Email is communication to your consumer base is a very important channel in the multi-channel marketing approach to increase revenue and to build relationships.

Important factors in choosing an email marketing platform:

• Cost – what is your company’s budget? What are the contract terms and add-on feature costs?
• Implementation time – how long will it take to establish the rules of the platform within your company and for responsible parties to learn the platform capabilities? Establishing a business rules process document will ensure involved parties understand the platform and how it fits internally to their department and company-wide.
• Integration with current customer relationship management system (CRM). Your CRM is where all the important pieces of information of your customers live. Integrating your CRM with the chosen platform will help allow for personalization in messages sent to your consumers.
• Reading view options within the platform will help optimize the message on the device that your consumer chooses to use – desktop or mobile.
• Response time will help ensure that all the messages your company sends will be sent in sufficient time for the consumers pending the size of your mailing list. Constant lag between deployment and inbox retrieval times will cause campaign headaches and data collection delays.
• Design capabilities – can your company easily design templates for “evergreen” communication or can HTML be easily entered to enhance the visuals of the email?
• Scheduling email deployments will allow for less resourcing of physical employee presence to send communications and allow for your company to test multiple deployments.
• Versioning emails will allow for your company to speak individually to different segments of your consumer base with multiple sends of one email at one time.
• Data collection of each of the email deployments will be key in measuring the success of the email. How are the emails tracked? What data is collected (open rates, bounce rate, click-through rate, etc.)?

The above are just a sampling of what components of an email marketing platform your company will need to look at when deciding whether it is time for a switch or begin the investment.

MailChimp

Recently named one of the best software companies of 2020 by G2, MailChimp offers a complete integrated marketing experience. Not only is it an email management system, but also offers creation of landing pages, social ads, digital ads, and allows for printed postcards to be sent to a consumer.

MailChimp offers a free plan that allows for 2,000 contacts, which is great for a start-up business. From there, plans range from $10-300/month pending the features and number of contacts.

With numerous templates, tutorials, and integrations with MailChimp, it can give your company the launching pad it needs to reach your goals. However, if your company needs more than basic email marketing, MailChimp may not be the best solution. Using it for transactional email on an ecommerce site requires integration with a separate platform, Mandrill, and the provided email automation is not as up to par as peers.

Constant Contact

Another household name within email marketing platforms. Similar to MailChimp with easy communication building through drag-and-drop features, Constant Contact, offers more robust features that may be more suitable for larger businesses, along with offering website and ecommerce building to help build your business.

Pricing is a little higher than MailChimp, starting at $20 per month for the email platform and $10 per month for the website hosting. However, with ability for segmentation and variance in emails, it will be an essential tool to build your company without completely breaking your allocated budget.

ActiveCampaign

Best known for its A/B testing component, ActiveCampaign is suitable for mid-size to larger companies that have complex email communication that allows for robust testing and with real-time data collection for optimization of design, message, and ROI.

Similar to other email platforms, ActiveCampaign offers easy drag-and-drop template creation with access to stock images, tutorials, and image hosting to enhance your communication. The edge that ActiveCampaign has over the other platforms is the extensive automation and real-time data collection capabilities.

Pricing begins at $9 per month and is based upon how many contacts and by type of business your company is conducting; general digital presence, B2B, or ecommerce.

GetReponse

Offering the best integration solutions with Salesforce, GetResponse is a sizeable platform that offers multi-channel inbound marketing solutions.

Features of GetResponse, besides pre-set templates, easy design features, and automation, is that campaigns based on assets from different sources, GetResponse will allow you to export files from several formats and offer in-built statistics including best-performing emails and cart abandonment rate.

If your company is looking for ways to connect with its customer base during a global pandemic, GetResponse offers webinar hosting that may enhance the interaction versus other web conferencing tools.

Pricing is based upon how number of contacts, but offers a full suite of included features.

HubSpot

Many think of HubSpot is being an overall marketing resource and not offering products. They will be happy to learn that HubSpot offers a free email marketing and CRM tools for businesses with up to 2,000 contacts per month.

Drag-and-drop design features, scheduling, and data protection are features that HubSpot highlights for the tool. The differentiator is that you can use the same reputable CRM to house all your information to smartly inform your email campaigns. It is seamless integration and a game changer for small businesses who may not have the financial means to invest in two large software programs.

Next Steps

Of course the platforms mentioned above are only a few of the players in the game. We have chosen these based upon ease of use, pricing, and features that will help businesses be successful in every campaign launched through the programs.

Forming a core committee to evaluate the needs of the company through the offerings of the platforms will be key to making the decision that is best suited for the company. Thorough demonstrations, trial periods, implementation team, and customer service should also be taken in to account when deciding on a platform.

Let Colleen Eakins Design aide in the search process and formulate effective designs to be launched through your new investment.