If you're building a digital marketing campaign, email is likely the heart of it. As marketing gurus champion the cause of new channels like social media and mobile marketing, many wonder if email is still as powerful a tool as it used to be. The short answer is yes, but building your campaign and measuring its success have changed with the times, which means your campaign strategies must also change.
An intelligent combination of email marketing, informative newsletters, and actionable landing pages can give marketers an extensive arsenal of engagement tools, all without breaking the bank. Modern marketers love the omnichannel approach, and email marketing tools remain a crucial part of that. Multiple channels mean you'll be able to launch your campaign not only over email but also using social media, direct mail, chat, and even SMS marketing on smartphones.
However, all these activities are anchored on a consistent and thoughtful email marketing strategy. Having the tools and capabilities that match what your business needs are essential. This roundup takes a close look at 11 of the best, but first, some important considerations before you buy. What Is Email Marketing Software?
Email marketing software can manage your contact lists, help you design and send compelling emails, and track whether these were opened and read. The good news is that it doesn't cost much to get started, nor is it an arduous undertaking. Many of the solutions in this roundup have affordable initial plans, and some even offer onboarding services for new customers. The ten products we've chosen also tend to have a gamut of self-serve support and knowledgebase articles for common issues.
As email marketing solutions go, we see a range of options from text-based template solutions that marketers can quickly make their own to more complex HTML or JavaScript templates. Leveraging email for marketing can take several forms. For example, some businesses might decide their most effective marketing tactic is a value-add newsletter delivered to a gated subscriber community. Others might want to tie their emails directly to their product and sales engines, so they can provide special offers and deals to recipients.
Each approach requires different tools for creating the source email, dissemination to specific recipients, and integration with other back-end systems, notably the accounting system, certainly your customer relationship management (CRM) system, and possibly even the inventory management system.
If you're a tiny business, you can manage contacts simply by keeping a spreadsheet list of names and email addresses. But as your company grows, that method gets cumbersome fast. You can easily create a sophisticated database full of subscribers segmented by demographic slices and engagement levels using these email marketing tools. That's a key reason email marketing platforms are still so popular. Understanding exactly how you need to segment your audiences is the trick. Is Email Marketing Still Relevant in 2022?
Marketers have many more channel tools available to them these days than they did even just a few years ago. Social media, mobile and text marketing (see below), and even video campaigns compete for marketers' budget dollars. With all those options available to them, many wonder if it's time to give email the boot.
To be clear: absolutely not. Email remains the most pervasively used communications channel in the world outside of verbal communication. According to the market research firm, Statista, the number of global email users will grow to about 4.5 billion in 2022 up from around 4 billion in 2021. That trend is reflected in Statista's forecast of email marketing's global market valuation through 2027. That forecast has email marketing valued at $7.5 billion in 2020 but is projected to grow to almost $18 billion by 2027, which is a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.3%. So, yes, email marketing will remain highly relevant in 2022.
That said, succeeding in this channel has definitely changed, and a key disruptor is a huge surge in mobile marketing. That's borne out by another set of Statista numbers, which has mobile internet traffic accounting for up to 50.51% of all internet traffic in 2020.
If users are interacting with email on their mobile devices that means they'll be accessing emails throughout the day and wherever they are. Thanks to Apple Pay and Google Pay services, consider that smartphones have also evolved as mobile payment solutions. This can make your phone a one-stop shop allowing customers to go from marketing to purchase in a single session. For a business engaged in online sales, that's a fantastic scenario.
The key features you need to be looking for here will show up in your email designer and the analytics section of your email marketing service. The designer should provide at least a preview of how your email will look on a typical mobile device. A better option is to see how it will look on several screens of varying sizes. Even better will be a preview of the two leading mobile operating systems, Apple iOS, and Google Android. The designer should also automatically render your email in a responsive format, meaning the HTML will correctly size images and other elements depending on the device used to view them. If it doesn't do that, you'll be forced to do it yourself, which means putting an HTML coder on staff.
You should be able to segment your audience based on mobile device data. That should be part of your service's default reports. Some tools may force you to create custom reports to see this data, which means you may have to export it to a third-party business intelligence (BI) tool.
Helping with that one-stop experience is CRM integration. You'll find that the more advanced email marketing services have begun to crossover into CRM for precisely that reason. It makes sense: Both types of software deal with managing and communicating with customers. Some offer this functionality through integration, while others have a suite of CRM features built right in. You need to be sure those features will satisfy what you need from a CRM in addition to what they'll do for you on the email marketing front.
And don't forget your customers. Several years ago, email marketers began deploying user-generated content (USG) as part of their email marketing campaigns. The prime example of UGC is a user review of a product they just purchased, like those you'll find under most product listings on Amazon. However, UGC can also take the form of social media posts or comments and comments in online forums, including your support forums. It's a deep well of potential marketing content, according to market data from research aggregator, Statista, which says that more than 67% of online shoppers are factoring user reviews in their purchasing decisions.
Initially, UGC was viewed as a niche tool for digital marketing. But a recent study by Tint, a digital marketing publication, shows that as of 2020, more than 50% of email marketers rated UGC as one of their top user engagement strategies.
There are three main benefits to benefits to using UGC in your email campaigns: Recipients are more inclined to trust it.You have free access to it if your selling platforms allow it.It's a fast turnaround since you don't need to create it from scratch.An Alternative Channel: Text Marketing
Yet another trend that's rising quickly is SMS marketing because it exploits an even more personal line of contact with customers and is mobile-friendly. According to recent research, SMS has a 90% open rate compared to straight email marketing, hovering between 20-25%. That's a clear difference, and it's making marketers flock to platforms that support it. Email marketing vendors that have it right now include the likes of GetResponse and Mailchimp, among others.
But hitting customers up through a channel they trust and usually used mainly by friends and family is risky. Some might react badly no matter what, but all of them will want to hit the dreaded unsubscribe request if they suddenly start getting ongoing SMS messages from people or organizations they don't even know. Sure, chat and SMS are exciting new channels, but they're also something you should use wisely. However, that goes for regular email outreach, too.
"It's important to vary the content that you use in your email marketing programs. It's easy to get into the habit of constant emails about sales or special offers," said David Tiberia, VP Analytics of Bluewater, a digital marketing agency. "Unfortunately, too frequent emailing or too many sales offers can lead to customers ignoring your emails or unsubscribing altogether."
Savvy marketers don't simply jump on new channels like mobile or SMS. They carefully consider the form those portions of their campaigns should take and the rules around creating compelling content, especially if it's headed for smaller screens.