When it comes to email marketing, you want to be sure to keep the content relevant and interesting to your audience to keep them listening to your message, encourage them to buy, and to reduce unsubscribes. Keeping your emails engaging can feel like a never-ending task of thinking up new ideas to include. There are some tools though that can help with that task. The other side of campaigns is reporting – you need an easy way to measure what’s working and what isn’t so you can drive sales higher. So, here’s a list of recommendations for our four best email marketing tools that will help you keep content fresh and engaging and some to help you work out which are working best for you!
Video – whilst email marketing platforms don’t typically support embedded videos, there’s no arguing that video is king when it comes to keeping viewers viewing! There are so many video software packages available, but some of them can be so complicated to use, or come with limited functionality and are expensive to unlock the really useful features. That’s why we like Wondershare’s Filmora. It’s an AI-driven editing suite that allows you to add all the trimmings, from captions, signs and effects (like hearts or snow), to music. You can write a prompt and Filmora will bring it to life. Skip the free version because of the watermark overlay, but the paid plans are very affordable, starting at around £41 for the year (including VAT). For extra effects and plug-in packages you can buy on a monthly subscription. It doesn’t have some of the sophistication of other video editing tools such as VR or Multicam, but if you’re new to video editing, then this has to be our favourite. Create your video, upload it to a hosting channel such as Vimeo or YouTube, and add the link with thumbnail to your email campaign.
Ideas for video content:
- Introduce a new product
- Highlight a service
- Meet the team sessions
- Customer reviews
- Showcase applications for a product
Photos – don’t worry about paying for photos, there are plenty of images out there that are free to use even for commercial purposes. We particularly like Unsplash for its Meme photos, but Pexels and Pixabay are also worth a look and offer video as well. Pixabay allows you to search by image type such as photos, illustrations, and vector files, as well as offering sound effects, music and Gifs all in one place.
Email-Heatmaps – rather than wade through reams of numbers, easily see which call-to-actions have generated the most interest with a heat map that overlays your campaign. Genius! Literally, the CTAs with the fewest clicks will be bluer (cold) and the ones people are most interested in are redder (hotter). Once you see the CTAs that are working best, you can do more of them. Email-Heatmaps is easy to use, connects to your email marketing platform rather than your email list, and integrates with most of the popular email marketing tools including Klaviyo, MailChimp, Moosend, Active Campaign, iContact, Benchmark, and Get Response. This tool is used by a number of well-known brands including BBC Maestro, IshFish, and Newsflare, as well as Budd and Tusting all of whom love how easy it has made their campaign reporting!
LinkShortener.io – now this tool is a game-changer! Link shorteners are amazing tools for reducing character count on long, unwieldily URLs, for customising links for brand reinforcement, and for being trackable. However, this tool offers so much more! In addition to shortened, customised links, LinkShortener.io also offers shortened, trackable links for email addresses and telephone numbers. Until now, it’s not been possible to measure how many calls or emails have been generated through an email campaign but now, you can! Included in LinkShortener.io is a QR code generator – another brilliant way of getting more engagement with your audience – and being able to track it too!
The key to keeping email interesting is to include multiple types of content, and mixing up video, images, Gifs, memes, and QR codes is sure to keep your audience coming back for more.
… email marketing that delivers!
Shaun Reynolds has been specialising in email marketing since 2005 and, in February 2019, launched Email-Postman. Since then, we’ve helped over 100 clients across a range of industries and sectors build successful email marketing campaigns across various email marketing platforms. For further information or to discuss getting help with your email marketing, you can arrange a free call-back today by clicking here!
