Email marketing might not be as glamorous as the latest social marketing trend (like Snapchat), but it continues to be the best performing internet marketing strategy out there.
According to McKinsey’s iConsumer Survey, email marketing is 40% more effective when it comes to acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. In another survey of marketers, email was voted the best digital channel for ROI.
So how can you succeed with email marketing?
For starters, you’ll need these 3 email marketing tools to market yourself better.
- A way to send emails
Your email marketing software is your marketing workhorse. You’ll use it to capture send out, segment and design all your emails. Without it, you might as well not have an email marketing strategy at all.
Fortunately, you have tons of options to choose from when it comes to email marketing software. Some of the most popular ones are:
And so on.
Most of these tools work on a SaaS model, i.e. you pay as you go monthly or annually. Some tools, such as MailChimp, will also let you add 2,000 subscribers for free. Others, like Aweber, will let you try out the software for $ 1/month.
Besides sending out emails, the tools listed above will also help you design HTML emails and newsletters. You can also gauge the performance of your emails through in-depth analytics.
- A way to capture emails
Mailchimp, Aweber and other marketing tools will help you send out emails, but they won’t be of much help with capturing subscriber emails.
Driving traffic to your website is one of the SEO basics of an effective campaign, but what happens when visitors arrive? For that, you need tools to create landing pages, opt-in boxes and email forms.
Just like email marketing software, this is a crowded field. You can choose from WordPress plugins to capture emails to powerful landing page generators such as Unbounce.
Some options at your disposal are:
The price for these tools can range from a few dollars to $ 100 or more each month. They can help you design and publish landing pages, A/B test for performance, capture leads through opt-in boxes, etc. Remember, subscribers need a reason to give up their email and you’ll want to check out and test content marketing examples from your competitors to see what converts for you.
- A way to test emails
Once you’ve captured your readers emails and plugged them into your marketing software, you need a way to test their performance.
The best tool for this is Litmus. This powerful tool will help you benchmark, monitor and test your emails for open rates, spam reports, and in-depth engagement reports. You can check how your email will look in different browsers and email clients, whether it is mobile friendly, and even identify broken links.
It’s the final ingredient in the email marketing puzzle and one that will take you from a ‘beginner’ to a ‘professional.
Conclusion
Email marketing is the single most powerful weapon in your marketing arsenal. But to make the most out of it, you need a few essential tools to send, capture and test emails. Choose from the tools listed above and you can make your marketing shine.
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