No matter how good your email marketing campaign is in terms of content, no matter
how big your mailing list is, if you do not have the proper tool to distribute it
and than check the results all of your work will be in vain. Email marketing software
is designed to make this final step easier and beneficial.
When Choosing Email Marketing Software, Keep in Mind the Following:
Integrated or Stand Alone; Online or Offline
As mentioned some email marketing software can be integrated in your current CRM
software. This might be more expensive but, depending on your needs, might be the
best solution for you. Some email marketing tools are online, meaning you can manage
your campaigns and check the statistics on another site, while there are programs
that need to be installed on your computer. Think in advance what the best solution
for your business is considering how many people will use it. Lets summarize the
options:
- Email marketing and newsletter hosted services - Complete email marketing
solution (Software as a Service) that can easily fit any business.
Advantages: No technical expertise needed for deployment, access through
any web browser, can be integrated with CRM and DB, service is constantly upgraded
and updated.
Disadvantages: Companies that have extremely strict guidelines regarding
their security policy may not be able to use hosted services.
- Email marketing and newsletter licensed software – bought licensed software
that usually comes in varying levels for different business modules.
Advantages: deployment on own server, abides to high security policy demands,
integrates with CRM and DB and has one time fee.
Disadvantages: You get what you pay for. Does not receive regular updates
and upgrades like hosted services.
- Email marketing and newsletter software for PC's – software that installs
on own PC.
Advantages: no registration requires, anyone can use from any computer, easy
deployment and usually a free version or trial version in available.
Disadvantages: targeted for smaller businesses and limited number of recipients.
The Price
Set a budget and find software within that budget. There are plenty of programs
that will do the work you need and some of them are not that expensive. Be careful
about the cost – some companies charge per number of emails sent, while other companies
have flat fees.
The Tools
The tools that come with the email marketing software are the heart of the issue.
If you do not receive the right tools there is almost no point of the software you
are using. Decent email marketing software should have tools that:
- allow easy management of your subscribers lists;
- allow distribution of targeted emails i.e. you should be able to easily create different
group of subscribers and post messages to each group;
- provide easy subscription/unsubscription management;
- provide sophisticated
statistics showing the number of the emails sent, the number of the emails opened,
link tracking and percentage information about various ratios such as the ration
between the people who opened the email and those who received it, the people who
received it and who unsubscribed, the people who opened it and those who clicked
on a link or made a purchase, etc. ;
Reporting
Ideally good email marketing software has a number of automatically generated reports.
While this is not a vital part, it is a tool that will ease your work a lot.
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