Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to establish relationships with prospects, reach your current customer base, promote your brand, and increase your sales.
According to Salesforce, 44 percent of people who received promotional emails made at least one purchase because of said emails. A study by McKinsey & Company revealed that email is 40 times better for acquiring customers than Twitter or Facebook, and according to Gigaom, marketers consistently reported that email was the single most useful method for retention, awareness, conversion, and acquisition.
If you want to launch a campaign and begin to build your subscriber list, you need to have the best tools possible at your disposal. Here are 10 of the essential email marketing tools that’ll help you jumpstart and enhance your email marketing.
1. Sign up forms and buttons
People aren’t going to sign up for your email list if it’s a hassle. Instead, make it easy on them by placing sign up forms and buttons in prominent places like the top of your website and on your social media accounts. For example, on your Facebook page, you can include a call to action sign up button that users click on and input their email addresses. If you’re utilizing an email marketing software or service, they will provide you with the HTML code to put the form on your website.
2. SumoMe
A sign up form that lives on your website and social media page may go unnoticed by some of your prospects. That’s one of the reasons you should try SumoMe, a platform that detects the exact moment when a customer is about to leave your website, and then shows a pop up box prompting him or her to sign up for your list. The box is customizable, and you can change the text or color to test out different strategies for encouraging sign-ups.
3. Touchstone
If your subject lines aren’t enticing, your subscribers aren’t going to tempted to open your emails. Touchstone is a website you can sign up for that tests your subject lines and compares them to 21 billion subject lines, including ones that are trending in your industry. The tool tests for delivery, open, and click rates, meaning that you won’t have to do testing on your own over and over again to figure out the most effective subject lines.
4. MailChimp
Choosing an email marketing provider is no easy task. You need to look at the software’s features, pricing, and how it differs from the competition. MailChimp is a comprehensive and flexible software that offers free and paid tools to send out emails, analyze how well they performed, and keep up interactions with your subscribers. If you want to know who your subscribers are, you can create profiles that display your one-on-one conversations with them, how they engaged with your emails, their website activity, and what purchases they made. You can also view email reports that help you determine what content to send out and when to send it.
5. BombBomb
Online video usage is growing at a fast rate. According to the Washington Post, by 2020, 80 percent of the internet will be online video. To get a jumpstart on your video email marketing, try BombBomb, a service that lets you record and send video emails to your subscribers. You can record the video right on the spot or upload a pre-recorded one. Either way, you’re going to supply your subscribers with visual stimulation, and give them a chance to connect with you face-to-face.
6. Litmus
If you have an existing email service provider, but you’re not satisfied with the testing options, give Litmus a try. This platform allows you to preview your campaigns across more than 40 email services, test your emails to make sure they will be delivered to your subscribers, see who read and deleted your emails, and make sure they can pass spam filters. Litmus and other testing software is crucial because you want to ensure you’re actually reaching your subscribers, and not throwing away precious money just to end up in the junk folder or trash bin.
7. Zurb
When customers open emails, they want to be able to read them quickly. This is why you must have a well-designed template in which to plug your content. That’s where Zurb can help you out. This email marketing provider offers responsive email templates that you can download, tweak, and use in your own campaigns. It also lets you see how the templates look on different email services so you can choose the one that’s most appropriate for your business.
8. HubSpot
Converting email subscribers can be difficult. You need an attractive call-to-action button that gets customers to click on your product, service, or website link within your email. HubSpot lets you design call-to-action buttons and test them to see whether or not they’re getting subscribers to click through. You can test everything from the color of the CTA button, to the text inside of it. Plus, the tool shows different CTAs depending on whether customers are on a desktop computer, tablet, or mobile phone, and it shows different CTAs based upon who is seeing them and where they are in their customer journey.
9. Act-On
It would be impossible to try and track every prospect’s journey every step of the way. Instead, try Act-On, a software that automates the email process for you and nurtures leads every step of the way. It also sends out emails to your prospects and customers at the right time. For example, if a customer abandons a shopping cart, he or she will receive a follow up email that will attempt to close the sale.
10. 99 Designs
A well-designed email will engage your subscribers and encourage them to read it all the way through. If you want more options than an email marketing provider will give you, then hire a designer to make custom emails through 99 Designs. The website allows you to choose your preferred template, upload images, and input your email text. Then, graphic designers send in their designs, and you can choose which one is perfect for your business.
Would you like to become a marketing pro? Try one of our classes at CreativeLive such as Effective Email and Newsletter Marketing with Jeff Goins and Email Marketing for Crafters, taught by Abby Glassenberg.
