You might first be asking yourself, why do I need a dedicated email marketing platform (EMP) when I have Outlook or Gmail already? The answer is simple: an email marketing platform is a specialised tool that will help you deliver your email marketing campaigns in a more effective method and allow you to track the results so you can continuously improve.
Mass sending of emails from Outlook or any similar platform is likely to cause your email address to be marked as a spam sender, and your emails will get blocked or get delivered to the junk folder. EMPs help you avoid that. They also should allow you to tag your audience with relevant markers, such as their interests, segment them by geographic location, age group, etc., and set up automations so that the email receiver’s actions trigger the next email without you having to do anything. It will also offer a range of analytics so you can see which email addresses are being delivered to and which are bouncing, who is clicking on your calls to action and which of those is the most popular (is it the latest blog, a video, a product?) and all of this means you can send personalised emails to the right people, at the right addresses, with the right message that will encourage them to engage with your brand and support more of your products and services.
There are a lot of email marketing platforms out there, so how do you choose one that’s right for you? There are some key features you need to look for and you need to determine which of those features are critical for your business.
- Number of email sends per month – many platforms base their pricing on how many emails you’re going to send. Consider the types of emails (newsletters, sales offers, etc.,) and then consider how many of those you’re going to send. You may send 1 newsletter and 1 promotional per month to 1000 contacts. That’s 2000 emails.
- Number of contacts – some platforms increase their pricing based on the size of your database. Check how many you have and consider how long it will be before you need to go up a bracket.
- Templates – can you brand them with your logo and are the optimised for mobile?
- Analytics – do they tell you what you need to know?
- A/B testing – does it allow you to send two versions of a campaign to test which works better before sending out the main push?
- GDPR compliance? How easy is it for you to export data if a customer requests it? Can you prove a customer opted-in? If you delete someone, does the platform then anonymise their data in the reports?
- Can you set up automations? These save you a lot of time, but some platforms charge extra for this facility.
- Integrations – will the platform connect to your CRM or your accounts/stock control package? How about the social media platforms you use?
If this all seems like a lot to consider, Email-Postman is here to help. Get in touch for a chat and we’ll deliver some pointers, or if you prefer, we work on a consultancy basis to get the right platform for you. Alternatively, we’ll be happy to work as your email marketing partner – we’ve helped nearly 100 customers improve their sales and grow their customer base. We’d love to help you.
Email-Postman – email marketing that delivers.
Shaun Reynolds has been specialising in email marketing since 2005 and in February 2019 launched Email-Postman. Since then, Email-Postman has helped over 90 clients build successful email marketing campaigns across a range of 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!
