It’s easy to believe that in an age of social media, email marketing isn’t effective. After all, think of all of the emails from companies, nonprofits, and public figures you get every day. They all seem to want you to do something. Usually that something involves spending money. Today, email marketing remains one of the highest ROI marketing tactics. In fact, experts say that most companies receive $36 for every $1 spent on email marketing.
However, that profit isn’t guaranteed. A lot of it depends on the quality of your email and the platform you use to send it out to existing or potential customers. Here, we’ll explain how the best platforms utilize data to attract a specific audience to your products or services and help you craft amazing emails.
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What Makes One Email Platform Different From Another?
There are dozens of email marketing tools and platforms out there and their price points vary dramatically. What they’re good at and the companies they’re best suited for also vary. For example, a small company will likely not need the ability to send tens of thousands of emails per month. What matters more to them is the personalization of each email. Meanwhile, other businesses care more about having a great email blast service. Some businesses have great writers (or employ great content creators like us) to compose the text and visuals in an email, so they don’t need a service that comes with writing prompts or stock photos or videos. However, companies that don’t have strong content creators may want to invest in an email marketing tool that has a robust photo and video library and includes AI-generated text.
Your Company’s Goals
Goals also play a role in which email marketing tools you should choose. If one of your goals is to increase your contact list size, you want to make sure you choose a platform that has an opt-in email marketing service. Opt-in services are essentially when a visitor gives you his or her email address and agrees to receive promotional materials from you. If you have enough contacts already, then there’s no need to pay extra for this feature.
How Much You Can Afford
Pricing is another major component in deciding which platform to select. Most email marketing tools offer packages based on the quantity of contacts you already have. One thing you should always pay for is the ability to integrate your email marketing efforts with Google Analytics. Being able to understand and analyze why people click on some emails, but not others, and why they complete an action in an email – or don’t – will save you tons of money and time in the future.
Additional Capabilities
When you are considering which email marketing platform to use, consider what you’ll link to in an email, and where you want people to go on your website after clicking that link. Some email marketing platforms allow you to create landing pages on your website. Others don’t offer this option, because they assume you can create a page using your existing content management system, and know how to link to it.
Many people ask if landing pages, i.e. web pages that are directly related to the content in an email, are truly necessary for them and their business. The simple answer is yes. Unique landing pages are almost necessary. If your email is about a flash sale on certain items, you don’t want to link to a generic sales page that includes all items on sale. You want to direct people just to the flash sale items.
The Most Popular Email Marketing Platforms
Now that you know what you should be looking for from an email marketing platform, let’s explore some of the most popular options.
Emma
Emma is an email marketing tool that does a wonderful job helping novices to entire teams improve their email marketing efforts. The Emma system has a reputation for being extremely user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. Many people speak to the ease of the “what you see is what you get” approach.
Emma’s pricing is also easy to understand. For $99/month, you can send emails to up to 10,000 contacts. There’s a simple drag-and-drop editor, which includes access to stock photos and videos, and you can integrate it with a variety of tools. For $159/month, you can get all of the above in addition to the ability to create landing pages specifically related to the email. You can also send text messages. Their top plan costs $249/month and adds the ability to let a variety of people access certain powers of email creation. It’s best for companies that also work with other companies to complete their marketing projects.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms out there. They offer options like tags which allow an email marketer to categorize contacts into certain groups, such as by where they live or by the types of purchases they tend to make. It also offers social media advertising and posting along with retargeting for some of the pricier packages. They are leaders in the space of generative AI text. So if you have no ideas for what to say in your emails, they offer plenty of options that encourage users to take action.
What we love about MailChimp is that they offer a free version. Sure, you can’t do a ton with it, but you can get used to the software and then upgrade once you know what you’re getting into and need. All paid tiers offer one free month. For $13/month, you get pre-designed templates, AI tools, and A/B testing. We love marketing platforms that offer A/B testing. You can test, internally, which email performs better and looks best before sending it out to the public. For $20/month, you have the above and access to suggestions about what your contacts are likely to do with other emails. Their top package, for $350 per month, does almost everything marketing platforms can do.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign does more than just email marketing. They also offer e-commerce solutions and customer relationship management (CRM). To make it easier for people to use their platform, they offer a free migration from other email marketing services. In addition to importing contacts, it will also import automation workflows and email templates.
Pricing for Activecampaign is kind of complicated since there are a number of plans. Each one has different options and features included. They categorize plans into whether you want sales tools, marketing tools, or a combination of both. The number of contacts you have also plays a role.
For example, the Plus plan for email marketing costs $49/month. 3 users can have access to the platform, which includes AI tools. The Plus Sales plan costs $19/month and includes email content generation tools. You can spend $386 per month for tools ranging from email marketing to predictive AI tools to sales management tools.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is an email marketing service that has been around since the mid-1990s. Their experience shows in everything they offer, including their great tagline: “Take your marketing from meh to marvelous.”
Their drag-and-drop editor is easy to use and their system integrates well with Salesforce, Shopify, QuickBooks, and WordPress. As you compose emails, they alert you if you’re doing something that may send an email into someone’s spam folder.
Pricing starts at $12.00 per month, with their top package costing $80 per month. All packages include AI content suggestions, which is not something everyone in this space includes for free. They also don’t limit you to a certain number of contacts, but they do limit you to your expected number of contacts. For example, their lite plan can send emails to 10x your number of contacts. This means you can grow without necessarily paying more right away. They also offer discounts to nonprofit organizations. Their higher-priced plans help you create and manage social media ads and allow you to add more users to your account.
Drip
Drip does a great job integrating emails that target the audience based on past behaviors. Drip also makes it easy to integrate their tools with Google Analytics. This will allow users to know not only if their emails were opened and clicked on, but where their site visitors originated from. Drip does allow for customizable landing pages which will direct users right to the correct pages. These landing pages are designed to make your users convert quickly.
The best part about Drip is its transparent pricing. Their plans start at $39/month for 2500 contacts. And then, you can use the arrow on their homepage to show you what the cost will be if you have more contacts.
Email Marketing Help From SEO Design Chicago
There are a variety of email marketing tools and platforms out there. At SEO Design Chicago, we can offer you a consultation about which one is best for your business. More importantly, we can create email marketing campaigns for you. There’s an art and science to email marketing. If you don’t care to learn about best practices for email marketing, let us handle it for you.
FAQ:
- What are the best five email marketing platforms?
- What is the ROI of email marketing?
- How do you decide which email marketing platform is right for you?
- What are the benefits of ActiveCampaign for email marketing?
- How much does MailChimp cost?
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