Email Marketing
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is
the highly effective digital marketing strategy of sending emails to
prospects and customers. Effective marketing emails convert prospects into
customers, and turn prospective customer into buyers. Email
is the best easiest way to make sales online.
One
advantage of email marketing is that you can automate the entire process.
By using this definitive guide, you’ll know:
1.
How to build an email list.
2.
How to optimize highest open rates and click-through rates
(CTR).
3.
How to automate your leads and turning prospects into customers.
Table of Contents
What is Email Marketing?
What
is an Auto responder?
How to create an effective email marketing campaign?
6 Best Email Marketing Service (2020 – 2021)
Importance of Email Marketing
Email Marketing Software FAQ
Bonus Tip: Improve Your Email Deliverability
What is a Lead Magnet?
Conclusion
What
is an Autoresponder?
An autoresponder is a sequence of emails that are automatically sent to a segment
of people on your email list and is triggered by a specific event. Example: Joining
your list, a certain browsing behavior, cart abandonment, downloading a PDF, or buying a product.
Online business needs an autoresponder series for two main
reasons:
1. Nurture your leads by providing
valuable information and insights, as well as teaching them how to make better
decisions through an automated onboarding process.
2. Turn your prospects customer
into buyer by helping you build “know, like, and trust” before
you ask for the sale. Then you can make your pitch at the best possible moment.
How to Create an Effective Email Marketing Campaign
Effective email marketing
campaigns need to be cleverly written to attract
attention in busy inboxes. Here are four steps you should follow to create an
effective email campaign.
1.
Comprehensive email builder.
The first step to
creating an effective email marketing campaign is to use the best email
builder.
There are several options depending on your needs,
including Get Respond, MailChimp, Awber Email
Marketing and Constant Contact.
With a comprehensive
email builder, you can create, optimize, and personalize your own email
campaigns without needing any technical or graphic design experience.
2.
Include your personalization elements:
Marketing emails
need to be personalized to the reader and filled with interesting graphics.
Few people want to
read emails that are addressed "Dear Sir/Madam" -- as opposed to
their first or last name -- and even fewer people want to read an email that
simply gives them a wall of text. Visuals help your recipients quickly
understand the point of the email.
3.
Appropriate for call-to-action.
Once you've included
personalization elements and added your copy and images, it's time to add a
call-to-action.
Above all, exceptional marketing emails must contain
a meaningful CTA. After all, if brands are taking up subscribers' time -- and
inbox space -- with another email, every message must have a point to it.
Internet users get multiple emails per day -- why should they care about yours?
4.
Make sure that software is designed for all devices:
Effective email marketing campaigns are
designed for all devices on which users can read their emails -- desktop,
tablet, and mobile.
Email campaigns that are designed for mobile devices
are especially important -- a quality known as "responsive design."
In fact,
75% of companies today prioritize mobile device optimization when
creating email marketing campaigns.
But first, download the planning template you'll need to craft your own lovable email marketing
campaign.
Some
common ways to entice people to sign up include:
·
Email series
·
Free downloads
·
Free white papers or eBooks
·
Update lists, like new releases and product
updates
Top 6 Best Email Marketing Services (2020 - 2021)
Are you looking for the best email marketing software?
Choosing the right email marketing service can have a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign.
Why Choosing The Best Email Marketing Service is Important?
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing
strategy for small businesses. Email marketing on average sees a 4300 percent
return on investment (ROI) for businesses in the United States.
What to Look for in a Good Email Marketing Tool?
A good email marketing service should enable you to create
highly engaging email newsletters with an easy user interface.
Aside from that, your email marketing service must make it easy
to manage your contact list, segment users into
groups,
and track the performance of your email marketing campaigns.
Most importantly, a good email service provider ensures that
your email campaigns do not end up in the spam folder.
Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the most popular
email marketing service providers and how they stack up against each other.
Constant Contact is one of the largest and fastest growing email
marketing service in the world. It is also the most easy to use and beginner
friendly email marketing service.
You can easily manage your email lists, contacts, email
templates, marketing calendar, and more.
Each account gives you access to easy tracking and reporting,
built-in social media sharing tools, free image library, list segmentation,
Facebook ads integration, and a powerful eCommerce integration for Shopify stores.
Their Email Plus accounts also come with powerful features like
email automation, drip campaigns, surveys & polls, coupons, online
donations, and subject line A/B testing which helps you send targeted emails to
maximize your open rate.
Aside from online training, they also offer in-person live
seminars across the United States. This allow small business owners to quickly
learn the basics of email marketing and start using it to grow their business
like a pro.
For all the reasons above, we rate Constant Contact the best email marketing
service for small businesses.
Constant Contact has a 60-day free trial
(no credit-card required). After that their pricing starts as low as $20/month.
WPBeginner users can use our Constant Contact coupon code to get an additional 20%
off.
SendinBlue is a complete SMS and email marketing software for
businesses. They are one of the fastest growing email marketing platforms in
Europe.
It is an extremely easy to use platform with excellent tools to
create beautiful and highly engaging emails. Their simple drag and drop email
editor is perfect for beginners with no experience in email marketing.
SendinBlue offer a completely free email marketing plan that lets you
send up to 300 emails per day, but all your emails will have their branding.
Paid plans start from $25 per month. You can also include SMS to your account,
but the pricing will vary based on your sending requirements.
They have improved their premium plan to recently include more
advanced features like landing page builder, live chat, CRM, and Facebook ads
integration. This means users now get more value for the same price.
SendinBlue also offers a separate SMTP bulk email marketing service which you can use to power automated or transactional emails from your WordPress site. You do not need this for email marketing campaigns, but it’s a nice to have feature if you have a large website, and you want automatic real-time content based emails.
ConvertKit is a robust email marketing platform for professional
bloggers, authors, and marketers. It is extremely easy to use and incredibly
powerful.
ConvertKit’s unique feature is that allows you to easily offer content upgrades and incentives
with email signup forms. It also comes with easy to manage auto-responders
allowing you to send drip emails from their emailing service.
A lot of ConvertKit features are specifically designed for
creators and professional bloggers that’s why we rate them the best email
marketing service for professional bloggers.
ConvertKit offers a 14-day free trial, and their pricing starts from
$29/month. They also offer a 30-day refund policy.
AWeber is one of oldest and most popular email marketing service
providers in the world. They offer a wide-range of tools for small and medium
sized businesses to manage their email marketing.
Getting started with AWeber is easy. It connects seamlessly to
most platforms including WordPress. For detailed instructions, see our ultimate guide on how to
connect AWeber to WordPress.
You get access to ready to use html email templates, list
management, autoresponders, and email tracking with detailed insights.
Support options include live chat, phone support, email support,
live webinars, and a vast library of how-tos and tutorials.
AWeber offers a limited free plan for up to 500 subscribers.
After that, their pricing starts from $19/month. You can also signup for
quarterly or annual plans to save even more.
GetResponse is another very popular email marketing solution. It
is extremely easy to use and simplifies email marketing for small businesses.
It comes with some amazing marketing automation tools which
allow you to create smart automated campaigns.
With their drag and drop builder, you can create campaigns,
segment contacts, and send any number of emails designed for specific groups.
These tools help you create effective email campaigns to boost your profits.
GetResponse comes with beautiful responsive forms, landing pages, A/B
testing, unsubscribe tracking, and autoresponders. It also integrates with
third party lead generation software like OptinMonster,
SalesForce, Google Docs, ZenDesk, etc.
Support is provided by phone, live chat, and email. Their help
section is full of free learning material including videos, webinars, how-tos,
guides, etc.
GetResponse offers a 30-day free trial. Their pricing starts at
$15/month.
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing service
providers in the world primarily because they offer a forever free email
marketing service plan.
Mailchimp comes with an easy drag-and-drop email builder,
autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, and simple tracking for
analytics. It also allows you to setup delivery times based on user’s
timezones, and you can setup segmenting based on geolocation.
You can easily integrate MailChimp with WordPress,
Magento, Shopify, and many other platforms. If you are using WordPress, then see
our ultimate guide to using
Mailchimp and WordPress for detailed instructions.
When it comes to marketing automation features, Mailchimp platform
is quite limited when compared to other providers in our list such as Drip or ConvertKit.
In the recent years, Mailchimp has attempted to add many of the
“advanced” features, but having tested many of these, they’re not truly
advanced..
Mailchimp offers a forever free plan which allows you to send
12,000 emails for up to 2,000 subscribers. This plan is fairly limited because
you don’t get features like send-time optimization, advanced segmentation,
multi-variate testing, etc. Their paid plans start from $10/month for up to 500
subscribers, and the pricing increases in the increment of 500 subscribers.
Pro Tip: Get More Email Subscribers, Faster!
Once you have picked an email marketing service for your
business, you’ll likely want to start getting more email subscribers.
We use and recommend OptinMonster.
It is a powerful conversion optimization toolkit that helps you turn abandoning
website visitors into email subscribers and customers.
OptinMonster seamlessly integrates with all the best email
marketing service that we mentioned above and dozens more.
WPBeginner founder, Syed Balkhi, is also the co-founder of
OptinMonster. He initially built OptinMonster to help grow our own email list.
After the launch in 2013, it has tremendously grown in popularity.
Bonus Tip: Improve Your Email Deliverability
All the email newsletter tools that we have shared in this
article have great email deliverability rates.
However there are few things you can do to make sure that your
marketing emails always get delivered.
1. Use a Professional Email Address
Email platforms like Gmail, Outlook, and others have algorithms
that look for spam behavior. One of them is the sender email address.
As a business, it’s important that you use a professional business
email address (like yourname@yourcompany.com) and not a generic hotmail
or gmail address.
This will help make sure that your email deliverability rate is
higher than industry average.
2. Send Targeted Emails based on Interests
It’s very important that you personalize your emails based on
user segments. Email marketing software like Constant Contact allows you to easily group
your subscribers into segments such as most active, not-active, interested in
specific topics, custom segments, etc.
This will help your email marketing campaigns have the highest
open rate and click through rate which is a big factor in future email
deliverability.
For more tips, see this ultimate step-by-step email
marketing guide with examples to help you create a successful email
marketing campaign.
Email Marketing Software FAQs
Having helped thousands of users pick the best email marketing
software, we have answered quite a lot of questions. Below are some of the
answers to the most frequently asked questions about email marketing platforms.
Can I do bulk email marketing from my Gmail or Outlook?
Yes. But this will quickly get your email accounts
suspended. G Suite and Outlook are not made for
bulk email sending.
Which is the best free email marketing service?
A lot of email marketing services will offer free tiers for
limited use. The best free email marketing service is SendinBlue because
their free plan doesn’t have a limit on the number of subscribers. MailerLite and MailChimp also
offer free email marketing service plans.
How much does email marketing cost?
Your email marketing cost will entirely depend on the number of
subscribers you have, the number of total emails you send per month, and the
email platform you use. On average, a small business email marketing costs is
around $20 – $300 per month on email marketing given that they manage their own
campaign. If you use an email marketing agency, then your cost might be closer
to $500 per month or higher.
Are there other email marketing platforms that are not listed
here?
Yes, there are literally hundreds of email marketing services
out there, but we have not listed them all here. We believe that creating a
full email platforms list would create more confusion and cause choice
paralysis for non-techy readers.
We have tried all the top major email marketing service
including many that are not in our email platform lists above such as: MailerLite,
ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Ontraport, Mailjet, Campaign Monitor, InfusionSoft
(now Keap), Klaviyo, Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot by Salesforce, Sendloop, iContact,
Moosend, Emma, TotalSend, SharpSpring, MailPoet, and more.
The top email marketing services that we have chose to include
in our list provide the best features for the best price.
The Importance of
Email Marketing: We’ve covered the
biggest question, what is email marketing, but haven’t gotten into why email
marketing is so very important for your business. Let’s talk about that now. There are many reasons you should make email marketing one of
your top priorities:
1. Email is the number 1 communication channel. Did you know that at least 99% of consumers check their
email on a daily basis?
2. Create your own list. On
any social media platform, your account could be suspended or deleted at any
time, for any reason, without notice. However, you own your email list. No one
can take those leads away from you.
3. Email just converts better. People who buy products marketed through email spend 138%
more than those who do not receive email offers. In fact, email marketing has an ROI (returns on
investment) of 4400%. That’s huge! And
if you are wondering if social media converts even better, think again:
the average order value of an email
is at least three times higher than that of social media.
What is a Lead Magnet?
A lead magnet is
something awesome that you give away for free in exchange for an email address.
It doesn’t have to cost you anything to create; most lead magnets are digital
materials like PDFs, MP3 audio files, or videos.
Most popular lead magnet
is:
·
ebooks
·
A cheat sheet of tips or resources
·
White papers or case studies
·
A webinar
·
Free trials or samples
·
A free quote or consultation
·
Quizzes or a self-assessment
·
A coupon
Conclusion: Email marketing is the best for small business owner. You can
try at least once. So start today.
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