Email marketing is one of the most popular and effective ways of engaging with customers. Marketers use email marketing software to send out promotional emails to potential customers, engage with them through personalized messages, and track the success of their email campaigns.
Many email marketing platforms offer basic features and templates, while some offer advanced options for businesses who want to get the most out of their platforms. Before making a purchase decision, it’s important to understand what features are important to you and what sort of results you are trying to achieve.
Features
The features of an email marketing platform will determine how easy it is to use and what sort of results you can expect from your campaigns. Some of the more significant features that you should consider include:
- AI integrated campaign manager
- Marketing automation
- Marketing segmentations
- Tageting (Automatic tagging of email content)
- Personalized Messages
- Single- and double-optin marketing
- Unsubscribe option
- Viral email marketing
- Web browsing history (Honeypot)
- Web analytics (Google Analytics, etc)
- WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get; Drag & Drop HTML editor)
Strategic User Base
One of the most significant aspects of any business platform is its user base. A well-designed and marketed product will usually have a strong following, and that’s what can make or break your business. Having a large and active user base is both a blessing and a pain. On the one hand, you can grow your business quickly and effectively by tapping into this large audience, but on the other hand, you have to deal with the constant influx of people coming into your platform with fresh inquiries.
The more people who use your product, the more you will learn about their needs and the more you can tailor your product to suit their requirements. A healthy user base is often a sign of a successful product, and that’s what you want to go for when choosing an email marketing platform. The more people using your product, the more engaged they will be with your brand, and the more you can gain from this engagement.
It’s not always easy to determine the size of a user base for a new product, but you can find out quickly and easily if there are many people already using the product. Checking for active users and getting a sense of the size of their audience is straightforward. You can also look into the number of installations for an email marketing platform and the average number of user sessions per day. The more people using your product, the more you will learn about their needs and the more you can serve them with high-quality content.
Compatibility With Other Applications And Websites
One of the significant challenges with any software product is its compatibility with other applications and websites. If you are planning to integrate your email marketing with a CRM or marketing automation tool, then you need to ensure that the platforms work together efficiently and seamlessly. Ensure that all of your communications and workflows stay in sync and that you don’t end up with duplicate communication and task tracking systems.
These platforms should be compatible with one another so that when you send a lead magnet to someone using MailChimp, for example, it automatically moves to another platform designed for marketing automation use.
Usability
When choosing an email marketing platform, you need to determine how easy it is to use and what sort of results you can achieve with the product. Some of the significant aspects to consider here include:
- Navigation
- Usability
- User feedback
- Error messages
- Customization
- Template selection
- Campaign setup (creating, setting up, and tracking campaigns)
Based on your needs and the nature of your business, you will need to determine what features are important to you. It is also important to evaluate the user experience of the product to ensure that you are getting what you want. Don’t just look at the features list because some products may sound great on paper but can be difficult to use in practice. Testing the product yourself is always the best way to determine how easy it is to use and if it will support your business objectives.
When it comes to the creation of compelling content, many businesses struggle with finding that perfect balance between creativity and practicality. Too little attention to detail and a poor use of technology will turn readers away, but overusing complex words and phrases and ignoring creative simplicity will certainly keep people from wanting to learn more.
Creativity should not be a trait limited to art, but it should be present in every area of your business. Designing a product that will engage and retain customers should be a key objective, and the content that you create should reflect this. Simple yet effective.
As you can see, there are many different factors to consider when choosing an email marketing platform. The type of content that you create, along with the features that you need to have, will help you determine the best solution for your business. Don’t hesitate to try out a few different products before making a decision, and ensure that you select a platform that can meet your needs and expectations. Good luck!