What do you want to get out of your email marketing?
If your answer is “high open rates, click-through rates, and solid ROI,” then the email marketing automation platforms below are just what you need!
Without further ado, let’s look at some of your top options and how they compare with each other.
The Importance of Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most common forms of digital marketing today. As the word suggests, it uses mailing lists to promote your business’s products and services. It is also one of the best ways to introduce products to customers and keep them updated on your newest deals and promotions. In short, it helps you achieve customer retention.
But due to its personal approach, email marketing can be tedious. At first glance, it may be hard to imagine how you can email hundreds to thousands of customers regularly and still maintain a personalized connection to them.
Fortunately, there are now email integrations and automation tools – we recommend everyone implement at least one profitable email sequence.
Today, the best mail marketing automation tools have advanced features to increase efficiency. They don’t only auto-send emails to subscribers. Most have engagement trackers, forms and pop-ups, templates, pre-built campaigns, and more.
Here are some essential features you should look for in an email marketing tool:
A/B Testing
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a popular form of market research. It splits the customers into groups where you can test different marketing approaches. With this, you can analyze how the audience responds.
Many email marketing automation tools feature A/B testing. The software creates two versions of promotional content. It then sends the email to the samples and automatically tracks how each group reacts. Split testing helps you improve content.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer relationship management is the technology used to keep and improve the relationships between your business and its customers.
Fortunately, many email marketing automation tools have built-in CRM. It is more efficient than spreadsheets and to-do lists.
Email marketing tools with CRM can automatically keep track of and send birthday, holiday, and anniversary greetings and promo codes. It also includes personal thank you and welcome cards.
More advanced CRM tools can even track customers’ social media activities, from which you can take note of their likes and dislikes.
Advanced Integrations
Many email marketing software tries to make everything available in one place. But developers do understand that each business has unique needs.
Integration with third-party apps to help managers efficiently complete tasks from one app to another. You can do so many things with email integrations.
For one, you can easily track sales and performance when you connect your e-commerce app with an email marketing tool. You may also integrate your preferred email server and your marketing team’s app.
App integration tools can also help you connect email marketing platforms to other third-party apps. For example, Zapier, Integrately, and Mulesoft. You can also connect to social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and many others.
Why Use Email Marketing Automation Platforms for Your Marketing Campaigns?
Although some tools offer free services, you may need to invest in more advanced features worth every penny. Here, we’ve listed some reasons you should get into email marketing automation platforms.
It Is Inexpensive.
We’ve established that email marketing is crucial to promoting your products and services. However, it can also be an uphill task, especially when you have hundreds of people on your list.
Emails take time and money to create. Email marketing automation platforms can save you a fortune in the long run.
With automation tools, you can let the app do the tracking, reporting, analyzing, and other menial tasks involved in marketing.
It Provides a Personalized Approach.
It is no surprise that email marketing is a great way to build a relationship with your customers. Email marketing automation software often includes customer behavior analysis. It helps you connect with them on a more personal level.
With this, you have more reliable data about who they are and what they prefer. This information makes marketing even more effective when you use it properly.
Besides, CRM-integrated email marketing automation tools help you generate personalized offers. In turn, it increases the chances for sales, loyalty, and brand recognition.
More People Can See Your Promotional Material.
People nowadays spend their days on their mobile phones and computers. In fact, people check their phones 96 times a day on average (or once every 10 minutes).
Furthermore, people open over 40% of emails on mobile phones. Naturally, you may want your promotions to appear in your customers’ emails regularly.
Email marketing increases your chances of customer response. Email marketing automation tools ensure you “corner” your target audience at the right place and time.
It Lets You Accurately Measure Results.
You can measure the effectiveness of other marketing strategies in many ways. But email marketing automation platforms provide some of the most accurate results.
Some software even has trackers, which let you see how your audience interacts with your email in real-time.
Not only will you know what kinds of content attract your audience, but you can also quickly pinpoint the necessary changes. In addition, A/B testing-integrated apps let you consistently respond to your target market’s behavior.
What Are The Best Email Marketing Automation Platforms?
Here are our top picks for the best email marketing automation platforms.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a customer experience automation (CXA) tool. It offers email marketing, site tracking, sales automation, and other digital marketing services.
It can send broadcast emails, triggered emails, targeted emails, email autoresponders, transactional emails, and scheduled emails.
ActiveCampaign uses a Unified Data Model that gathers wide-ranging data into a comprehensive picture of the customer. It saves you time formulating the best marketing approach for your target customers, and it works for businesses of all sizes.
It is easy to use, with over 870 other software products available for integration, which makes it one of the most popular solutions out there.
Key Features
- Integration with Slack, Shopify, WordPress, and 870+ more tools
- 100+ pre-built automation features
- A/B testing
- Sales CRM tool
- User-friendly
- Flexible plans
Popular Integrations
- WordPress
- Shopify
- Salesforce
- Google Analytics
- Zapier
Pricing
- Lite: $9+ monthly
- Plus: $49+ monthly
- Professional: $149+ monthly
- Enterprise: Contact for details.
Maropost
Maropost is a premium multi-channel e-commerce platform that’s designed to help businesses of all sizes sell their products online, manage their inventory, and optimize their marketing campaigns. Maropost is a premium software solution designed for larger businesses, offering advanced features such as real-time analytics and reporting and integrating with a wide range of popular marketplaces and shopping carts, making it easy to sell across multiple channels and streamline your operations.
Maropost also offers powerful email marketing features, including advanced automation workflows, personalization tools, and in-depth analytics to help you engage your customers and drive conversions.
It also offers marketing automation through different media across email, SMS, social media, and more, helping you streamline your campaigns and drive growth for your business.
Key Features
- Multi-channel marketing
- Catch-all e-commerce solution (from marketing to shipping & labeling)
- A/B testing
- CRM
- Hundreds of software integration
Popular Integrations
- ClickBank
- ShoppingCart
- Magento
- Annex Cloud
- Checkout Champ
Pricing
- Essential: $251+ monthly
- Professional: $764+ monthly
- Enterprise: $1,529+ monthly
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is one of the most advanced email marketing platforms, and it is highly targeted toward e-commerce store owners. It offers powerful and intelligent analysis, advanced segmentation, and a wide range of integrations.
With its advanced features, Klaviyo can be pricey. However, the cost certainly pays off. It has numerous templates, revenue-based success reporting, real-time integration, and many other robust features.
The good news is that Klaviyo offers a free plan that lets you send up to 500 emails every month. It is perfect for small startups that are only starting to grow their audience.
Klaviyo has three plan brackets: Free, Email Only, and Email & SMS. Their pricing depends on which brackets you want to subscribe to and the size of your contact list. Klaviyo is among the most popular email platforms, with over 100,000 companies using it.
Key Features
- Advanced segmentation
- 300+ pre-built integrations
- A/B testing
- Advanced CRM tools
- ROI-based reporting
- Smart sending
- Real-time tracking
- Drag-and-drop design
Popular Integrations
- BigCommerce
- WooCommerce
- Shopify
- Okendo
- Magento Commerce
- LoyaltyLion
Pricing
- Up to 250 people: Free
- 250 to 3,000 people: $20 to $85 monthly (depending on the plan)
- 3,001 to 10,000 people: $95 to $165 monthly
- 10,001 to 20,000 people: $175 to $390 monthly
- 20,001 to 50,000 people: $400 to $735 monthly
- 50,001 to 100,000 people: $790 to $1,395 monthly
- 100,001 to 150,000 people: $1,440 to $1,970 monthly
- 150,000+ people: Custom pricing
Drip
Drip is another digital marketing tool that offers email automation features. It streamlines operations by sending subscribers automatic, personalized emails based on their purchase history. We’re big fans of drip content, and that’s exactly what Drip does best!
The same data also serves as the basis for the follow-up messages that keep customers engaged. With this, you can spend less time constructing content for each category of customers.
This software focuses more on the customer experience. With their advanced segmentation of contact lists, you can ensure that your content still caters to each customer’s preferences.
Drip offers a 14-day free trial period. Prices depend on the number of people on your contact list.
The price is $39 per month for up to 2,500 people, plus $10 for every 500 people. With a contact list size of 200,000, the prices vary based on your deal with Drip.
Key Features
- Simple user interface
- Sophisticated automation workflows
- Drag-and-drop design
- A/B testing
- Powerful CRM
- 100+ app integrations
Popular Integrations
- BigCommerce
- Shopify
- Magento
- Amplifier
- ClickSend
Pricing
- 2,500 people: $39 monthly
- 3,000 people: $49 monthly
- 3,500 people: $59 monthly
- 4,000 people: $69 monthly
- 4,500 people: $79 monthly
- 200,000+ people: Varies
Tips for an Effective Email Marketing Campaign
It’s not enough that you have an email marketing automation tool. They exist to save time and reduce menial tasks but can not carry your entire marketing operations by themselves. And if you don’t use them carefully, you’ll find yourself hitting the dreaded promotions tab every time you send an email to your clients!
We’ve listed some tips to guide you on your email marketing journey. You can incorporate these tips to ensure an effective email marketing campaign.
1. Come Up With an Attractive Lead Magnet.
Your lead magnet plays a crucial role in whether you’ll get a subscriber. It is the first thing your audience sees when they open your email.
A lead magnet can be a discount offer, free shipping promo, free trial, survey, gift cards, and many more. To develop an effective lead magnet, you should know your customers first.
For instance, working young adults mostly prefer discounts. On the other hand, survey forms in the middle of the day may get ignored during busy hours.
2. Make It Mobile-friendly.
As mentioned earlier, most people open emails on their smartphones. With this in mind, you should always consider how your email will look on a phone screen.
Ensure all visual elements are easy to view on the phone screen and all links are accessible.
Ideally, you should make images mobile-friendly and keep graphics small. Recheck the font, alignment, and margin. Don’t forget to preview it just to be sure.
3. Consider the Timing & Watch your Email Sending Reputation
Timing is crucial. You don’t want to send your customers an email when they’re most likely at work.
On the other hand, payday may be the best time to send them promotions, discounts, and other irresistible offers that’ll attract them to shop.
Many of the aforementioned tools can also track bounce rates, exit pages, and open rates. With this, you can have a clearer idea of when to schedule email sends.
4. Indicate Your Business’s Replying Email Address.
Upon opening your email, some customers may want to contact you for inquiries. What’s the point of promoting your business if you can’t reach out to those who become genuinely interested?
It’s advisable to put your return address at the end of your letter. It lets you connect with your interested subscribers.
5. Don’t Forget Inactive Subscribers.
Another great thing about email marketing automation tools is that they let you know who on your contact list ignores your emails. As a marketer, you should know what to do with them.
If you notice that some customers have been dormant for a while, you should formulate ways to get them back. This is where email segmentation comes in!
But keep in mind that each customer costs you time and money. Remember to remove people from your list from time to time to spare some space for new customers.
Recommendations
There are lots of outstanding email marketing automation platforms on the market. And they all come with strengths and weaknesses.
Pricing is a great factor that may affect your choice. But we can’t deny that the pricey ones have irresistible, highly advanced features that can help you guarantee larger sales in the long run.
Small businesses with less than a thousand people on their mailing list may do well with free subscriptions. Multi-channel platforms are also great if you want to establish a strong presence across all media.
Overall, the perfect email marketing automation tool for you comes down to your business’s needs. With a clear marketing goal in mind, you can quickly identify what features you need and the price range you’re willing to spend!
