What is email marketing software?
Email marketing software is a digital solution designed specifically for you to manage contacts, content, design, and law compliance. It has components that help you deliver emails and increase open and conversion rates.
Why should you use email marketing software?
Email marketing entails different processes that need your diligent attention. However, with email marketing software, you can fast-track every process with great accuracy. Whether segmenting your audience, designing newsletters, sending automated emails, or tracking your campaigns, your email marketing tool aids you at every stage.
It's important to keep in mind that sending a marketing email means you have to comply with the regulations of mailbox service providers, like Gmail, Yahoo, and Zoho Mail. These regulations help ensure a safe and secure experience for email users. An effective email marketing platform includes all the necessary features to help you comply with regulations, as well as the laws that govern email marketing.
Top indicators your business needs email marketing software
Personalized engagement
In today's digital world, personalized engagement plays a vital role in creating a superior customer experience. With email marketing software, you can send relevant and unique messages to everyone in your mailing list based on their behavior. Each click and open is a cue to play your cards right, and the automation features only adds to the efficiency.
Closing deals at a fair clip
If your salespeople don't have a clear picture of where a lead stands in the sales funnel, they are fighting a losing battle. That said, it's no small feat classifying your leads based on their engagement levels and likelihood to convert. This is where email marketing software enters the picture. Your sales process can revolve around the result of your email campaigns as it helps you understand your audiences better.
Steady ROI
One of the most pressing challenges businesses face is driving sales with a minimal marketing budget and time constraints. Email marketing helps you overcome these challenges with ease. If you have enough customer data and a state-of-the-art email marketing application, you're set. The investment is small, and the ROI is second-to-none.
Consistent and flexible customer engagement
With so many companies around, maintaining successful sales means it's essential to stay in the minds of your audience. At the same time, you can't afford to bombard them with one-dimensional messages. That's where email marketing can offer you a good balance—you can easily reach out to a wider audience with promotions, coupons, surveys, and more.
Benefits of using email marketing software
Key features of email marketing software
- Contact management
- Email newsletters
- Automation
- Real-time analytics
- Mobile edition
Contact management
This feature allows you to organize and expand your email database effortlessly. You can import contact details from different applications like Excel Sheet, Zoho CRM, Eventbrite, G Suite, SurveyMonkey, and more. To send the right content to the right audience, you can segment them automatically based on their demography, geography, behavior, and more.
Email newsletters
If crafting ideal content is one thing, delivering it aesthetically to your recipients is another. The responsive HTML templates and customizable layouts of email marketing software make sure you tick that box. Create content, hand-pick a template, and then combine the two, and your newsletter is ready. You can even preview how your emails would render across platforms and devices so you can make the necessary changes.
Automation
Gone are those days when automation was just looked at as the solution to minimize manual efforts and send messages in bulk. The automation capabilities of today's email marketing software help you do much more. Send time-defined email series, send emails at the time your audience wants them the most, or tie different processes together and automate the course of action. Email marketing software lets you leverage automation according to your needs.
Real-time analytics
Replacing guesswork with data-powered decisions can work wonders for you in terms of customer engagement. Email marketing software gives you that advantage. With metrics like opens, clicks, unopens, unique opens, unique clicks, and more, you get valuable insights for your next campaign as well as your overall engagement strategy. You can also view periodic reports for your mailing lists and campaigns to build on gains and course-correct.
Mobile edition
If you're an on-the-go person who wants quick and easy access to your data and campaigns, you'll need a mobile app. The good news is most email marketing software solutions have them. By using the mobile application, you can manage your lists, send campaigns, and view reports. Even better, you can do all this offline.
A quick guide to sending your first email campaign
- 1. Collect your audience's email addresses
- 2. Segment your audience based on their preferences, needs, and basic information
- 3. Create your email. Craft your message neatly and fit it in an image template. Top it off with a relevant subject line
- 4. Select a mailing list and launch your campaign
What happens after you launch your campaign?
Understanding what happens after your campaign launches can help you ensure your email campaign's success. With countless emails arriving in your receipients' inboxes everyday, your sender address plays a crucial role in encouraging them to open your message. For example, a company called Zylker Fashion might use the sender address, firstname@zylkerfasion.com.
Once you hit the send button on your marketing email, your email arrives in your recepients' mailboxes through your email marketing software's servers. That means the domains and IPs of your email service provider (ESP) also enter the picture. Mailbox providers check to ensure that each email is actually from the concerned sender, and that's why successful email marketers authenticate their domains. It's a quick, one-time process that helps email marketers prove their identity and legitimacy to mailbox providers.
Implementing email marketing—the best practices
Now that you know what email marketing is and how a software solution can help you in a big way, here are a few best practices that will move you closer towards success.
Emphasize your contacts
- Send emails only to those who have expressed their consent. Use a double opt-in process.
- Clean your mailing lists regularly to remove inactive and invalid contacts. They hurt your bottom line.
- Segment your mailing lists based on different categories to send campaigns that are relevant and unique to your contacts.
Craft your content diligently
- Keep your subject line crisp and concise. Always have a pre-header that complements your subject line.
- Use a sender name that is easy for your users to identify.
- Ensure that your newsletters don't look flashy and text-heavy. Maintain a proper image-text ratio.
- Don't use too many links. Moreover, embed your links as call-to-action (CTA) buttons.
- Give your contacts the option to opt out of your mailing lists through an unsubscribe link.
Comply with standards
- Win the trustworthiness of your contacts by using your own domain to send out campaigns.
- Authenticate your domain with SPF and DKIM records. Complying with DMARC policy can benefit you further.
- Keep a close eye on your domain's reputation.
Wonder what's next? Start your email marketing journey with Zoho
Crafted for businesses of all sizes, Zoho Campaigns is an email marketing platform for creating, sending, and tracking your email campaigns. Zoho Campaigns also works tightly with vital business applications to let you completely harness the power of email marketing. With features like segmentation, pre-designed templates, workflows, and more, your email marketing becomes simple, yet effective.
Sign up for free