marketing platforms make it easier to manage and grow your email list, send bulk emails, create and design professional-looking emails to match your brand, and analyze data (open rate, click-thru rate, and much more). There are many different email marketing platforms available, and finding the right one for you can make a significant impact on your email marketing results.
We will cover the basics of a few different email marketing platforms in this article to help give you a better understanding of them, enabling you to make a more informed decision.
Mailchimp
Full disclosure, Mailchimp is the email marketing service we use at MackWP Marketing (we are not paid to promote them, but it would be nice. Are you listening Mailchimp?). Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms in the world. They offer a great free version that truly benefits new and small businesses, which is also one of the primary reasons we first started using Mailchimp. You may view the different plans and pricing offered by Mailchimp here.
Mailchimp is user-friendly with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop email builder that enables you to design professional, eye-catching emails. You can create opt-in forms as well as landing pages. Mailchimp seamlessly integrates with WordPress, Magento, Shopify, and more, making it easy to work with your website and grow your subscriber list. You can segment your contacts, allowing you to create and send more targeted emails to various segments in your email list. Analytics is hugely important when it comes to email marketing, and Mailchimp offers simple tracking and analytics data.
Constant Contact
Like Mailchimp, Constant Contact is vastly popular with businesses and organizations. In our opinion, it has the edge on Mailchimp when it comes to being user-friendly. Constant Contact makes it incredibly easy to create professional and great-looking emails. It lacks slightly regarding design limitations, like when you want an image to appear and fit into the text a specific way. You also are not able to hit the “tab” key to indent the beginning of a paragraph (our workaround is to add five hyphens for the indent and then make them the same color as the background).
In addition to being very user-friendly, Constant Contact offers useful features like drip campaigns, surveys & polls, coupons, online donations, email automation, and subject line A/B testing. Users can easily track and analyze emails, share on social, access a free image library, and segment their email lists. Constant Contact has top-notch customer support through live chat, phone, email, community support, and a resource library.
ConvertKit
Great for creators and eCommerce businesses alike, ConvertKit offers your go-to features like opt-in forms, landing pages, list segmentation, data & analytics, automation, and more. ConvertKit shines with its ability to automate your sales funnel. ConvertKit is designed with a focus on engaging with and nurturing your audience.
SendinBlue
SendinBlue is great for new businesses and creators looking to grow their email lists. They offer an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor along with automation allowing you to create great-looking emails to get email marketing starting in the right direction. They do offer a powerful free plan with unlimited contacts and 300 emails per day.
Moosend
Moosend is great for beginners just setting out on their email marketing journey with an easy, user-friendly drag-and-drop email builder and easy segmentation tool. Also great for veteran email marketing, offering versatile features.
Where Moosend sets itself apart is the eCommerce AI. This tool utilizes machine learning and collaborative filtering to look at similar customer’s shopping habits to target customers with products they may be interested in buying. Also, a unique feature of Moosend is its ability to easily cross-sell based on customer shopping habits. Moosend keeps track of how often a customer buys certain products, enabling you to regularly promote the product to them when they need to buy it. If you focus on eCommerce, Moosend may be the route to go for you.
Drip
Drip is incredible for new eCommerce businesses as it is a CRM that offers email marketing for eCommerce businesses. Drip brings the same powerful automation and segmentation tools for email marketing that large eCommerce stores use to the smaller, independent shops. Drip comes with valuable analytics to give you a better understanding of your customers, and their buying habits. Using Drip, you are also able to target users that abandoned items in their carts.
Final Words
Email marketing is the best way to convert leads into customers while also building customer loyalty. Whether your a novice or a veteran in email marketing, the right email marketing platform for you may make a world of difference. There are many options out there (many more than we covered here), do your research and check them out to make the best-informed decision for you and your business.
As always, reach out to us with any questions you may have.
You may learn more about email marketing from our prior articles here:
A Beginners Guide to Email Marketing
Benefits of Email Marketing and Why You Need It
Stand Out with Email Marketing Trends for 2021
5 Ways to Build Customer Relationships through Email
What email marketing platform to you use? What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it?
Until next time, keep smiling.
Recent Comments