Email Marketing Software: Benefits and an Effective Implementation Process

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

Did you know that email marketing software is now widely used by businesses of all sizes? This format is one of the key links in every company's marketing strategy, contributing to brand building and increasing conversion rates. You may still be wondering how to run an email marketing campaign for optimal effectiveness, and where to start.

What Is Email Marketing Software?

Email marketing is a form of direct advertising that uses email to communicate with customers.

Email Marketing is a solution that saves a great deal of money compared to conventional advertising methods like handing out flyers, hanging banners, printing catalogs, and so on. With every email sent, we can deliver detailed and necessary information and images without resorting to other costly forms of print advertising.

Benefits of Email Marketing

• Broad reach: In 2020, more than 3 billion people were recorded as using email, and 91% of them check their email daily.

• Cost savings: It is a marketing format that overwhelmingly outperforms other media. Every $1 spent on email marketing returns $44; email marketing costs only one-tenth as much as Google AdWords or Facebook Ads, and can increase revenue by up to 760%.

• Drives conversions: Email conversion rates are 2 times higher than social media and search engines. Specifically, 68% of users decide to make a purchase after receiving a marketing email.

• Reaching an audience that opted in: Most people who receive emails from a business have signed up through a form to receive information from it. They are mostly genuinely interested in the business, its products and services, and its promotional programs. That is why this is an optimal solution for reaching (potential) customers.

As we can see, email marketing brings considerable benefits to a business. So how do you run this kind of campaign as effectively as possible? Keep reading!

The Process for Executing an Email Marketing Strategy

Define the Goals of the Strategy

This is a crucial element of any strategy. People often skip this step and focus only on the others. But it is in fact an essential step — the compass guiding virtually every directional activity of the whole plan. The purposes of running an Email Marketing strategy are varied, and usually include the following:

• Introducing new products or services

• Promoting discount and promotional programs

• Increasing brand awareness

• Engaging more deeply with customers

Segment Your Target Customers.

There are many ways to build an effective email list: through signup forms on your website, collecting data from customers, organizing events, and more. Depending on your time, scale, and budget, you can choose the approach that gets you a good email list.

Then, segment your target customers — that is, divide the audience who will receive your company's marketing emails into smaller groups. Split your customer database into small target groups based on shared characteristics or interests. The better the content and presentation of each email match each target group, the better.

How you segment your target customers depends on the nature and industry of your business — for example, a fashion brand might group customers by gender, while a travel company would be better off segmenting by geographic location.

Choose Your Email Sending Method

Currently, businesses have 3 main ways of sending marketing emails:

• Self-sending/manual sending: This is probably the most common method of email marketing, but also the most laborious. With this method, the business uses a personal email account to send to each recipient one by one. Although time-consuming, sending manually increases the chance of landing in the inbox.

• Using email marketing software: In today's 4.0 era, more and more businesses use email marketing software, notably Mailchimp, GetResponse, and HubSpot CRM. This method overcomes many of the drawbacks of manual sending: faster sending speed, larger audiences, and email templates that are far more polished and professional.

• Using a third-party web server: When you partner with an email marketing service provider, you work directly on their website through every stage: selecting the recipient list, designing images and content, sending the mail, and finally measuring campaign effectiveness.

Design the Email

Elements such as content, form, message, and design of the email also need attention. Make sure the email is aesthetically pleasing, professional, and persuasive, with links to your website and landing pages. Also, email designs should not contain images with large dimensions and file sizes, and must comply with the email service provider's security policy to avoid being marked as spam.

Email Sending Schedule

If all the steps above are done well but you choose the wrong sending time, the open rate of your emails will suffer. Generally, marketing emails should be sent during free time slots, when click rates are higher. According to marketers' research, the time slots when users typically open your mail are 8–10 a.m. and 3–4 p.m. So you should send your mail about 1 hour before those windows to achieve an ideal open rate.

Measurement and Statistics

Measurement and statistics play a very important role in every marketing campaign, because they directly reflect the effectiveness of your email marketing through metrics such as open rate, number of opens, conversion rate, bounced mail, revenue, and more. Depending on your goals, review the relevant metrics.

Mailchimp Email Marketing Software

Mailchimp ranks among the top Email Marketing software providers, with "simple and convenient" as its leading criterion. It makes it easy for users to set up email marketing campaigns, manage and analyze customer data, run A/B tests, and integrate across multiple platforms such as Magento, Twitter, WordPress, Facebook, Google Analytics, and more.

Advantages:

• Intuitive, simple interface — even beginners to email marketing can operate it easily

• Attractive, varied email marketing templates that help businesses choose the right email design for each campaign

• The free plan allows sending to a large number of customers

Disadvantages:

• A high proportion of emails land in customers' promotions inboxes, affecting campaign effectiveness

• Mailchimp Support does not provide regular assistance if you are not on a premium plan

Email Marketing Pro Software

Email Marketing Pro is also one of the Vietnamese software products, letting you send bulk emails to customers with the following advantages:

• Unlimited number of managed emails

• Simple, easy-to-use interface

• Statistics system that lets you check your campaigns

• Visual reporting: total recipients, opens, and clicks on links in the email

• Bulk email sending within 1 second

• Helps you handle spam mail, bounced emails, and reuse marketing campaigns

GetResponse

This is an optimized software with these great features:

• Cheaper than many competitors. The Basic plan includes many standout bundled services such as Autoresponders, Landing Page Builder, Facebook Ads, and more

• Convenient automation features that save businesses time

• Support for many languages and a wide variety of fonts

However, GetResponse also has some drawbacks businesses should weigh:

• The drag-and-drop interface is complex and rather convoluted, requiring senders to have email marketing experience

• No two-factor authentication (2FA) on login — low security

• Although GetResponse is strong in A/B testing features, the campaign performance reports are rather complicated

GetResponse's pricing is quite affordable, with many tiers to choose from:

Although email marketing software has overcome many of the drawbacks of manual sending, to achieve the highest campaign effectiveness you need a tight, carefully detailed implementation plan. We hope that with SimERP's insights, readers will find an effective solution to make their email marketing strategy a success!

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