Email marketing is a valuable tool for businesses to reach their audience and connect with them in a personalized way.

However, it can be challenging to get people to open and engage with your emails, so brands can spend a lot of time and resources trying to improve their email open rates.

In this post, we’ll look at the fastest and easiest way to increase your email open rate.

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First Impressions Matter

Email open rates are a major challenge for many businesses for several reasons:

• People are inundated with emails from multiple sources.
• Inboxes are becoming more crowded and cluttered.
• Emails have a lousy subject line, sender name or sending frequency.

As a result, many emails are simply ignored. So one of the keys to increasing your email open rate is to make a good first impression.

When someone receives an email from you, the first thing they see is the subject line and sender name:

These two elements are critical in determining whether or not the recipient will open your email:

• A well-written subject line can capture the recipient’s attention and entice them to open your email. It should be short, relevant and personalized to the recipient’s interests. Personalization can include using their name, referencing past purchases or interactions, or highlighting a common interest.
• The sender name is also crucial in making a good first impression. It should be recognizable and relevant to your brand. Using an individual’s name may work in some cases, but using the name of your organization in addition can often be more effective.

For example, the marketing team of a family hotel called SEMI Kinderhotel wanted to improve their email marketing campaigns, so they tested this strategy. They changed the email sender name from just the hotel (impersonal) to adding the head of the hotel, Michaela Sattler’s name (personal).

With just that one tiny change, they saw a huge boost: a 57% increase in their open rates.

A final note on first impressions: When someone subscribes to your email list, do they receive a simple “thank you for subscribing” message, or do you go further and provide them with valuable information and next steps?

Your welcome email is crucial in setting the tone for your future emails. Take advantage of this opportunity to introduce yourself and your brand, provide details on what your subscribers can expect from these emails, and share relevant content or case studies. By doing so, you create a positive first impression that makes your subscribers look forward to your next email.

If you can impress subscribers with your first email, they are more likely to open and engage with future emails.

Dive Deeper: How to Use Personalization to Increase the Impact of Email Marketing

Clean Your List

Another easy and quick way to get better open rates is to make sure your subscriber list is clean. An unclean email list can include invalid or inactive email addresses, spam traps and unengaged subscribers.

Having an unclean email list can negatively impact the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns in several ways:

• Invalid or inactive email addresses can lead to a high bounce rate. When you send emails to email addresses that have not been used in a while or have been closed, the email bounces back. Email service providers (ESPs) like Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook view high bounce rates as a sign of poor email list management and may penalize you by decreasing your sender reputation or marking your emails as spam.
• Spam traps are email addresses that are specifically designed to catch spammers. When marketers send emails to these email addresses, it indicates that the sender is either not following good email marketing practices or has obtained email addresses through non-permissible means. Internet service providers (ISPs) and ESPs may then view the sender as a spammer, which results in decreased deliverability rates.
• Unengaged subscribers are those who have not interacted with your emails in a long time. When email providers receive emails from a sender, they analyze various factors to determine whether to deliver the email to the recipient’s inbox or not. One of the important factors is engagement or the recipient’s response to the emails. If a recipient consistently ignores or deletes emails from a particular sender, it signals to the email provider that the recipient is not interested in the sender’s content, and the email provider may start treating the sender as spam.

By regularly cleaning and segmenting your list, you can ensure that you are sending emails to engaged and active subscribers who are interested in your brand, which can help to improve the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.

Dive Deeper:
* 7 Steps to Get More SaaS Customers with Cold Email
* 10+ Follow-Up Email Examples You Should Share With Your Team

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New and Novel Content

Now that you’ve updated your list to keep only the subscribers who are engaged and you’ve perfected your welcome email, here is the number one way to increase your email open rate:

Create new and novel content.

People are more likely to open and engage with your emails if they contain info that they haven’t seen a hundred times before over the last year or so.

If you’re just regurgitating a topic that has already been covered extensively and recently, it’s unlikely that people will be interested in reading it again. ChatGPT, anyone? 😉

However, if you provide something that people haven’t seen before, like Google rolling out a new algorithm that you analyze or simplify for your readers, or a new study related to your industry or niche, you are more likely to get higher open rates.

Creating new and novel content can be a challenging task, but you can:

• Write about a new angle on an old topic (aka the skyscraper technique)
• Discuss and analyze new trends in your industry or provide insights that are not commonly known
• Conduct research or surveys to provide unique data or content

Sharing original research findings or results from your own case studies can significantly boost your email open rates. This approach shows that you are an expert in your field, and your subscribers can trust you to provide valuable information.

Dive Deeper:
* 30 Ways to Come Up with Great Ideas for Your Blog Posts
* How to Use Google Keyword Planner for Content Creation

Tracking Your Success

And, of course, don’t forget the importance of tracking your success.

Tracking your email campaign performance can lead to better open rates by providing you with valuable insights into the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.

By analyzing your open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and other key performance indicators (KPIs), you can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to optimize your email campaigns.

Use email marketing tools to track your open rates and then experiment with different strategies to see what works best for your audience.

For example, if you notice that your open rates are low, you can A/B test different subject lines, sender names or send times to see if you can improve your open rates. You can also segment your email list based on past behaviors, interests or demographics, and send targeted emails to specific groups to increase relevance and engagement.

Additionally, tracking your email campaign performance can help you identify which types of content or offers are resonating with your subscribers and which ones are not. By analyzing your CTRs and conversion rates, you can determine which calls-to-action (CTAs) are most effective and adjust your email content and design accordingly:

Furthermore, tracking your email campaign performance can help you identify deliverability issues or other technical problems that may be impacting your open rates. For example, if you notice that your open rates have suddenly dropped, it may be a sign that your emails are being marked as spam or that your sender reputation has been impacted.

Overall, tracking your email campaign performance is crucial for optimizing your email marketing efforts and improving your open rates. By using data and analytics to make informed decisions, you can increase the relevance, engagement, and effectiveness of your email campaigns and drive better results for your business.

Dive Deeper:
* How to Run A/B Tests that Actually Increase Conversions
* How to Analyze Your Email Campaign Performance and Optimize It

Conclusion

Increasing your email open rate can be a challenge, but it’s not impossible. By focusing on making a good first impression, cleaning your email list, creating new and novel content, and measuring performance, you can improve your email open rates and connect with your audience in a meaningful way.

Whether you are new to email marketing or have been doing it for a while, it is never too late to implement these tips and start seeing results.

Hopefully you learned how to increase your email open rates, but if you just want someone to do all the work for you, click the orange button below! 👇

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The post The Fastest and Easiest Way to Increase Your Email Open Rates appeared first on Single Grain.

Email marketing is a crucial aspect of any business’s marketing strategy, and choosing the right email marketing platform can make all the difference.

One option that has been a go-to for businesses since 1998 is GetResponse. With over 23 years of experience in the industry, this platform has continued to evolve and develop cutting-edge features to help businesses reach their customers more effectively.

In this GetResponse review, we’ll take a closer look at the features, pricing, and customer support to help you decide if this platform is the right choice for your business if you’re looking to automate your marketing efforts.

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What Is GetResponse?

GetResponse is an email marketing software that helps you automate customer communication, create powerful campaigns, and track results:

It’s easy to use and offers features such as automated emails, A/B testing, landing page creation, autoresponders, segmentation, SMS marketing, web push notifications, live chat, forms, pop-ups, AI recommendations, paid ads, webinars, and so much more.

GetResponse also has more than 100 integrations with popular applications such as Salesforce, Google Analytics, Shopify, Optinmonster, Fomo, Google Ads, WordPress, Gmail, HubSpot, Eventbrite, Evernote, PayPal, Zendesk, Twitter, Zoho, Slack, Vimeo, Freshbooks, Facebook, Square, Zapier, and more.

Its pricing is competitive and it offers great customer support. There’s no credit card required to get started, which is a must to get me onboard with a free trial. Plus, you can choose a plan now and try it out or you can simply browse your free trial and pick a plan later.

Overall, GetResponse is a great choice for businesses looking to get started with email marketing in 2023.

Related Content: How to Lower Ecommerce PPC Advertising Costs with Email Marketing

Prices and Plans

GetResponse offers three different pricing plans, over and above the free plan, which you can choose depending on the number of contacts you have, the number of emails you want to send, the depth of digital marketing you need to do, and the number of landing pages you plan to build.

The free plan allows for up to 500 contacts, 2,500 newsletters, one landing page, and some basic features like sign-up forms and pop-ups. This plan is perfect for a small business just getting started with email marketing.

• The Email Marketing plan starts at $15.58 (don’t ask why such a specific number…) per month and includes up to 1,000 contacts, but it has unlimited newsletters, landing pages, and website builders. It adds on features like basic segmentation, autoresponders, integrations, and API.
• The Marketing Automation plan is the most popular and offers the most value at $48.38 per month. It includes everything in the Email Marketing plan plus additional marketing automation features, event-based automation, webinars, advanced segmentation, contact scoring, and sales funnels features.
• The E-commerce Marketing plan is available for $97.58 per month for businesses that need a more comprehensive solution that integrates with their e-commerce platforms. It includes everything already mentioned, plus features like quick transactional emails, e-commerce segmentation, abandoned cart recovery, promo codes, product recommendations, and web push notifications.

For all plans above the free plan, you can add up to 100,000 contacts, but the price increases as you do. In addition, GetResponse also offers two Max custom plans for large businesses who need even more features or capacity.

Overall, GetResponse offers some of the most competitive pricing on the market and its feature set is comprehensive enough to meet all your marketing needs. Whether you’re a small business just getting started with email marketing or a large enterprise looking for an all-in-one solution, GetResponse has something for everyone.

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Getting Started with GetResponse

Signing up for GetResponse was really easy and it took me less than two minutes. I provided and verified my email, and I was in. It took me straight to my dashboard with a few offers to take a tour, which I chose to skip for now. They remained on my dashboard (good user interface, by the way) in case I wanted to view them later.

Once I was done with the sign-up process, I started creating my first email campaign. The set-up wizard made it easy to create a new campaign by entering a few details like name, subject line, sender name and email address. Once that was done, I could start building my content using the drag-and-drop editor or HTML code.

The editor had a wide range of features like text and image placeholders, video embeds, dividers, and more. As I worked on my content, I kept an eye on the preview window to make sure everything was looking good. Once I was happy with my design, I moved onto setting up my subscriber list. This took a few seconds as I just had to upload my contacts in a CSV or XLS file.

After that, it was time to review and send the email. I added some additional settings like scheduling when the email should be sent out and how long it should stay open before expiring. This is optional but could be handy if you need your emails to go out at a certain time.

Finally, I clicked ‘Send’ and the email was sent out. GetResponse gives you lots of options for tracking the performance of your emails, including open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribes and more. This is great for businesses that want to measure their success and optimize their email marketing campaigns.

Related Content: SaaS Email Marketing: 12 Best Strategies to Follow

GetResponse Features and Integrations

One of the things I like about GetResponse is its wide range of email marketing features and integrations.

As mentioned, it has a comprehensive drag-and-drop email editor that lets you create stunning emails with ease. It also offers some powerful automation tools to help you create automated campaigns that save time and increase engagement.

The integration options are also great. GetResponse integrates with a variety of platforms, including WordPress, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, and more. This makes it easy to connect your online store or website to GetResponse.

They also offer advanced features like an API so you can integrate with virtually any platform or system. You can use the API to automate tasks such as adding contacts, scheduling emails, and more.

Autoresponders

Autoresponders are one of GetResponse’s most powerful features. They allow you to automate your email campaigns based on triggers like website visits, purchases, and more. You can also customize the timing of emails so they arrive at the right time for each contact.

For example, you could send a welcome message as soon as someone subscribes to your email list. Or you could send a follow-up email after someone makes a purchase or registers for an event. Autoresponders are a great way to nurture relationships with leads and customers over time.

Related Content: 10+ Follow-Up Email Examples You Should Share With Your Team

Website Builder and Landing Pages

In addition to email templates, GetResponse also offers a website builder that makes it easy to create stunning websites. You can choose from dozens of professionally designed templates and customize them with the drag-and-drop editor. The site builder is optimized for mobile devices, so your website will look great on all screens.

You can also use GetResponse as an effective landing page builder for your campaigns. The drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to create beautiful pages in just a few clicks. You can include forms, images, videos and more on your pages for effective lead generation that will drive conversions.

Related Content: How to Design Landing Pages that Convert

Segmentation

Another great feature of GetResponse is its segmentation tool. This allows you to send targeted emails to different groups of contacts based on their interests and behavior. For example, you could create a segment for customers who have recently made a purchase or a segment for leads who have shown an interest in a particular product.

This can be useful for sending more relevant emails and improving your open and click-through rates. It also helps you get better insights into your audience so you can create more effective campaigns in the future.

Related Content: 7 Segmentation Mistakes That Are Costing Your Business Money

Marketing Automation and SMS Marketing

GetResponse offers powerful marketing automation tools. You can use these to automate tasks such as sending emails based on customer behavior, creating email campaigns based on web data and more. This helps you save time and increase engagement with your audience.

It also has an SMS marketing feature that lets you send text messages to your contacts. This is great for sending reminders, announcements and special offers directly to people’s phones.

Web Push Notifications

GetResponse also offers web push notifications which are an effective way to reach customers and drive engagement. This feature lets you send browser notifications directly to your contacts’ desktops or mobile devices. You can use this to remind customers about upcoming sales, new products and more.

Related Content: How to Target Your Mobile Users with Push Notifications

Live Chats and Surveys

GetResponse also has features for live chats and surveys. With the live chat feature, customers can get help from your customer service team quickly and easily. You can also use surveys to collect feedback from your customers so you can improve your services.

Pop Ups and Forms

GetResponse also has features for pop ups and forms. You can use these to capture leads or collect information from customers. This helps you build your mailing list and get feedback from customers.

These are just a few of the great features that GetResponse offers. There are so many more that you can use to increase engagement and drive conversions. This email marketing service is a powerful marketing platform that can help any business reach their goals.

Related Content: How Correctly Used Pop-Ups Can Help Increase Leads

Customer Service

GetResponse provides excellent customer service. Their support team is available 24/7 and can help you with any questions or issues you may have. They also provide helpful webinars and tutorials to help you get the most out of their platform. You can reach out to them via live chat or get email support.

They also offer a comprehensive online help center with articles to help you navigate your favorite features. They have videos, webinars, and a blog to offer tips and tricks for businesses of all kinds. I feel comfortable saying that GetResponse’s customer service goes above and beyond most other platforms.

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Final Assessment of GetResponse

There are plenty of good email marketing services, like MailChimp or ActiveCampaign. But you’ll find that GetResponse holds its own as an excellent marketing automation platform for businesses of any size.

It offers powerful features such as automated emails, segmentation tools, web push notifications and more. The customer service team is also very helpful and available 24/7.

The only downside is that it’s not very user-friendly when it comes to learning how to use all the features offered without some guidance or training.

Here is a summary of the GetResponse email marketing platform:

Pros:

• Easy to use drag-and-drop builder for website
• Landing pages and emails
• Powerful segmentation tools for targeting customers based on interests and behavior
• Automated marketing tools to save time and increase engagement with your audience
• SMS marketing feature for sending text messages directly to phones
• Web push notifications for reminding customers about sales, products and more
• Live chat and survey features for collecting feedback from customers
• Pop ups and forms for capturing leads or collecting information
• Excellent customer service with 24/7 support team

Cons:

• It can be difficult to use the platform if you are unfamiliar with marketing automation tools
• The pricing plan may be too expensive for small businesses with limited budgets
• May not be able to customize the platform enough to meet your specific needs
• The reporting and analytics features may not be as detailed as other platforms
• It can take some time to learn how to use all of the features available

Read more of our review posts:
* ConvertKit Review: Is It Worth It in 2023?
* Hostinger Review: Is This the Best Web Hosting Provider in 2023?
* AWeber Review: Is It Worth It in 2023?
* Kicksta Review: A Legit Way to Automate Your Instagram Growth
* Supermetrics Review: Is It Worth It in 2023?
* Moosend Review: Is This the Best Email Marketing Tool for Beginners?
* UltraVPN Review: Is This 2023’s Best VPN?

The post GetResponse Review: Is It Worth It in 2023? appeared first on Single Grain.

ConvertKit is an email marketing platform particularly suited to bloggers, small businesses and entrepreneurs as it can help you build relationships with your customers, automate tasks, create forms, and much more.

But is it worth it in 2023?

To answer this question, I took ConvertKit for a test drive and spent some time looking at the features and benefits.

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What Is ConvertKit?

ConvertKit is an email marketing solution that helps businesses automate their marketing processes, capture customer information, and segment customers into different lists.

With an intuitive interface, customizable templates, and powerful automation tools, ConvertKit makes it easy for busy online business owners to create high-converting campaigns with their email lists. The platform offers excellent deliverability with a variety of features, including:

• automation capabilities
• form builder tools
• A/B testing
• lead capture forms
• webinar services
• robust integrations with e-commerce shop software

At the most basic level, ConvertKit’s automation capabilities help you streamline your marketing processes. You can set up automated emails, segment customers into lists based on their behavior and preferences, and create rules for segmentation. This makes it easy to create personalized marketing campaigns and find the right customers for your business.

In addition, ConvertKit offers a variety of form builder tools that can help you quickly create opt-in forms/opt-in boxes, and surveys. With these tools, you can capture the information you need from customers and segment them into different lists or categories. Plus, with its A/B testing capabilities, you can quickly test different versions of emails and forms to see which email broadcasts are most effective.

And, finally, ConvertKit’s advanced analytics and detailed reports provide users with insights on their campaigns’ performance so they can make informed decisions when it comes to optimizing their email marketing strategy.

Related Content:
* 5 Important Landing Page Elements You Should Be A/B Testing
* 11 Email Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2023
* How to Lower Ecommerce PPC Advertising Costs with Email Marketing

Pricing for ConvertKit

One of the best things about ConvertKit’s pricing is that it’s affordable:

They offer three plans – Free Plan, Creator Plan and Creator Pro Plan – which are for up to 300 subscribers, and they range from free to $25/month, billed yearly.

This is great value for the money, especially when compared to other platforms with similar features.

The only downside to this pricing is that it’s only for 300 email subscribers, which may be fine for a small or medium business, but doesn’t scale well as you grow beyond that, and certainly isn’t a great option for enterprise users.

They also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it out risk-free.

More email marketing tool reviews:
* AWeber Review: Is It Worth It in 2023?
* Moosend Review: Is This the Best Email Marketing Tool for Beginners?

Getting Started with ConvertKit

Getting started with ConvertKit is really easy.

Once you’re signed up, you can start creating forms and emails, setting up automation rules, segmenting customers into lists, and much more.

There’s a free 14-day trial that doesn’t require a credit card, which I love. If you’re anything like me, you’ll sign up for a free trial that requires a credit card – and then forget to cancel it! Then you’re billed for something you haven’t even decided if you want to use yet.

With ConvertKit, getting started is super easy and there really is no obligation.

Signing Up

Immediately upon signing up right from the home page, they display a welcome video that helps you get your bearings.

Then they guide you with where to start. It really couldn’t have been any easier to create my first forms and emails.

Upon signing up, ConvertKit asks if you’re migrating from another tool or just getting started. Depending on your answer, they’ll help you find the tools you need and move your existing data over. They’ll even suggest integrations that might work for you based on your business demographics.

Insights

After using ConvertKit for a while, I found that I really needed some sort of insights dashboard where I could see how my marketing performance was trending. I wanted an analytics dashboard that displays a variety of metrics, like open rates, click-through rates and conversions, as well as subscriber growth over time. This would have made it really easy for me to see how my campaigns were performing at a glance.

However, insights are only available for those who upgrade to Creator Pro, which meant spending a bit more money that I wanted to.

Although I didn’t get detailed insights, I at least had some basic values, like the number of form sign-ups in the past 30 days and the number of marketing emails completed.

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ConvertKit Features

ConvertKit has plenty of features you’ll want to try out before your free trial is up.

You can grow your audience with landing pages, email sign-up forms, and integrations.

Landing Pages

ConvertKit’s landing page builder is great for quickly creating an opt-in page for your website or blog. It only takes minutes to promote your upcoming project and get people on board. The great thing is that you can choose one of their fully customizable landing page templates or create one from scratch.

Email Sign-Up Forms

You can also create forms to capture customer information and segment them into different lists based on their preferences. Once again, they’re fully customizable email templates, but you can also create your own and build trust with your loyal audience as well as your new subscribers.

Integrations

ConvertKit also offers a lot of integrations with other platforms and services.

This means you can easily connect your blog or website to ConvertKit, so customers are automatically added to your lists when they sign up. You can also integrate with payment processing platforms, social media channels, and more.

There are literally dozens of these integrations. ConvertKit has done a great job of making sure their tools work with the tools you’re already using. The learning curve isn’t so bad when you don’t have to overhaul your entire process.

You can also connect with your fans using email marketing, an email designer and automations.

Email Marketing

One of the main features of ConvertKit is its email marketing capabilities.

Here you can create beautiful emails, segment them into different lists, and use automation tools to send the right emails to the right people at the right time. It’s all very easy to set up, but also powerful enough for a more advanced user.

Dive Deeper: SaaS Email Marketing: 12 Best Strategies to Follow

Email Designer

This feature allows you to create beautiful emails that are fully customized. You can upload photos, insert links, customize fonts and colors, and much more. The email designer also includes A/B testing capabilities so you can test different versions of your emails to see which one works best.

Automation

ConvertKit makes automated marketing easy. You can set up rules that automatically send emails based on predefined triggers. For example, you can set up an autoresponder rule to send a “Thank You” email sequence when someone signs up for your mailing list.

Dive Deeper: What Is Marketing Automation: Definition, Benefits & Uses

And you can earn a living with commerce tools and Creator Pro.

Commerce Tools

If you’re selling products or services online, ConvertKit’s commerce tools make it easy to accept payments and deliver digital goods. You can integrate with a payment processor and quickly start selling your products or services.

Creator Pro

This is one of the more advanced features of ConvertKit, but it’s well worth it if you’re a serious content creator who wants to make money online. Creator Pro is an all-in-one suite of tools that allows you to manage subscribers, create digital products, run affiliate programs, and more.

Where Creator Pro really shines is allowing you to treat every subscriber like the individual they are. You can tag your subscribers based on what you know about them. The more you know, the more attention you can provide, pulling them closer to your brand.

It also allows you to fine-tune your insights, reward subscribers for referring their friends, and target specific audiences on social media. It’s a robust feature that’s worth exploring if you’re serious about making money with your blog or website.

Unfortunately, this features isn’t available on the free trial or the free plan, so if you really do need some advanced features, you’ll have to pay for them.

Customer Support

ConvertKit offers great customer service and technical support. They have an extensive knowledge base, as well as live chats and email support.

If you have trouble with ConvertKit, I would start with their online resources. You can read blog posts, view video trainings, see stories from other inspiring creators, follow tutorials, or connect with other members of the community.

However, if you still have problems, their 24/7 live chat is the way to go. I absolutely love it when companies offer an easy way to reach out. I don’t like email because it’s too impersonal, and I hate calling because it takes too long.

But with ConvertKit, you can simply chat with their experts and get answers very quickly. If they’re busy, they’ll send you a message when they’re available so you can jump back into troubleshooting and getting the help you need!

Pros and cons of this email service provider:

Pros:

• Easy to use with an intuitive interface
• Extensive integration capabilities, making it easier to migrate from other tools
• Powerful email marketing features and automations
• Creator Pro suite of advanced features
• Comprehensive customer service and technical support
• Free plans
• 14-day free trial with no obligation

Cons:

• Can be expensive for smaller businesses or those just starting out
• Not a great option for large or enterprise businesses
• Not all features are available on the free plan

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ConvertKit: Final Assessment

Overall, ConvertKit is a user-friendly email marketing platform that offers powerful automation capabilities and form builder tools at a reasonable price.

Similar tools include Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse and Drip, but it’s definitely worth considering ConvertKit if you’re looking for ways to better manage your marketing efforts and connect with customers this year.

With its free plans and 14-day free trial, you can try out this email marketing service before committing to it. And with its dedication to customer service, you’ll always get the help you need if something goes wrong. Good luck!

The post ConvertKit Review: Is It Worth It in 2023? appeared first on Single Grain.

In this comprehensive Moosend review, I’ll be looking at a platform that’s often thought of as one of the best email marketing software for small businesses using email to grow.

If you read our guide to this year’s top 10 email services, you may recall that we praise Moosend for its affordable pricing and exceptional ease of use, both in setting it up and its deliverability. But are those two things alone enough to make this the right choice for your first email marketing campaign – or is there a better option out there?

In this post, I’ll weigh the pros and cons of this popular email platform, show you how it works, and outline everything you need to know to answer that question for yourself.

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What Is Moosend – and What Are Its Key Features?

60% of marketers say that email marketing is their biggest source of ROI.

But unless you plan on manually sending thousands of emails to your individual subscribers, you probably want to use an email marketing tool which will do it for you automatically.

Moosend is one such email platform. They are a cloud-based email marketing and automation software for managing all your email campaigns in order to help you improve your lead-generation efforts and get more conversions.

Effortless Email Campaigns

At the heart of Moosend’s platform is a highly intuitive campaign management system whose impressive array of features is matched only by its remarkable user-friendliness. Its user interface is simple and its email editor is a snap to use.

After configuring essential elements such as the to/from email addresses and your subject, you can pick from an abundance of premium-quality email templates, with options for a wide range of industries from web apps to weddings:

Each template also comes pre-designed for a specific purpose such as abandoned cart recovery, sending a discount code, or sending a welcome email to a new sign-up.

All this means that no matter what your business and no matter what occasion you need to send an email for, you’re going to find a professional template to help get your message across.

The best part is that these templates are a breeze to customize thanks to a beginner-friendly drag-and-drop editor.

Dive Deeper: 7 Steps to Get More SaaS Customers with Cold Email

Pre-Designed Automated Workflows

Automation may have started as just another email marketing trend a few years back, but now it’s such an integral part of growing a business that any email service that doesn’t offer automated workflows is probably not worth your time.

Fortunately, Moosend not only offers automated workflows but offers more pre-designed automation ‘recipes’ and more simple-to-customize options than the majority of its competitors:

Though you can always choose to build a brand new workflow from scratch, you can save an awful lot of time by taking one of the dozens of email automation templates and tweaking it to your liking.

For example, if you’re looking to use personalization to increase the impact of your email marketing, you could send personalized offers based on customers’ previous purchases, or use a different template to send out a special discount on their birthday.

Elsewhere, you’ll find recipes to send welcome email series, onboarding sequences, and abandoned cart recovery emails.

My personal favorite is the automated campaign which sends personalized product recommendations based on the weather in each customer’s local area.

For example, if you run a home and garden store and the weather forecasts sunshine, it would send out recommendations for lawn chairs or gardening equipment. Should it rain, those customers would instead get recommendations for furniture covers or rain barrels.

Speaking of things I love, the interface for choosing and customizing these workflows is one of the simplest I’ve seen, making it a breeze for even absolute novices to harness the full power of email marketing automation.

Audience Segmentation

The ability to group your email subscribers into individual segments is another essential email marketing feature that Moosend makes incredibly easy.

Along with the option to create custom segments based on your preferences, you can also choose nine different pre-set audience segments based on user behavior or other factors, including:

• A recent interaction with your campaign or web page
• Total spend
• Order total
• Number of purchases
• Unopened emails
• Lack of engagement

If you’re using email marketing for multiple purposes or you only want to send certain special offers to your most loyal repeat customers, this useful feature ensures that you’ll have no trouble doing so.

Other Key Moosend Features

Moosend’s wide list of features also includes:

• Split A/B testing
• Landing page and subscription form creator
• CRM tools to manage your contacts
• Custom reports which help you analyze and optimize your campaign performance

Dive Deeper: 7 Segmentation Mistakes That Are Costing Your Business Money

Moosend Pricing Plans

Moosend’s affordable pricing is one of the main reasons why it’s such an attractive option for email marketing beginners. And when you check out their plans for yourself, it’s easy to see why:

They don’t have a free plan, as such, but the platform does offer an excellent, unrestricted 30-day free trial which allows you to test run all of its features (except for SMTP server integration) so that you can see if it’s a good fit for helping you achieve your business goals.

If you do decide to stick with Moosend, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan, like their low-cost Pro plan which contains all the following features:

• Unlimited email campaigns
• Transactional emails
• Sign-up forms and subscription forms
• Landing page builder
• SMTP server

How much you pay for these features will depend on the number of subscribers you have, with plans starting at just $9 per month for up to 500 subscribers, all the way to $5,840 per month for 800,001+ subscribers.

Popular plans that are most likely to appeal to small and growing businesses include:

• 501 – 1,000 subscribers: $16/month
• 1,001 – 2,000 subscribers: $24/month
• 2,001 – 3,000 subscribers: $32/month
• 3,001 – 5,000 subscribers: $48/month

They also have an Enterprise plan, for which you’ll have to call and get a quote.

For me, it isn’t just the pricing structure itself that makes Moosend’s plans so appealing. It’s also the flexibility it affords you as a business owner.

If you’re completely brand new to email marketing, you can start with a handful of subscribers on the $9 per month plan, and only pay more once the platform has started paying dividends and your email list surpasses the 500 subscriber mark.

That way, you only ever pay for what you need.

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Moosend User Experience: How to Create One-Off and Automated Email Campaigns

Here, I’ll walk you through setting up an email campaign so you can get a better idea of how this email platform works.

1) Start Your Free Trial

Go to moosend.com and type your email address into the box provided to start your free 30-day trial:

You won’t need to enter any credit card details unless you decide to keep using Moosend at the end of the trial.

On the next screen, enter your login details and click ‘register.’

2) Complete Your Moosend Profile

You’ll enter your name first followed by a physical address which is required to comply with data privacy and anti-spam laws.

From here, the platform wants to learn more about your business and email marketing use so that it can tailor its features to match your needs.

Finally, you’ll be asked about your business activities and your industry.

With all that done, you can finish activating your account by clicking on the verification link sent to your email.

3) Connect to Your Website

Clicking the verification link that was sent to your email automatically logs you into the Moosend dashboard:

Here, you’ll be invited to sync the platform with your website so that you can make the most of its features.

To begin, simply click ‘Connect your website’ and enter your domain name.

Click ‘Submit’ to generate the ID code you’ll need to integrate Moosend with your site, and then select ‘Install connection script’:

This page brings up eight different options to connect to your site. You can choose to manually copy and paste the code into your website, or you can access built-in tools to connect with well-known website builders, top e-commerce platforms, and shopping cart solutions, including:

• Magento
• Prestashop
• ZenCart
• CSCcart
• OpenCart

It’s important to note that Moosend is compatible with WordPress and WooCommerce, but on the day I wrote this review, the plugin was “closed” and inaccessible.

As such, WordPress users will have to choose the Custom installation option and paste the provided code into the HEAD tag of their website:

4) Create Your First Email List

To create your first email marketing campaign, you’re going to need people to send it to which means your next task is to create your first email list.

From the main menu, select Audience > Email Lists > New > Email List using the button in the top right-hand corner.

Give your email list a name and click ‘Create’:

And then click ‘Add a Member.’ This will allow you to manually enter new subscribers to your mailing list.

Alternatively, you can click ‘Perform bulk actions’ to import multiple contacts in one of the following three ways:

• Uploading a .csv, .txt, or .xlsx file
• Manually copying and pasting an email list,
• Importing contacts via Google Contacts or Salesforce

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5) Create Your First Campaign

To create a regular broadcast such as an email newsletter, marketing message or announcement, select Campaigns > Regular, and then click ‘Create’:

This will take you to the dashboard where you can configure all the essential details, including:

• Campaign name
• Subject name
• Preview text
• To and from names and email addresses

You can also choose to track your campaign and how much revenue it generates:

Next, select ‘Design’ and pick from one of the many high-quality templates:

Here you can preview any template and select it at the click of a button:

Doing so opens it up in a handy drag-and-drop editor which allows you to customize every element, as well as add new ones:

When you’re done, you can choose to either send the email right away or schedule it for a later date and time, as well as whether or not you want to resend the email to recipients who don’t open the message.

Now all that’s left is to preview your campaign and send it out.

6) Create Your First Automated Campaign

If you prefer to create an automated campaign, you can do that by selecting ‘Automation’:

Here, you have the option to either create an automated workflow from scratch or use one of those excellent pre-made “recipes” I mentioned earlier:

Since I’m a big fan of making things as simple as possible, I’m going to pick a recipe. Namely, I’ll pick the recipe which automatically sends out product recommendations based on the local weather conditions:

Whichever recipe you pick, you’ll first be given an overview of how the automated steps in your workflow link together.

You can then customize each step of the process:

For example, you can choose when to trigger the automation:

And which weather condition should trigger the email being sent:

You’ll also have the option to create a new email campaign message or import the design and content from the one you already created under ‘Campaigns’:

Once you’ve configured everything to your liking, all that’s left to do is to activate the workflow, then sit back, relax, and watch as Moosend’s email marketing automation gets to work on generating more web traffic and sales for your business.

It honestly couldn’t be any simpler.

Dive Deeper:
* How to Lower Ecommerce PPC Advertising Costs with Email Marketing
* 10+ Follow-Up Email Examples You Should Share With Your Team
* How to Analyze Your Email Campaign Performance and Optimize It

What Customer Support Does Moosend Offer?

Though Moosend’s exceptional ease of use is one of the main reasons why it’s one of the best email marketing tools for beginners, help is still at hand should an unexpected problem arise.

Although the lack of telephone support may be off-putting to some, all users (even those on the 30-day trial) can access both email and live chat support at any time.

Email support comes with the standard 24-hour waiting time disclaimer, though we’ve seen plenty of support requests being replied to and resolved the same day.

Moosend Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Moosend is a highly-intuitive platform that requires no experience or expertise to create attractive, effective email campaigns
• The platform offers an impressive range of highly-customizable automation recipes
• The scalable plans are highly affordable and come with a free 30-day trial.

Cons:

• No telephone support is available
• Lacks custom fields to personalize emails

Still unsure? Check out our other email marketing tool review:
AWeber Review: Is It Worth It in 2023?

Is Moosend the Best Email Marketing Tool for Beginners? Our Final Answer

If you’re looking to get started with email marketing but you’re put off by high costs or confusing features, you’ll certainly find a great deal to like about Moosend.

Try the service free for 30 days and you’ll find that sending beautifully-designed email campaigns and using powerful automation tools to boost sales and analyzing the results of your efforts is as simple as you could possibly hope for.

So yes, in our opinion, Moosend is certainly a powerful email marketing service for beginners, though if you don’t yet have any subscribers to add to it, you may want to first check out our guide to the most creative ways to collect emails without being spammy.

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FAQs About Moosend Email Marketing Platform

How many emails can I send with Moosend?

Moosend offers unlimited emails. You can add as many recipients as you like to an email list, send an email to that entire list, and create as many campaigns as you need to.

Does Moosend offer a free version?

No free version of Moosend’s email marketing service is available, though you can access a trial and try it free for 30 days.

What are the best Moosend alternatives?

Mailerlite, GetResponse, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp and Constant Contact are some other excellent email marketing providers that rival Moosend for simplicity, affordability and automation.

The post Moosend Review: Is This the Best Email Marketing Tool for Beginners? appeared first on Single Grain.

Overall, AWeber is a great choice for small businesses and entrepreneurs (particularly beginners) who want an easy-to-use, affordable email marketing software.

I recently tested it out for my business and was impressed with its features and easy functionality. However, it’s not perfect. There are a few areas where AWeber could improve, such as customer support and integrations.

In this AWeber review, I’ll cover the pros and cons of using this email marketing service so you can decide if it’s the right solution for your business.

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What Is AWeber?

AWeber is an email marketing tool that offers marketing automation services, like a landing page builder, email automation, detailed reporting, sign-up forms, and autoresponders.

It’s a great choice for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs who want to stay in touch with their customers and grow their business or stay in touch with their customers and prospects.

Many marketers and small brands use it for their email marketing campaigns because it’s relatively affordable and it offers the basic automation features that make it a breeze to email newsletters to their customers. It also helps them set up online stores, collect payments, offer payment plans, and send notifications to new subscribers.

It saves time with plenty of automation tools, can help get more eyes on the content you publish, build brand awareness, and retain customers for life.

They have a robust knowledge base and video tutorials on their site so you can so you can get up to speed in no time and start automating your workflow.

Plus, switching from your current provider (Mailchimp, Moosend, GetResponse, ActiveCampaign, etc.) is a cinch. The AWeber team helps you migrate your current data and offers business hour phone support, and 24/7 email and live chat support.

Related Content: 7 Steps to Get More SaaS Customers with Cold Email

AWeber Pricing

One of the best things about getting an AWeber account is that it offers a free plan.

For up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails per month, you can get many of their features for free. That includes things like:

• Creating and sending newsletters
• RSS to email
• Drag-and-drop editor (email builder)
• HTML emails
• Dynamic content
• AMP emails
• Hosted broadcast archive
• Thousands of professional images
• Landing pages
• AWeber ecommerce
• Google Analytics
• Sign up forms
• WordPress plugin
• Tagging subscribers
• Sales tracking
• Purchase tagging
• Social integrations
• 24/7 live support

That’s a huge list! I only tried the free version of the software but, in my mind, it’s well worth the investment in time to get it set up. It was fast and easy!

However, if you need even more than what the free plan offers, you can opt for the pro plan. The price fluctuates from $16-150 per month depending on the number of subscribers you have. The plan does max out at 25,000 subscribers, which means it’s not a great enterprise solution.

For small businesses, however, it’s a great deal. You get all of the features of the free plan, plus:

• Unlimited email lists
• Email split testing
• Coupons and discounts in AWeber ecommerce
• Automated follow-up emails (autoresponders)
• Subscriber tagging
• Detailed reporting and analytics
• Priority customer support
• Integrations with popular business tools

AWeber also offers a risk-free, 30-day money back guarantee. So if you’re not satisfied with the service, you can cancel within the first month and get a full refund.

Related Content: How to Lower Ecommerce PPC Advertising Costs with Email Marketing

Getting Started with AWeber

Now that we’ve covered the basics of what AWeber is and how much it costs, let’s dive into how to get started with this email marketing platform.

The first thing you need to do is create an account. You can do that by going to the AWeber website and clicking on the “Get Started” button.

You’ll then be asked to choose a plan. As I mentioned, you can start with a free plan or go directly to a paid plan:

Once you select your plan, you’ll be prompted to enter your contact information.

After you enter your contact information, you’ll be asked to create a password, which will then log you in and take you to your dashboard:

On the left-hand side of the dashboard, you’ll see a menu with all of the different features and tools that AWeber offers.

In the middle of the dashboard, you’ll see an overview of your account, including your subscriber count, recent activity, and a list of your most recent emails.

Getting started is fast and easy. It took me about 5 minutes to create an account and get logged in. Then, I was able to start using all of the features and tools that AWeber offers.

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AWeber Features

Once you sign up, there are plenty of features (even with the free version) that you should take advantage of! I found them simple and intuitive to use.

Adding Subscribers

Now that you have a list set up, it’s time to start adding subscribers! There are a few different ways to do this.

You can manually add subscribers by clicking on the “Subscribers” tab in the left-hand menu and then clicking on the “Add Subscribers” button:

You’ll be prompted to enter the subscriber’s information, including their name, email address, and any custom fields that you’ve set up.

You can manually add subscribers by clicking on the “Subscribers” tab in the left-hand menu and then clicking on the “Add One at a Time” button:

Again, you’ll be prompted to enter the subscriber’s information, including their name, email address, and any custom fields that you’ve set up.

You can also add subscribers by importing them from a file. To do this, click on the “Subscribers” tab in the left-hand menu and then click on the “Import Multiple” button:

You’ll be prompted to select the file that you want to import and then match the columns in the file to the fields in your list.

Once you’ve imported your subscribers, they’ll appear in your list and you can start sending them emails!

Related Content: 10+ Follow-Up Email Examples You Should Share With Your Team

Creating Lists

The first thing you should do now is create a list.

While the free plan allows you to have one list, the Pro plan gives you the ability to create multiple lists. This is convenient if you have several different newsletters or segments of your audience.

You can do this by clicking on the “Lists” tab in the left-hand menu and then clicking on the “Create New List” button:

You’ll be prompted to enter some information about your list, including the name, description, and default “From” name and email address.

You can also choose to enable double opt-in, which means that subscribers will need to confirm their subscription before they’re added to your list. I recommend enabling this feature to reduce the risk of spam complaints.

Once you’ve entered all of the information about your list, you can click on the “Create List” button.

Creating Forms

The next step is to create a sign-up form so that people can subscribe to your list. To do this, click on the “Sign Up Forms” tab in the left-hand menu:

And then click on the “Create a Sign Up Form” button (you can create a sign-up form on a landing page or for your website):

You’ll be prompted to enter some information about your form, including the name, description, and list that you want to add subscribers to. You can also choose from a variety of form templates or start with a blank form:

Once you’ve selected a template, you can customize the form to match your brand. You can change the colors, fonts, and layout. You can also add custom fields so that you can collect additional information about your subscribers.

Creating Emails

Now that you have a list of subscribers and a signup form, it’s time to start sending them emails! To do this, click on the “Automation” tab in the left-hand menu and select “Campaigns”:

You’ll be prompted to enter some information about your email campaign, including the subject, sender name, and sender email address. You’ll also want to add more detail about tags, triggers, and other automations:

You can also choose from a variety of email templates or start with a blank email.

Once you’ve selected a template, you can customize the email to match your brand. You can change the colors, fonts, and layout. You can also add images, videos, and other media to your email. Using the drag-and-drop email builder makes this process even easier.

Once you’re happy with your email, you can click on the “Save Changes” button. You’ll then be able to preview your email and send it to your list.

The only downside to campaigns is that the free version only allows for one campaign. To set up additional campaigns, you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro.

Here are some additional features you may want to take advantage of:

• Creating autoresponders: In addition to sending one-time emails, you can also create autoresponders. Autoresponders are emails that are automatically sent to subscribers after they sign up for your list.
• Landing pages and ecommerce: In addition to signup forms and email templates, AWeber also offers landing pages and ecommerce features. With these features, you can create professional-looking pages to promote your products and services.
• Tracking and reporting: AWeber provides detailed tracking and reporting so that you can see how your emails are performing. You can see things like open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates.
• Integrations: AWeber integrates with hundreds of apps like Facebook, PayPal, WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, and more. These allow a seamless experience between AWeber and your other apps to give you and your customers or subscribers the ease of use you need.

AWeber offers a lot of features and integrations that make it a great choice for small businesses and entrepreneurs. If you’re looking for an email marketing solution, I recommend checking out AWeber.

Related Content: How to Analyze Your Email Campaign Performance and Optimize It

AWeber Customer Service

Perhaps one of the most convenient features offered by AWeber is their 24/7 customer service. No matter what time of day or night it is, you can always reach someone by phone or email if you have any questions or need help with anything.

Their representatives are knowledgeable and friendly, and they’re always willing to help you solve any problems you may have. In my experience, they always go above and beyond to make sure that I’m happy with their service.

You can reach out to them via phone, email, or chat for your convenience.

One thing I really like about AWeber is their blog. They offer a lot of helpful articles that can help you improve your email marketing strategy. If you’re ever stuck or need some inspiration, definitely check out their blog.

The blog is also useful for plenty of other things besides when you get stuck troubleshooting your account, though. They offer fun tips and tricks like clever email subject lines to improve open rates, creating lead magnets, marketing ideas, and so much more! They are really dedicated to helping small businesses succeed, and it shows.

Pros:

• Great for small businesses and entrepreneurs
• Comprehensive email marketing solution
• Offers a free plan
• Drag-and drop email builder makes it easy to create beautiful emails
• 24/7 customer service
• Plenty of features and integrations, even on the free plan
• Versatile and easy to use
• 30-day free trial

Cons:

• Can be pricey for small businesses with large subscriber lists
• Some features, like A/B testing and landing pages, are only available on the paid plans

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Final Assessment of AWeber

AWeber is a great email marketing solution for small businesses and entrepreneurs. It offers a free plan, plenty of features, integrations, excellent deliverability, and 24/7 customer service. It’s easy to use and versatile, making it a great choice for those who are new to email marketing.

While it can get pricey for small businesses with large subscriber lists, it’s a great value for the features and service you get. If you’re interested in AWeber, check out their website for a full list of features.

If you’re looking for an email marketing solution, I recommend checking out AWeber.

The post AWeber Review: Is It Worth It in 2023? appeared first on Single Grain.

The expectations of your subscribers and the tactics that your email teams use have changed. Owing to this, it has become imperative for email marketing professionals to adapt to evolving customer behaviors and needs.

So, what kind of twists and turns can we anticipate in the world of email in 2023 and the years to come? Let’s explore the email marketing trends that we can look forward to in 2023 and the years to come.

11 Email Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2023

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1) Agile Email Marketing

Adapting and pivoting at a moment’s notice will be of utmost importance this year and beyond. That’s where agile email marketing comes into the picture.

Agile email marketing is the process of using data and analytics for continuous iteration of your marketing campaign by way of testing and experimenting in collaboration with other teams.

The agile methodology helps streamline email marketing operations while adopting a trial-and-error approach. Consequently, you will be able to overhaul your email strategy as your data and subscribers change.

Agile marketing works on six principles and four shifts, as represented in this diagram:

By following the agile methodology, you’ll understand your target audience better and create a personalized experience in line with the customer’s interests.

Working in collaboration is another principle that drives agile email marketing. Litmus has revealed that 52% of marketers spend two weeks or more to produce one email template. On the other hand, taking an agile approach will help you overcome any inefficiencies and expedite this process.

The salient features of agile email marketing are:

• It helps to save time in the email workflow.
• You can focus on the needs of your target audience.
• It gives you greater speed to promote your products or services.

Related Content:
* How to Analyze Your Email Campaign Performance and Optimize It
* How to Use Personalization to Increase the Impact of Email Marketing

2) Micro-Segmentation and Hyper-Personalization

Creating targeted emails with relevant content will become more important than ever – and this is where micro-segmentation comes in.

Here’s an example: If you are an e-commerce industry email marketer, you can segment your target group into “deal searchers” or “deal buyers” and increase the frequency of promotional emails for these segments. Then keep an eye on the email metrics and optimize your email workflows accordingly.

To create micro-segments, you can use interactive content like quizzes, chatbots, assessments or calculators:

This will not only help you generate more qualified leads, but also increase the likelihood of converting them into paying customers.

Rather than segmenting according to basic parameters like age, gender and geographical location, you can carry out advanced segmentation, like past purchases, resources downloaded, and kind of products searched for.

This will provide real value to your email subscribers.  

Related Content: Segmentation 101: A Strategist’s Complete Guide to Marketing Segmentation

3) Artificial Intelligence

Marketers will strive to create humanized automated emails with a personal touch. They will use AI-powered tools to send out triggered emails that are more relevant for the users and thus see higher open rates and click-through rates:

Robust CRM tools like Marketo and Salesforce come with features like predictive analytics and lead scoring models that allow you to send impactful emails that are perfectly aligned with the customer’s expectations.

Amazon and Netflix have aced their email marketing game by using this technology. They send out recommendations based on the past behavior of the customer. For instance: If someone has searched for “royal blue dresses,” Amazon will send out a product recommendation email showcasing matching footwear and earrings.  

Similarly, Netflix sends out movie recommendation emails based on the user’s previous watching history:

Interestingly, you can also use Artificial Intelligence to draft more engaging subject lines and improve your email open rates. Tools like Phrasee can help you do the same. They work on the principles of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and computer algorithms to predict what kind of subject lines will resonate the most with the subscribers.

Related Content: How Artificial Intelligence Is Revolutionizing the Digital Marketing Sphere

4) Empathetic Tone in Emails

As the world struggled through a brutal lockdown pandemic last year with riots and an increase in overt racism and violence, it was (and continues to be) of utmost importance to be sensitive toward the sentiments of people. Therefore, you must always maintain an empathetic tone in your emails.

Many businesses and individuals are still going through a tough time, so you must adjust your tone and email marketing strategy according to the situation. Consider pausing your email automations or any other scheduled communications, including push notifications and text messages, in case there is any regional emergency or situation of unrest.

Remember that your subscribers might be customers or followers of your brand, but they are human first and expect a considerate rather than pushy marketing approach from you. Whether it is the visuals, the cadence of the message or the words used (“Our clients are killing it this quarter!” is probably not appropriate during these times), everything must reflect empathy and compassion for your subscribers.

Really Good Emails sends out a warm email to urge their subscribers to spread love and stand by each other in the tough times:

5) Visual Email Marketing

As human minds are programmed to process visuals 60,000 times faster than text [Editor’s note: Regarding the 60K stat, you may want to read this article], visual email marketing has gained immense popularity in recent times. Venngage has revealed that:

68% of marketers said that visual content was either “essential” or “very important” to their marketing strategies.

Email marketers usually include different types of visuals, like static images, GIFs, illustrative animations, 3D images, cinemagraphs and videos, in their emails to grab the subscriber’s attention. While this does not mean that plain text emails will become obsolete, visually rich emails stand out in the subscriber’s inbox. In fact, brands that include visual content have a 7x increase in conversion rates.

In 2023 and the days to come, more and more marketers will make use of visuals to up their email marketing game. Email designers are experimenting with different types of layouts, like monochrome designs, gradients and textured background, to add visual oomph to the emails. 

Let me share some of my favorite visual email marketing examples with you:

• Uncommon Goods has used a beautiful cinemagraph to promote their indoor S’mores fire pit and tempted readers to buy it:

• Tough Mudder has made their email fun by emulating a hilarious chat conversation and presenting it as a GIF:

• ILIA has used a monochromatic layout to make the products stand out and grab the subscriber’s attention:

If used in the right way, visuals can enhance the overall appeal of your emails and make it all the more impactful for the readers.    

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6) Adoption of BIMI

According to a 2021 report by DMA: 

68% of users have to recognize the email sender – i.e. the brand – before they will open it.

In line with the same research, there is a modern approach known as BIMI that will come to your rescue: “BIMI, short for Brand Indicator for Message Identification, allows domain owners to coordinate with email clients to display brand logos next to authenticated email messages.” This will help subscribers recognize your brand instantly and encourage them to open your email.

Here are some reasons why you must adopt BIMI at the earliest:

• BIMI increases authenticity and builds trust with the recipients.
• It boosts brand visibility and increases your reach.
• BIMI acts as a shield against fraudulent emails and phishing efforts.
• It may also increase your email conversion rates.
• You will be able to ensure a higher deliverability rate by implementing BIMI.

Take a look at this image to understand how brands can implement BIMI: The sender’s logo is showcased in the inbox, which adds another layer of security to your email campaigns: 

Related Content: How Poor Website Security Negatively Impacts SEO Rankings

7) Dark Mode in Emails

Many people prefer to access their emails in dark mode, which Apple launched in the fifteenth release of the desktop Operating System, macOS Mojave, in September 2018. A year later, Gmail introduced dark mode for Android, iOS devices, and iOS Mail.  

As far as the adoption of this new trend is concerned, 81.9% of people use dark mode wherever available, as reported by Android Authority in March 2020.  

Not designing a dark mode compatible email could hamper your sender reputation as well as deliverability rate if people are not able to access it. Hence, your emails should always be designed with this new display setting.

Here is an example of how a well-designed email would render in dark mode:

And here is another example of a dark mode email:

It is quite likely that all the popular email clients will start supporting dark mode in the days to come.  

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8) A/B Testing

With the changing preferences of customers, A/B testing will be an indispensable part of the email marketing strategy. Just guessing what is working well does not work any longer.

Employ A/B split testing to learn more about your audience and what kind of emails would resonate the most with them. This will enable you to send customer-centric emails that leave a deeper impact and bring conversions. You can test elements like subject lines, type of visuals used, CTA placement, CTA copy, and email personalization.

The email marketers at Swiggy tested two different subject lines (wording and emojis) for their subscribers:

Related Content:
* What Is A/B SEO Testing?
* 5 Important Landing Page Elements You Should Be A/B Testing

9) AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) in Emails

A few years ago, Google released Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), a solution that improves the experience of mobile users by making your site load much faster.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is still one of the fastest growing trends in the world of email marketing and design. It runs on the wheels of CSS, HTML and JavaScript framework. With the help of this technology, you can send emails that allow users to take action without getting redirected to any third-party website or app. For example: Subscriber can fill out a form, respond to a survey or easily complete a purchase from the email itself.

Currently, email clients like Gmail and ESPs like AWeber, SparkPost, Twilio Sendgrid, Amazon SES, and Amazon Pinpoint support AMP in email. It is anticipated that in the near future, many other email clients and ESPs will extend support to AMP in emails as well.  

Email Uplers (erstwhile EmailMonks) has created a beautiful sample email with the help of AMP. In addition to an accordion and slider, we have included a subscription form and contact form to demonstrate the usage of AMP:  

10) Accessibility in Emails

Quite a lot of subscribers on your list may be using assistive technologies like screen readers to access emails. In order not to exclude the one billion people across the globe who live with a disability, you must follow all email accessibility best practices.

Some of the accessibility tips that all email marketers must keep in mind for their future campaigns are:

• Add semantic tags like <p>, <h2>, and <h3> to guide the reading flow of the email.
• While using visuals, always add suitable Alt-text to go with it so that a screen reader can read the description of the image.  
• If you are using GIFs, the flashing rate of the animation should not be between 2 Hz to 55 Hz as this can aggravate the condition of photosensitive epilepsy.
• Use a proper color contrast to make it easier for color blind people to read your emails.

Your subscribers are expecting an inclusive experience through your emails.

Related Content: 4 Ways to Ensure That Your Website Meets Accessibility Standards (& You Avoid Penalties!)

11) Omnichannel Marketing Approach

There is no doubt that email is one of the most effective marketing channels. However, you must not rely on a siloed marketing approach. In other words, you should adopt an omnichannel approach to your marketing. This means providing a consistent experience across all social media platforms, push notifications, and SMS communications.

Studies show that brands with omnichannel strategies retain an average 89% of their customers, compared to 33% of companies with a single-channel strategy:

An omnichannel strategy is important because it enhances the customer experience by giving them seamless transactions. In other words: “Whatever quality of communication and support a person receives on channel one, they will also receive on channel two.”

See how Skillshare has shared the same message through their email as well as social media page:

Learn More: Omnichannel Marketing: Using the Content Sprout Method to Overcome Info Overload

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Wrapping Up

In addition to email marketing best practices, email marketers should also adopt these advanced technologies like micro-segmentation, hyper-personalization, AI-driven email automation, AMP and BIMI. This will take the subscriber experience to the next level and make email marketing all the more rewarding in terms of sales and conversions.

More Content on Email:

• 7 Steps to Get More SaaS Customers with Cold Email
• 10+ Follow-Up Email Examples You Should Share With Your Team
• SaaS Email Marketing: 12 Best Strategies to Follow
• Top 10 Best Email Marketing Services
• How to Get More Responses From Your Cold Emails
• 11 Best Cold Emailing Tools to Help You Quickly Close Sales Deals

The post 11 Email Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2023 appeared first on Single Grain.

One thing they all have in common is that they are software products used by the end user on the Internet. Another is that, just like any other business, SaaS companies need to market their products to find new leads and customers. This often includes cold email campaigns. 

A HubSpot report showed that the software industry saw a cold email open rate of just 20% — which means that 80% of cold emails from SaaS companies were never even read:

This leads to the question of how SaaS companies can create emails that not only connect with prospects but also get their customer value management off to a positive start. Ultimately, it comes down to writing an email that appeals to and answers the call of the person receiving it.

In this post, I’ll discuss how to achieve this, but first let’s take a brief look at how cold email campaigns for SaaS companies are different from those in other industries. 

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What Makes SaaS Cold Emails Different from Other Industries?

SaaS companies face many of the same problems that other industries do when it comes to email marketing. They still have to make sure their emails are delivered, for example. They also need to make sure people open their emails, read them, and — even better — click on the link they’ve provided.

One way that the SaaS business model stands out from other models is how they tend to go about attracting new customers. For instance, you would not find many retail businesses offering the use of their products free to use for a month — which is precisely what a lot of SaaS businesses do. It can be a very effective carrot to draw people in. After all, people love free stuff!

And although it might be relatively easy to get people to sign up for a free trial or demo, it generates no revenue until the prospect signs up for a paid package.

SaaS businesses should try to avoid the temptation of offering a trial straight away, instead using it as a closing tool where appropriate.

A lot of prospects will end up signing up for a free trial or demo before committing, meaning that there should then be a focus on educating them on the product — and not just how all the features work, but how it can make the prospect’s life easier. This helps ensure strong customer value management and will ultimately get you closer to a deal. 

Even better, the nature of SaaS products means that the developer will have detailed information on how their products are being used on an individual level. This opens up marketing opportunities that most other industries won’t have. SaaS businesses should recognize this and take full advantage of it.

Learn More:
* Vertical SaaS: The Future of SaaS Is in Niche Industries
* How to Get More Responses From Your Cold Emails
* SaaS CAC: A Guide to Customer Acquisition Costs

7 Steps to Get More SaaS Customers with Cold Emails

1) Gather Data and Understand Your Prospects

When it comes to cold emails, the first order of business is understanding who you’re sending it to. You may already have a contact, a company name and a general idea of how your firm can help theirs. But sending an effective cold email requires you to go further, and an excellent place to start is recognizing what your prospects need.

The most obvious starting point is current clients or segments you already service. This will give you a broad idea of who may respond most favorably to your email.

Next, dig a bit deeper. Learn about the company and who they are:

• What regions do they serve? 
• How many employees do they have? 
• Who are their competitors? 
• Do they have an IT Team Department?
• Do they have existing software platforms?
• Startup or legacy brand? 
• What’s their growth rate or target for growth? 
• Is anything impeding that growth?

Your specific data gathering can be as narrow or as broad as you see fit, but ensure that you develop a clear picture of who your target prospect is and their pain points by the end of the process. Most importantly, figure out how your solution will help them overcome it.

Once you have sufficient data, you can put it into a customer or buyer persona that will shape your cold emails. The deeper you dig for data, the more direct and consequential your message will be:

Learn More:
* 3 Steps to Increase SaaS Conversion Rates with Customer Education
* Top 10 Best Email Marketing Services
* How to Analyze Your Email Campaign Performance and Optimize It

2) Find the Correct Recipient(s)

Now that you’ve identified the type of person (i.e. job role) you want to target, you need to get their email address. But how do you find it? 

The good news is that software is available that will help make the task a lot easier than you might think. For instance, a tool such as Email Hunter make it easy for you to find the email you’re looking for in a matter of seconds. The tool offers search options that include the most common email pattern and the ability to find all email addresses at a domain, which is ideal if you want to send bulk emails to particular companies.

More targeted search options include the ability to filter by department or to search for emails by the name of the intended recipient. Just type in their first and last name along with the domain of the company they work for and you should get their work email address in a matter of moments. 

Email Hunter will also verify the emails for you by checking their deliverability. This will help to keep your bounce rate down and help ensure that your emails make it to the inbox of the people you are trying to reach.

Dive Deeper: SaaS Lead Generation: How We Improved Axure’s Lead Quality Overnight [Case Study]

3) Make It Personal (Not About You)

Some sales individuals mistakenly believe that making it personal means focusing on themselves. While that may prove helpful in specific scenarios (namely, when you’re past the cold email stage and building rapport), cold emails need to be about your prospect.

First, show you’ve done your homework and that your concern is for the email recipient’s success. When you’re digging for data and identifying stakeholders, check out their social media pages — Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for starters.

Look for nuggets of info you can use to break the ice of your cold email, whether it’s about them personally (within reason, of course) or their company. Have they recently received an award? Published an article or blog post? Been recognized for something they, their team or their company achieved?

Personalization doesn’t require much. Using an individual’s LinkedIn page will yield a lot of information, and not just about their current job, but also where they attended school or any organization or charities they might support.

Verify names and titles. If you’re emailing James Smith, VP of Marketing, first make sure that he does indeed go by James and not Jim. Next, check and recheck that their title is correct. While it may not matter to some, getting a person’s current title correct at least shows you’re referencing up-to-date information.

A tool like Clearbit Connect can be really helpful in this stage of the game:

It allows you to instantly gather a large amount of data on any prospect, including title, email address, social profiles, and the contact info of other important people at the company.

Learn More: How to Use Personalization to Increase the Impact of Email Marketing

4) Prompt a Response

Arguably, the most critical aspect of your first email to a prospect is your call to action (CTA). Oddly enough, it’s also the part of your communication that most benefits from being direct and straightforward. At this point, you’re not trying to offer a free trial, generate a sale or even set up a demo. You just want to get on the prospect’s radar yet respect their time and leave them with a good enough impression to take the next step.

Your main goal is to move the engagement process forward. Don’t attempt to get an hour-long meeting or full-blown demos of your product or service. Instead, your CTA on a cold email can be as simple as a question. In fact, that’s all it should be. Posit your CTA as a chance for the prospect to discover your brand’s value in a timeframe that is manageable for them. Keep your CTA appealing, short and to the point.

Make it easy to answer with a simple yes or no and within a specific timeframe. Busy professionals appreciate not having to negotiate a timeline to discuss your initial cold pitch. Keep any requests to less than 30 minutes (shorter is better). Examples include:

• Would you like to jump on a 10-minute call to discuss how we can increase your primary revenue streams?
• Do you have 15 minutes to see how our accounting software can do away with a lot of your menial tasks?
• Can you carve out 20 minutes in your busy schedule for me to walk you through a short CRM demo?

Here’s a good example of a CTA that is clear, direct, and actionable:

Your CTA (really, your entire email) is directed at achieving the next discussion point with your prospect. Even if it’s a straightforward 10-minute phone call, then your email was successful enough to step from typing to talking.

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5) Write a Great Email

This may seem very elementary, but writing a great cold email is key to getting it acted upon. However, excellent correspondence goes beyond getting your point across. Often lost in striving to create the perfect marketing or lead-generating email is clear communication that is easy to read and understand.

Cold emails, in particular, should be kept painfully simple. You want the recipient to read your message, like what you have to say, and trust you enough to respond and keep the dialogue going. That trifecta is easily achieved when there is no filler getting in the way.

Just as you would with an in-person sales pitch, writing a great email means honing your message. Ask yourself:

• Is it straightforward and to the point?
• Do you connect at a personal level early in the email?
• Do you identify a prospect’s pain points and demonstrate the value your brand brings to the table?
• Are you directing your message to the right recipient?
• Is there a clear call to action?

One thing that will help you write killer cold emails that get clicks is to remember the AIDA model: 

• Attention – Get the attention of the recipient. Ask a question along the lines of “Would you like to automate your accounting tasks?” or “Are you interested in reducing staffing costs?” Obviously, the question you ask will depend on the nature of your SaaS product, but the general idea is to pull them in with specificity so they continue reading. 
• Interest – Tell the reader something that helps them get interested in what you are offering. One good way to achieve this is to provide a factoid that explains how other companies are benefiting from your product. Business owners are often interested in anything that might be giving the competition an edge.
• Desire – Get the reader thinking “I want these benefits!” Will your SaaS product help reduce staffing costs by x%? Let the reader know! Will it make the workload easier, improving productivity? This is something that will help people realize that they want what you are offering.
• Action – Encourage the reader to take action. Tell them to click on a link to arrange a chat with you or for more information. Make your CTA compelling; make the reader feel as though they don’t want to miss out. If they don’t click now then they are unlikely to return to your email again, so create a sense of urgency. Use the word “today” or “now” to encourage an action right away. It can be surprising just how easily people will follow straightforward instructions. 

Once you’re clear on what you want to say and have refined the message, proofread it. And then proofread it again. Read it out loud. Read it to someone else and have them read it back to you.

A great, well-written cold email should read effortlessly because your writing and research skills reflect you and your brand’s attention to detail.

Learn More:
* 11 Best Cold Emailing Tools to Help You Quickly Close Sales Deals
* 9 Cold Email Case Studies with Great Reply Rates
* 7 Segmentation Mistakes That Are Costing Your Business Money

6) Segment Your Emails

Once you’ve constructed your baseline emails — honed your pitch, personalized the email, ended with a compelling CTA— you should segment it to allow for a more targeted approach to prospects.

Segmenting your emails makes them easier to manage. More importantly, it lets you drill even further into prospect personalization, which carries a higher chance for response. Whether it’s based on company size, the individual or job title, it helps you build more direct and more time-saving processes around your outreach.

You can make your segmentation as narrow as you deem necessary. For example, if your brand provides management software for apartment communities, there’s an infinite number of segments you can make direct appeals to, such as:

• Management companies
• Private ownership groups
• Communities in specific states
• Residential apartments
• Student housing
• Luxury communities
• Apartments that operate in rural areas

The list can go on. And that’s just one very specific industry, too. This process also helps you figure out your ideal prospects. One segment may possess a higher response rate than another, indicating that more resources should be dedicated to that client profile.

Jordie van Rijn of Emailmonday offers some helpful “pillars” you can use to segment your cold emails:

As part of the segmentation exercise, you might consider full sales automation to address the more tedious aspects of the cold email and sales funnel process. That way, you maximize your efficiency and keep your sales reps focused on growing the business.

If you use email marketing software like MailChimp, it’s easy for you to segment your database according to certain criteria. In fact, MailChimp users get access to pre-built segments categorized by some of the most commonly used segmentation pillars. 

Another option is to use a CRM platform like Salesforce or Pardot. These platforms offer many of the features that email marketing software does, with additional features including advanced marketing automation tools.

Learn More:
* Is Netflix a SaaS? 25 Examples of SaaS Companies that Are Rocking It
* What Does ACV SaaS Mean in Marketing?
* LinkedIn Ads for Enterprise B2B SaaS: The Only Guide You’ll Need

7) Follow Up

Finally, don’t “one-and-done” your cold emails. If a recipient doesn’t respond the first time, don’t take it as an automatic rejection. People are busy; inboxes get full. Some of your best clients may grow out of a little extra effort.

To best manage your cold emails, build a timeline for sending out follow-ups until the prospect responds or it’s time to move on. It may even prove helpful enough to prompt the prospect in other ways before sending your follow-up email.

A follow-up schedule might look like this:

• Initial cold email
• Request to connect with them on LinkedIn (or like one of their posts)
• Send follow-up email
• Reach out by phone
• Send final email

Depending on the businesses you’re appealing to, adjust accordingly. Anywhere from three to seven engagement attempts are optimal. It’s persistence without being a pest.

In our example, if after the fifth attempt to connect fails, then it’s time to move on and focus on the next potential lead. If you do get a hit at any one of the follow-up engagement points, act upon it immediately. If it proved difficult connecting the first time, it might be even more challenging if you delay capturing their return inquiry from a follow-up.

Much like your cold email, write specific, targeted follow-up emails. Reiterate your original value points, add additional personalization, and include a different CTA (instead of 20 minutes, ask for 10).

Here’s an example of one that is short and to the point but also reiterates the value offered:

You can also opt to automate the process and send out your follow-ups at specific intervals. As we mentioned above, platforms like MailChimp, Salesforce and Pardot offer marketing automation features, including sending out emails according to certain criteria. They can even give you information, such as whether or not the email was opened, helping you to respond in an appropriate manner.

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5 Cold Email Templates You Can Use

Here are five cold email templates to use in your own cold email outreach.

Template #1: The Initial Outreach

Hey [first name],

I know you’re busy so I’ll keep this short. I wanted to reach out because [relevant reason for connecting, like referral, came across website, etc].

[Name of platform] is a software platform that will help [name of prospect’s company] [achieve big goal]. Specifically, it allows you to:

• Benefit/feature 1
• Benefit/feature 2
• Benefit/feature 3

Are you available for a quick chat this week to talk about how [name of platform] might help you [big benefit]? Just shoot me back a quick reply and we can get the ball rolling.

Cheers,

[Your name]

Template #2: The Follow Up

Hey [first name],

Just wanted to touch base to see if you saw my previous email regarding how [name of platform] might be able to help you [big goal/benefit].

I’d love to quickly show you how [prospect’s company] could:

• Benefit 1
• Benefit 2
• Benefit 3

Do you have a few minutes to chat this week? Here’s a link to my calendar if you want to schedule a call [calendar link].

Cheers,

[Your name]

Template #3: The Redirect

Hey [first name],

I haven’t heard back from you about using [name of platform] to [big benefit].

I realize, however, that may not be your area of focus.

Could you put me in contact with the person responsible for [business goal]?

Thanks!

[Your name]

Template #4: The Voicemail

Hey [first name],

I just left a short voicemail about [subject].

Is there a better time to chat about how [name of platform] can help [prospect’s company] [achieve big goal]?

If so, just let me know and I’ll get it on my calendar.

Also, you can call me directly at [phone number].

Cheers,

[Your name]

Template #5: The Breakup

Hey [First Name],

I’ve tried to get in touch with you several times regarding helping [prospect’s company] [achieve big goal], but I haven’t heard back from you.

I won’t continue to bother you, but I want you to know that if your needs change at any point, I’ll be happy to help you.

Just shoot me an email or call me at [phone number] and I’ll be there to help.

Cheers,

[Your name]

Dive Deeper: Best SaaS Marketing Agency: Top 5 Choices for 2023

Final Thoughts

There’s no great mystery to cold emails. But it does require time and due diligence to understand who your prospects are and how to write the best cold emails to garner their attention.

While the basic premise remains more or less the same for all companies, there are some practices that are unique to SaaS companies, giving them opportunities others don’t have. Recognize those opportunities and make the most of them — doing so can make a considerable difference to your bottom line.

After all, email is not dead. The better you get at it, the more long-term success you’ll have with generating new customers.

Hopefully you learned how to get more SaaS customers with cold email, but if you just want a SaaS agency to do all the work for you, click the orange button below!

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The post 7 Steps to Get More SaaS Customers with Cold Email appeared first on Single Grain.

On average, the software industry has an email open rate of 21.29% and a click-through rate of 2.45%. But that doesn’t mean your SaaS company can’t have higher numbers. With top-notch email marketing strategies, you can increase engagement and generate more sales.

Let’s get started!

12 Best Email Marketing Tips to Maximize SaaS ROI

1) Set Clear Goals

In order to make the most of your email marketing efforts, it is vital to set clear goals. Otherwise, how will you know if your approach is working or not? To figure out what goals you want to hit, ask yourself what action you want the user to take.

The answer to the above questions defines the following points:

• Email content: Your copy reflects your goals. For example, if you wish to get subscribers to sign up for a free trial, you should send resources highlighting the benefits they will receive without spending a penny. If you want to convert the free trial user into a paying one, you should send them reasons to upgrade to premium.
• Email recipient: Not every subscriber is a good fit for each email. For example, to convert leads into customers, you should send promotional emails only to non-paying users. But, to paying customers, you should share tips to help them get the most out of your tool.
• CTA: Your call-to-action button depends on what you want to achieve. For example, if you want your subscribers to sign up for a free trial, a “try for free” CTA would be effective. If you wish to inform the user about a newly launched feature, a “learn how it works” CTA would work better.
• KPIs: This includes the metrics you track to determine if your efforts are bringing in the desired results. If you want to increase sales, you should monitor the email conversion rate. But if you wish to reduce the churn rate, you should focus on the retention rate.

Here are the most common goals and the types of emails for SaaS businesses:

2) Spend Time Understanding Your Subscribers

When you know who your subscribers are (beyond their name and email address), you will be better able to satisfy their needs. This is similar to your buyer persona, but focused on your email subscribers:

Here are some of the things that you should know about your subscribers:

• The reason they subscribed to your emails
• Their biggest pain point that you can help them solve
• Their basic demographics (age, location, job title, company details, etc.)

Follow these tips to better understand your subscribers:

• Check where they arrived from: Did they sign up for your newsletter from a blog post? Or a lead magnet? If so, which one? This helps you understand their pain points. You can use Google Analytics to track email clicks and link clicks.
• Send surveys: This is the best way to get to know who signed up for your emails.
• Track the emails they engage with: The emails they open and engage with indicate their interest and pain points. Also, check which links they click on.

Dive Deeper:
* SaaS Marketing Strategy: 12 Killer Ideas to Grow Your Company
* How to Use Personalization to Increase the Impact of Email Marketing
* Top Marketing KPIs that Every B2B Company Needs to Track

3) Tailor Content for Where the Subscriber Is in the Customer Journey

When you know where each lead is in the customer journey, you can better customize the email copy to take them to the next level. Here’s an example of three stages of a customer journey:

For example, if a subscriber is in the consideration stage, you can send emails highlighting how your product can solve their problem without burning a hole in their pocket.

It is important to create email sequences that are effective. Here are the most common types of emails for subscribers at different stages of the customer journey:

Dive Deeper: What’s the Right Content for Each Stage of the Marketing Funnel?

4) Automate Email Marketing to Scale Quickly

Connecting with your subscribers at a personal level can seem daunting, especially if you have thousands of customers in your email list. That’s where automation can help. مال مجاني

With email marketing automation, you can trigger emails based on the user’s behavior on your website, create drip campaigns, and track performance metrics.

To automate email marketing, Sendinblue and MailChimp are the two best software. Set rules to send the right email to the right person at the right time. For instance, you can initiate a welcome email immediately after a user signs up. You can also trigger a “trial ending” email 3-4 days before to remind users to upgrade to a premium version.

Dive Deeper: What Is Marketing Automation: Definition, Benefits & Uses

5) Use Branding at Every Stage of the SaaS Buyer Journey    

In a SaaS buyer journey, prospects interact with different people (sales, tech team, support team, etc.) in your organization via email. Make sure to follow good SaaS branding practices to build authority and credibility. لعبة تربح فلوس

That means using a consistent tone for your SaaS brand. For instance, if you use a formal tone in your emails, make sure the entire organization uses the same tone. That way, no matter who sends the emails to the customer, the tone, or voice, remains consistent.

In addition, ensure that email signatures across the organization remain the same. You can use a tool like Office 365 Signature Management from WiseStamp to create a global signature for your entire organization. Here’s a great example of SERanking using branding in an email signature: The image, brand name, website and contact information are all part of the signature. No matter who sends the email from the company, these things remain the same.

Dive Deeper: Buyer’s Journey 101: What Your Email Data Says About Your Customers

6) Send a Mix of Informative and Promotional Emails

A word to the wise:

• Send only promotional emails, and you will see an increase in the unsubscribe rate.
• Deliver only educational or informative emails, and you might not generate any sales.

The primary motive of email marketing is to build a long-lasting relationship with your audience. Thus, it is essential to send a mix of both informative and promotional emails.

A good educational to promotional email ratio is 3:1.

This helps you position yourself as a go-to guide to assist your subscribers in solving their problems.

7) Ignite the “What’s In It for Me” Factor

Your subscribers don’t care about your product or upcoming event unless it benefits them. Hence, make sure that your email copy clearly highlights what’s in it for them.

For instance, sending emails saying this might not get you many registrations:

• “We’re hosting a webinar on the topic ‘how to improve your website’s performance’.”

But by tweaking it to something like this, you can get more people to sign up:

• “We’re hosting a webinar where you will learn how to maximize your site’s performance, increase your website’s rankings, and generate more sales.”

After you write an email, read it as if you were a subscriber. Would you care if you received the email? Would you take the desired action immediately? If not, re-write the copy.

8) Allow Subscribers to Decide What They Want to Receive

By allowing subscribers to fine-tune their preferences, you achieve two things:

• First, the engagement rate will increase because they will receive only emails that interest them.
• Second, you get a better idea of their pain points, which will enable you to tailor your content accordingly and increase the chances of conversion.

For instance, SEMrush sent me an email asking me what kinds of emails I wanted to receive:

When I clicked on the “update my preferences” button, it took me to a page that provides detailed information on the types of emails I can choose to receive:

Dive Deeper:
* Is Netflix a SaaS? 25 Examples of SaaS Companies that Are Rocking It
* How Adobe Does SaaS Marketing: A Case Study
* 10 SaaS Business Lessons from $1B+ Unicorns (like Slack, Twilio, Lyft)

9) Curate a List of the Best Content in Your Industry 

By curating a list of the best content in your industry, even those not written by your brand, you indicate that you care more about providing value to your subscribers than promoting your product. This helps build trust with recipients, thereby increasing the chances of conversion in the long run.

Another benefit of curating a list of the best content is that it ensures that you send highly valuable emails regularly without investing a huge amount of time in creating them. كيفيه لعب البوكر

For example, Kinsta sends a weekly email consisting of links to their blog posts and other articles that might interest the recipient:

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10) Incorporate Videos and Power Words into Your Email

Videos make it easy to understand even the most complex topics. By embedding a video in your email, you can capture your subscribers’ attention, increase engagement, and build a long-term relationship.

Videos can increase:

• Open rates by 19%
• Click-through rates by 65%
• And reduce the unsubscribe rate by 26%

The best way to incorporate video is by uploading it on YouTube and then embedding the link in emails.

Additionally, use power words in your email to improve its performance. Power words evoke an emotional response in the subscribers, encouraging them to take action. These power words work well in emails (especially the subject line):

• Invitation
• Introducing
• You / Your
• Update
• New
• See
• Notification
• How to
• Special
• Offer
• Join
• Free
• Get

Here’s an example of an email from Unbounce that uses videos and power words to promote a conference. It includes terms like “see,” “today,” “give,” “act quickly” and “you”:

Dive Deeper: The Types of Videos to Use at Each Stage of the Marketing Funnel

11) Don’t Ignore Inactive Subscribers

Don’t give up on inactive subscribers too soon! They might not need your product right away, but they have shown interest in your product at one point. Thus, make the effort to (re)build a relationship with them, and they might purchase from you in the future.

Here are some ways to re-engage inactive subscribers:

• Ask a question in the subject line of your email, such as “Are we still friends?” or “Hey [name], are we breaking up? Please say no!” You can use effective copywriting strategies to increase responses.
• Give limited-time discounts to entice users into re-subscribing to your product.
• Remind users why they signed up for your email in the first place. Give them reasons to engage with your emails.
• Send a survey or questionnaire to understand why they are no longer engaging with your emails.
• Examine the subscribers’ past activity and purchases to understand their interests and tailor the content accordingly.

Here is a great example of a re-engaging campaign. It consists of a picture of a sad dog, indicating that the brand is not happy because the recipient is not engaging with its emails. It also highlights the reasons to stay subscribed, along with a CTA to do so:

Dive Deeper: 5 Ways to Re-Engage Those Long-Lost Customers

12) Determine the Right Time to Send Emails for Better Engagement

It might be tempting to send emails to subscribers as soon as you launch new features or publish a new blog post. However, it is imperative to wait for the right time to send emails in order to increase engagement.

The best way to find the right time for emails is by analyzing past engagement details. Check your analytics to see which day of the week and time of day the most emails were opened and clicked. You can also run tests to understand the best time, day and frequency of emails.

You also need to decide on the right email frequency. Send too many, and you might annoy your subscribers. Send too few, and they might forget about you. The best way to determine the email frequency is by asking your subscribers.

Tip: Avoid sending more than one email in a day. This helps prevent frustrating your leads and build their interest in your brand.

Takeaway: SaaS Email Marketing Tips

When done the correct way, email marketing can help your SaaS business acquire new customers, retain existing ones, and build a loyal following. The 12 strategies mentioned above are tried and tested to deliver the best results.

Hopefully you learned how to get started with SaaS email marketing, but if you just want a SaaS agency to do all the work for you, click the orange button below!

Get My Free SaaS Marketing Plan

The post SaaS Email Marketing: 12 Best Strategies to Follow appeared first on Single Grain.

Therefore, reviewing the campaign and tracking the metrics are important aspects of any email marketing strategy. This gives you an insight into how subscribers are resonating with the campaign and helps you optimize it based on numbers, not hunches.

So how do measure your email marketing performance?

The answer lies in the email marketing metrics.

In the first section, we’ll discuss the metrics that need to be tracked. In the second section, we’ll cover how to optimize your campaigns based on these figures.

Every Email Service Provider (ESP), whether you’re using Mailchimp, Constant Contact, HubSpot or advanced CRM tools like Marketo and Salesforce, has a dashboard from where you can analyze the metrics I mention in this article.

Metrics You Must Track

1) Open Rate

The percentage of email recipients who open a particular email is known as open rate.

The very first thing that you think about after sending your email campaign is whether people will open it. That’s the gateway to click-throughs and conversions.

Here’s how your email performance dashboard looks in Constant Contact:

In this dashboard, we can see: 731 subscribers received the email, out of which 302 recipients (30.60%) opened it. Thus, the open rate of the email is 30.60%.

However, marketers must remember that an email is considered “opened” only if the subscriber receives the images included therein. This implies that if your email users have enabled image-blocking on their email client, they will not be counted in the open rate. Consequently, the result you get might be somewhat unreliable.

Despite this, it is a valuable metric if you use it as a comparative metric. I mean to say that if you compare the open rate of the email sent last week and this week, it will throw light on how receptive your subscribers are to your emails.

Dive Deeper:
* Top 10 Best Email Marketing Services
* 11 Best Cold Emailing Tools to Help You Quickly Close Sales Deals
* Best Lead Generation Tactics for Content, Email & Social Media Marketing

2) Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The percentage of subscribers who clicked on the links you have included in the email is the click-through rate.

Click-through rate = (total clicks or unique clicks/number of delivered emails) x 100

For example: If you send emails to 20,000 subscribers and get 2,000 clicks, the click-through rate is 10%(2,000/20,000 *100).

Here’s how your email analytics will be presented in HubSpot: This dashboard shows that 8.9% percent of the email recipients clicked through the email with 22 unique clicks and 72 total clicks. Furthermore, 6.2% people have clicked through on desktop and 1.7% on a mobile device.

These metrics let you know that people are more receptive for conversion when they are on their desktops. In addition, it also lets marketers know how many people read the email, how many skimmed through it and how many just ran a glance.

Note that you can use total clicks or unique clicks while calculating this metric. Just make sure you follow a consistent formula to avoid getting any skewed results.

Click-through rate is a critical metric because it gives you an idea about subscriber engagement. Your click-through rate is directly proportional to the number of people who are interested in hearing from you. The higher, the better!

Dive Deeper: How to Write Hero Headlines to Skyrocket Click-Through Rates

3) Bounce Rate

The percentage of emails that fail to get delivered to the recipient’s inbox is called the bounce rate.

Bounce rate = (total number of bounced emails/number of emails sent) * 100

For example: If you have 40 bounced emails and 40,000 emails sent, the bounce rate will be 0.1% (40/40,000 * 100)

Bounces are of two main types: hard bounce and soft bounce. While soft bounce suggests a temporary failure to deliver the emails, hard bounce is the result of sending emails to invalid, closed or nonexistent addresses.

For example: If a user provides the email address kevin@gmai.com instead of kevin@gmail.com by mistake, it will lead to a hard bounce. On the other hand, if there is a transient issue with the recipient’s server, it will be counted as a soft bounce.

Most ESPs automatically remove the hard bounces. As far as soft bounces are concerned, the ESPs will attempt to send the email again and if it still fails to get delivered, it will be considered a hard bounce and deleted.

A bounce rate does not affect your email performance per se, but you must keep a close eye on this metric. Getting too many hard bounces can hamper your sender reputation and make you come across as a spammer for the ESP.

Take a look at this screenshot. According to it, 7 out of 1,043 emails have bounced, out of which 3 emails are hard bounces while 4 have shown temporary delivery issue with a soft bounce.

4) Unsubscribe Rate

The percentage of email subscribers who unsubscribe from the list and opt out of any future communications is known as unsubscribe rate.

Unsubscribes represent the number of subscribers who are no longer interested in hearing from you. While it is an unfortunate event in itself, unsubscribes are good for the health of your email list as it helps get rid of disengaged subscribers.

Take a look at this screenshot of the Constant Contact dashboard: It lets the marketer know that out of 731 recipients, 1 person unsubscribed, which means a 0.13% unsubscribe rate: (1/731)*100

Note that HubSpot also gives you a feature to determine the overall health of the email campaigns you send. It will help you understand whether your email sender reputation is up to the mark.

Through the information provided in the screenshot below, the marketer will be able to figure out that the open rate is too low and needs to be worked on. Also, the hard bounce rate is around 2.28% which suggests that the list might need some cleaning.

5) Conversion Rate

The percentage of email recipients who carried out the desired action after clicking on an email link is known as conversion rate.

In other words, if the goal of your email is to get people to respond to a survey, the number of respondents will be your conversion rate.

Conversion rate = (number of people who completed the desired action/number of emails delivered) * 100

For example: If 50 people took action through your email that was delivered to 50,000 subscribers, the conversion rate is 0.1% (50/50,000 * 100).

Your conversion rate is the most important metric as it directly relates to the number of people who acted upon your CTA.

Just make sure that you create UTM codes (unique tracking URLs) for all your email links and integrate the email platform into your web analytics. Google’s Campaign URL Builder tool allows you to easily add campaign parameters (UTMs) to your URLs so you can track them in Google Analytics. This will help you recognize the source of the click and the campaign from which it was generated.

Dive Deeper: 15 Fast and Easy Ways to Improve Your Site’s Conversion Rate

6) Overall ROI

Overall ROI is the total revenue generated from your email campaign divided by the total amount spent.

Overall ROI = [(amount generated through sales – expenses incurred in the campaign)/expense incurred in the campaign] * 100

For example: If you have made $3,000 through sales and invested $500 in the campaign, your ROI generated is 500% [(3,000-500)/500] * 100

Just like every marketing channel, overall ROI for emails will inform you about the actual revenue generated through your email campaigns and stand as a validation of business growth.

Dive Deeper: Google Analytics for Content Marketing: How to Track and Improve Your ROI

7) List Growth Rate

The number of new subscribers that you get reflects the list growth rate.

List growth rate = ([(number of new subscribers) – (number of unsubscribes + email/spam complaints)] / total number of email addresses on your list]) * 100

For example: If you get 500 new subscribers with 100 unsubscribes or spam complaints and you have 40,000 email addresses on the list, the list growth rate will be 1% [(500-100) / 40,000] * 100).

You must keep a close eye on the list growth rate so that you know where your business is heading.

You will be able to determine the email list growth rate with the help of marketing analytics that will give you an insight into the number of leads you have received through each channel, namely social media, SEO and PPC.

8) Email Forwarding Rate

The percentage of email recipients who click on these buttons will be included in the email forwarding rate.

Email forwarding rate = (number of clicks on a share or forward button/number of total emails delivered) * 100

For example: If you have received 50 clicks on the share or forward button and 1,000 emails are delivered, your sharing or forwarding rate is 5%.

Note: You will be able to track this metric only if you have included a “Share this” or “Forward to a friend” button in your email.

This metric is valuable because it helps to attract new leads and indirectly adds to the list growth rate. The better your email forwarding rate, the brighter are your chances of acquiring new business.

Monitoring these parameters will let you know how well your strategy is working to help you achieve the purpose of your emails.

This brings us to the next section….

How to Optimize Your Email Campaigns

Enhance Your Open Rate by Writing Engaging Subject Lines

The subject line is the first thing that your subscriber sees in order to open the email. It must pique their interest and make them curious about what is in the email. Personalizing your subject lines will make the subscriber feel special and increase the likelihood of your emails getting opened.

Take a look at this email by Saks Fifth Avenue. Their subject line: “Did you forget about your $700 gift card?” is sure to grab the subscriber’s attention and entice them to open the email.

Dive Deeper: How AI Helps Add Personalization to Your Email Campaigns

Lower Your Bounce Rate by Following Good Email Hygiene Practices

You must strive to have the lowest bounce rate as far as possible. To ensure this, you must have a double opt-in method whenever a subscriber signs up to your list. This will reduce the chance of having incorrect addresses in the database.

Here’s how Udacity sends out a verification email to confirm the subscriber’s email address:

In addition to this, you must build your email list organically and avoid purchasing lists at all costs.

Also, if you notice dormant subscribers who have shown no engagement within 30 or 60 days, try to re-engage them with a win-back email series, which is exactly what it sounds like: a series of emails whose purpose is to re-engage inactive subscribers. You may have received such an email from a retailer after abandoning your online cart, like this one from Amazon:

If they still do not engage with you, remove them from the list manually. Doing so will help to significantly reduce the bounce rate.

Dive Deeper: 5 Ways to Re-Engage Those Long-Lost Customers

Send Relevant Content with Actionable CTAs to Improve the CTR

Click-through rate is related to the value you can provide through your emails. You must send out tailor-made content that addresses the challenges of the subscribers and encourages them to click on the call to action button.

You can also add interactive elements to draw the subscriber’s attention. The CTA is an integral part of any email and it works as the powerhouse of conversions. You must, therefore, make sure that you draft actionable calls to action that compel the user to take the next action. Take a look at this CTA example:

A/B test your email layout, CTA design, and its placement to determine what drives maximum people to click through.

Dive Deeper: How to Create Better-Converting In-Content Calls to Action (CTAs)

Build Short Sign-up Forms to Optimize the List Growth Rate

To drive business growth, you must be able to generate a steady flow of leads and build a large email list with qualified prospects.

This will be possible only if you have short sign-up forms and interesting landing pages that match the initial form, ad or CTA. If the user clicks on your PPC ad, they must be redirected to a landing page that lets them know more about your product or service so they can fill out the form or convert.

Dive Deeper: 5 Important Landing Page Elements You Should Be A/B Testing

Make Your Emails Visually Appealing to Boost the Email Forwarding Rate

Your subscribers will be more likely to share your email and forward it if it has something unique in it.

To boost the email forwarding rate, you can use the principle of gamification or add rich media elements to make the emails more aesthetic. Bring freshness to the inbox of your subscribers and they will surely spread the word. It may even contribute to “viral email marketing” for you.

Take a look at this Christmas email by Email Uplers:

They have beautifully used the power of horizontal scroll effect. Sending out such out-of-the-box emails can impress your subscribers while making them share your email and look forward to hearing from you again.

Allow Users to Set Their Preferences to Reduce the Unsubscribe Rate

Most people opt out of receiving your emails if they get too many of them. Irrelevant emails is another factor that contributes to the unsubscribe rate.

Focus on sending relevant emails and let users set their preferences of receiving the emails. You can have a consistent schedule so that your subscribers know when to expect an email from you.

For example: I receive awesome weekly newsletters from Really Good Emails on every Tuesday and Friday. This set schedule of relevant emails makes me eagerly await the next one rather than wanting to unsubscribe.

Deliver Value through the Emails to Convince Subscribers to Purchase

Your email copy should be persuasive enough to convince subscribers to make a purchase from you. Use the power of storytelling in your emails and tap on the emotional instinct of modern consumers. This will not only help you get better conversion rates, but also yield more ROI.

For instance: You can use Dean Jackson’s nine-word formula for your re-engagement email. Jackson was a real estate entrepreneur and online marketer who claimed that a subject line with just the recipient’s name and a body with a one-line question is all you need to engage:

If you are a travel agent, you can send an email saying: “Are you still looking for flight tickets to London?”

Last Word on Optimizing Your Email Campaign

You must be vigilant about the metrics you are tracking so that you can effectively measure the success of your email campaigns and make necessary modifications if needed.

To recapitulate, you must strive to reach to a larger audience, create more useful emails, and think of innovative ideas to appeal to your subscribers. If you are able to work on these three things, you will certainly yield better results from your email campaigns.

The post How to Analyze Your Email Campaign Performance and Optimize It appeared first on Single Grain.

Almost 60% of marketers say that email marketing is their biggest source of ROI.

Clearly, email marketing is a force to be reckoned with. But unless you want to manually send out individual emails to your hundreds, thousands or even millions of subscribers, you need to use an email marketing service.

With so many popular email marketing tools vying for your business, it can be hard to choose one. In general, they all offer the same basic features (the ability to send emails to lists, to make your emails more visually appealing, to use automation, etc.), but they also all have varying strengths and weaknesses.

For example, if your top priority is making visually appealing emails, your ideal email marketing service will be different from someone who cares more about being able to send automated emails when a customer abandons their cart.

In this guide, we’re going to go over 10 of the top email marketing services available. We’ll discuss what their standout features are, what sets them apart from the competition, and what you should be looking for when evaluating a service on your own.

But before we get into the nitty-gritty, if you’re just looking for a quick recommendation, then take a look at the next section, where you’ll find two top picks for different types of businesses.

Best for Small Businesses and Sole Proprietorships: AWeber

AWeber is an impressive email marketing service that truly takes a load off anyone who’s trying to run a small business. While the platform doesn’t allow for the same depth of customization that other platforms do, it does make running email campaigns easy.

For example, AWeber can create AI-generated emails for you and make auto-newsletters using content from your company blog. That means less time spent crafting emails and more time spent on your business.

AWeber offers a free plan, which makes it easy to dip your toes in and give it a whirl. If it suits your needs, paid plans start at $19/month billed monthly.

Best for E-commerce: Drip

Drip is a CRM with email marketing features that was built specifically for e-commerce. Its features in this area surpass the competition: You can automate emails and segment your subscribers based on practically any action they take in your store. This allows you to target your customers with an extreme level of personalization.

Drip’s plans start at $19/month. However, a 14-day free trial is available to all new customers, so it’s easy to give it a try and see what you think.

You may also like:

• How to Use Personalization to Increase the Impact of Email Marketing
• 14 Ways to Kickstart Your Mobile Email Marketing Campaign
• How to Get More Responses From Your Cold Emails

Best Email Marketing Services Overview

Now that we’ve given you our top picks, let’s get into the reviews. First, here’s an overview of all the features that we’re going to cover:

Top 10 Best Email Marketing Services

1) MailerLite

MailerLite Highlights:
* Website
* Pricing: Starts at $0/month
* Standout Feature: Easy-to-use email designer
* Automation: Basic
* Best For: Businesses on a budget

MailerLite is all about simplicity. Despite the fact that it has “lite” in its name, it’s not nearly as watered-down as one might expect. In fact, the minimalist intent of the service gives it a sort of Zen-like power in which the user is able to get straight to the meat of their work without wading through the clutter of features that they’ll never use.

In short, MailerLite focuses on the fundamentals of what makes an email service great: an easy-to-use email design tool that doesn’t get in its own way. It’s simple to design and send emails that will wow your customers without your having to be a designer.

However, the service does offer more advanced features, like automation, A/B testing, etc., for those who want to make use of them. But compared to other email marketing services, it doesn’t go as deep. And that’s totally fine. MailerLite knows who its base is: businesses that want a powerful and intuitive platform that doesn’t break the bank.

Considering that MailerLite starts at the enticing price point of $0/month, it seems to be catering to them on all fronts. Now, it bears mentioning that the free version of MailerLite only allows for lists of up to 1,000 subscribers and doesn’t provide access to some of its more advanced features like automation and A/B testing.

You’re also limited to sending 12,000 emails per month (i.e., 12 e-blasts for a list with 1,000 subscribers). It can accurately be thought of as MailerLite-Lite. But for businesses that are newbies to email marketing, it offers a good starting point without making any upfront investments.

Once you break through that 1,000-subscriber threshold (or if you want to use more advanced features or send more emails), paid plans start at $10/month. There are only two plans, so you won’t need to decide which features you want. Instead, the subscription price is entirely dependent on how many subscribers you have. The Premium Plan ranges from $10/month (for 1-1,000 subscribers) all the way up to $1,915/month (for lists with up to 600,000 subscribers). Beyond that, you’ll need to contact MailerLite for custom pricing.

2) ConvertKit

ConvertKit Highlights:
* Website
* Pricing: Starts at $0/month
* Standout Feature: Visual automation and email sequences
* Automation: Advanced
* Best For: Businesses that want powerful automation tools

As you can likely gather from its name, ConvertKit is all about converting your email subscribers. And its focus is pretty clear from its feature set. Unlike other email marketing platforms that offer hundreds of email templates to choose from and tons of in-depth design tools, ConvertKit’s design features are quite minimal and only include three email templates.

But don’t confuse that with an oversight or lack of effort on their part. In fact, ConvertKit’s decision to shy away from deep design tools is actually a conscious effort to increase its customers’ conversion rates. The company takes a strong stance that fancy emails are useless and simple emails convert better. The idea is that by limiting customers’ design options, they’ll be forced to focus on what really matters: the content.

So, if design isn’t ConvertKit’s forte, then what does the service actually do to bolster those conversion rates? The answer is automation. ConvertKit’s automation features are top-notch and feel much more modern than those of some of the other big names in the space.

At its core, ConvertKit relies on Sequences and Visual Automation. Essentially, Sequences are automated email sequences that you can set up in advance, such as a series of abandoned cart emails or welcome emails. Visual automation allows you to fine-tune those sequences by arranging blocks that correspond to different steps in the email sequence. Overall, this is a very powerful automation system that caters to businesses that are either already deep in the automation game or looking to break into it.

As far as pricing goes, ConvertKit offers a free plan, but you won’t be able to use ConverKit’s visual marketing automation tools if you go that route. Considering that those features are ConvertKit’s bread and butter, many users will probably want to skip right over the free plan and move to one of their paid plans, which start at $29/month for lists with up to 1,000 subscribers and go up to $3,999/month for lists with up to 900,000 subscribers (annual subscription discounts are available). Above that, you’ll need to contact ConvertKit for custom pricing.

Overall, ConvertKit is a great choice for businesses that want an email marketing service built around powerful automation. But if design tools are a priority, you should look elsewhere.

3) ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign Highlights:
* Website
* Pricing: Starts at $15/month ($9/month billed annually)
* Standout Feature: Predictive capabilities that employ machine learning
* Automation: Advanced
* Best For: Established businesses that want sophisticated tracking and automation features

To call ActiveCampaign simply an email marketing service would be doing the platform a disservice. While ActiveCampaign is built around email marketing, the service also offers a sales CRM (which could be a standalone product on its own) as well as features like SMS marketing and Facebook custom audiences for Facebook ads based on your customer data.

Beyond that, ActiveCampaign also uses machine learning to offer features like predictive content (which helps you find the most relevant content for your subscribers), predictive sending (which helps you find the right time to email your subscribers), and win probability (which helps your sales team figure out which customers and deals are worth the effort and which should be put on the backburner).

There’s no doubt that ActiveCampaign is packed with features. But how does it do at simply making and designing emails? Overall, ActiveCampaign’s design features are about average. Customers will have access to over 25 professionally designed templates that they can customize to their liking.

As far as email itself is concerned, ActiveCampaign makes up for its lackluster design options with easy-to-use personalization, testing, and automation features. The service makes it easy to segment your list, personalize your emails, test how your emails are performing, and even put conditions into your emails. For example, you can add or remove content from your emails depending on whether the receiver carried out a specific action.

Compared to ConvertKit, which also places a lot of focus on automation, ActiveCampaign offers more in terms of tracking and building emails. However, ConvertKit’s automation features are a bit more sophisticated.

Price-wise, ActiveCampaign isn’t cheap. It doesn’t offer a free plan, unlike many of its competitors, so you’ll have to pay at least $15/month (or $9/month billed annually) to get in on the action. Even once you start paying, ActiveCampaign tends to be more expensive than other services: that $15/month only allows you to send emails to a list with up to 500 subscribers, while most services offer capabilities for up to 1,000 subscribers at the same price point.

And that’s just for the Lite plan. If you want to use the highest-tier plan (Enterprise), you’re looking at $279/month for a list with up to 500 subscribers.

4) HubSpot

HubSpot Highlights:
* Website
* Pricing: Starts at $0/month
* Standout Feature: Comes with other useful tools from HubSpot
* Automation: Depends on plan
* Best For: Established businesses and enterprises

HubSpot is one of the biggest names in the digital marketing space, so it should come as no surprise that their platform offers email marketing capabilities. However, like ActiveCampaign, HubSpot’s breadth of features expands way beyond email: By signing up for the HubSpot Marketing Hub, you get access to email marketing, ad management, live chat, conversational bots, forms and landing pages.

But let’s focus on what HubSpot can do for your emails. One of the biggest benefits to marketers is simply its wide range of features, so you’re not going to encounter much that you won’t find elsewhere as far as email is concerned. The service lets you do just what you’d expect: personalize emails, segment your lists, conduct A/B testing, and implement automation features.

That said, it does all these things very well, and it has a pretty hefty price tag to show for it. Compared to other household names like Mailchimp, HubSpot provides much more sophisticated automation features, which are necessary once your business expands to the point that you can no longer reply to individual emails in a timely manner.

However, although HubSpot’s paid plans are pricey, it does offer a free CRM that includes email marketing capabilities. Overall, the features in the free email service are pretty solid: There are quite a few templates to choose from, the email designer is robust, and you get some basic analytics tools. Unfortunately, you’re limited to just 2,000 emails per month, which is quite low.

Once you upgrade to these paid plans, you get access to the heavy-duty features:

• Starter: Starts at $50/month and offers list segmentation, conversational bots, live chat, and more.
• Professional: Starts at $800/month and offers automation, A/B testing, CTAs, campaign reporting, advanced analytics, and more.
• Enterprise: Starts at $3,200/month and offers partitioning, email send frequency caps, adaptive testing, multi-touch revenue attribution, and other advanced features.

As you can tell, HubSpot is one of the most expensive marketing platforms, but it does offer a very wide variety of services. If you’re an established business that wants to up your marketing game and needs more than just email tools, it’s definitely worth checking out.

5) GetResponse

GetResponse Highlights:
* Website
* Pricing: Starts at $15/month (discounts available for long-term commitments)
* Standout Feature: Autofunnels
* Automation: Average
* Best For: Businesses focused on inbound marketing and webinars

GetResponse is yet another all-in-one email marketing service that offers not just email building but landing pages, pop ups, automation, and more. Overall, GetResponse appears to be more focused on inbound marketing than some of the other platforms we’ve looked at.

For example, one of its standout features is Autofunnel which, as you can probably tell by the name, is an automated sales funnel. Essentially, it helps you design an automated sales funnel from the sign-up page all the way to the order form and beyond.

Once you’ve used GetResponse’s funnels to snag some leads, you’re able to easily segment them using the automated segmentation capabilities. For example, you can automatically segment your list based on behavior, such as one segment for everyone who clicked the link in your last email and another for everyone who didn’t.

However, GetResponse doesn’t go as in-depth with its automation as some other tools. But given the price point, it’s still a very viable option for businesses that are primarily focused on lead generation. In fact, its inbound tools are some of the strongest that we’ve seen.

GetResponse does not offer a free plan. Instead, users can choose between four paid plans (which have discounts for 12-month and 24-month subscriptions):

• Basic: Starts at $15/month. Offers unlimited landing pages, autoresponders, one sales funnel, unlimited leads funnels, unlimited automation templates, Facebook ads, and more.
• Plus: Starts at $49/month. Provides everything in the basic plan plus an automation builder, webinars with up to 100 attendees, contact scoring and tagging, webinar funnels, up to five sales funnels, and more.
• Professional: Starts at $99/month. Offers unlimited automation builders, paid webinars, webinars with up to 300 attendees, unlimited sales funnels, and more.
• MAX: Businesses interested in MAX plans must contact GetResponse for personalized pricing. MAX plans offer transactional emails as a paid add-on, dedicated customer support, a dedicated IP address, single sign-on (SSO), webinars with up to 500 participants, email campaign consulting, and more.

All in all, GetResponse is a good choice for businesses that have inbound functionality as a priority and would like to host webinars.

6) Constant Contact

Constant Contact Highlights:
* Website
* Pricing: Starts at $20/month
* Standout Feature: Robust email designer
* Automation: Average
* Best For: Businesses looking for a robust drag-and-drop email designer

Constant Contact is one of the oldest names in the email marketing space, and its longevity in such a competitive industry is a sign that the company is doing something right. However, when it comes to technology, being around for a while can also be a bad sign: Some companies can become a one-trick pony that rests on its laurels without keeping up with innovations in the field.

Unfortunately, Constant Contact falls more into the latter camp. While its core features are still strong, it simply lacks some of the sophisticated features that some of the newcomers to the space, like ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit, offer. Plus, due to Constant Contact’s brand recognition, it’s able to hike its prices up to a point that’s higher than what the company would be able to command if it were just starting out.

That said, Constant Contact is still a viable option for businesses that want a reliable email marketing service with a long track record of success. Essentially, the company hasn’t strayed far from its roots as a strong email builder.

Businesses that use Constant Contact will have over 100 templates at their disposal, a powerful drag-and-drop email editor, robust automation features, and integrations with e-commerce platforms like Shopify. Landing pages and websites, however, do not come included with the email marketing package.

Constant Contact offers two plans: Email, starting at $20/month, and Email Plus, starting at $45/month. Both plans offer the same basic features, but Email Plus also gives users access to dynamic content, coupons, online donations, automated email welcome series, and automated behavioral email series.

While this service may not offer some of the more advanced features that others on this list have, it does provide a solid and reputable service. Most small businesses won’t miss the lacking features, so it will largely come down to a question of budget and taste.

7) Keap

Keap Highlights:
* Website
* Pricing: Starts at $24/month
* Standout Feature: CRM
* Automation: Basic
* Best For: Businesses looking for a CRM with email marketing capabilities

Keap has been around since 2001, but it has flown under the radar of many marketers. At heart, Keap is a CRM with email marketing features, not the other way around. In fact, out of the three products that the company offers (Keap Grow, Keap Pro, and Infusionsoft), none bills itself as an email marketing service.

So, if email is your priority, which is the one you should be looking at? Well, all of them. The three softwares are tiered, so everything you get in Keap Grow, which includes email marketing, you get in the higher versions as well.

However, even though Keap includes email marketing, it’s simply not the company’s focus — it’s hard to even find any information about its email marketing capabilities. That said, it does provide an email builder and a good range of email marketing automation features. If you’re interested in automation, you’ll likely want to start out with Keap Pro.

Overall, Keap is more similar to HubSpot than it is to a dedicated email marketing service like Constant Contact. The company wants to provide its users with a tool that will help their businesses grow, and email just happens to be one of the features included.

If Keap sounds like it may be for you, you’ll need to choose between three price points:

• Keap Grow: Starts at $24/month for the first two months. It offers a CRM, email marketing, a business phone line, text messaging, appointment management, plus quotes, invoices and payments.
• Keap Pro: Starts at $45/month for the first two months. It includes everything in Keap Grow plus a landing page builder, automation, smart forms and reports, and recurring payments.
• Infusionsoft: Starts at $60/month for the first two months. It includes a CRM, automation, lead scoring, advanced reporting, and e-commerce features.

8) Mailchimp

Mailchimp Highlights:
* Website
* Pricing: Starts at $0/month
* Standout Feature: Email designer
* Automation: Average
* Best For: Startups and small businesses

If you’re looking into email marketing services, there’s a good chance that Mailchimp was the first service that popped into your mind. Indeed, “Mailchimp” is practically synonymous with “email marketing” these days, so it’s a platform that deserves a thorough look.

As a whole, Mailchimp still offers one of the best email marketing platforms around. It has a very in-depth email designer, gives users access to hundreds of templates, and provides some useful automation features as well. Plus, the company offers a robust free version, which can be a great starting point for new businesses or established businesses that haven’t yet ventured into email.

Since its inception, the company has expanded to offer a website builder, a CRM, and more. But like Constant Contact and MailerLite, Mailchimp really shines with its email building. Although it does offer more advanced features like A/B testing, automation, etc., the company started out with e-blasts, and that’s still what it does best. Its email automation features are not bad by any means, but if that’s your priority, there are better options out there.

Mailchimp’s design straddles the line between elegant and outdated. Its UI is sparse and the minimalist design language stirs feelings of an early webpage without CSS. In many ways, this perfectly embodies the Mailchimp experience: At times it’s luxurious, and at others (such as with automation), it feels somewhat outdated.

Overall, Mailchimp is a good starting place for small businesses that want to get more involved with email marketing. It’s still one of the strongest email-centric marketing platforms there is, and its popularity means that many of the most popular tools like Slack, Zapier and WordPress already have native integrations with it. However, its automation features are bested by the likes of ConvertKit, HubSpot and ActiveCampaign.

As for pricing, there are four plans you can choose from:

• Free: The free plan gives you access to basic templates, one-click automations, surveys, websites, and a marketing CRM. With a 2,000-subscriber limit, its one of the most generous free plans available.
• Essentials: Starting at $9.99/month, the Essentials plan provides access to all templates, A/B testing, custom-branding capabilities, and 24/7 support, along with everything that’s included in the Free plan.
• Standard: Starting at $14.99/month, the Standard plan includes advanced analytics and insights, retargeting ads, behavioral targeting automation series, and custom templates, as well as everything included in Essentials.
• Enterprise: This plan jumps up to $299/month and includes advanced segmentation features, unlimited seats, role-based access, phone support, and multivariate testing, along with everything in the Standard plan.

9) Drip

Drip Highlights:
* Website
* Pricing: Starts at $10/month
* Standout Feature: E-commerce automation
* Automation: Advanced
* Best For: E-commerce

Like some of the other services we’ve covered already, Drip is primarily a CRM that has email marketing features. So what makes it different from the rest on this top email marketing list? Drip is the only CRM we’ve seen that was built from the ground up with e-commerce in mind.

If you run an e-commerce business, Drip deserves your attention. In a nutshell, it uses data from your store to drive automated marketing campaigns, be they email, Instagram, Facebook, etc. For example, you can automatically segment visitors to your store based on the page they visited and then have Drip send out different emails to those segments. So, if one user visited the shoe section and another the jeans section of your clothing store, you can automatically send them different emails.

Drip has some of the deepest segmentation capabilities that we’ve seen. You can segment based on practically any action you can imagine, whether it’s clicking a link, opening a form, abandoning a cart, etc. This makes it easy to target your customers with pinpoint accuracy. And since Drip does more than email, you can use any of those actions (including interactions with your emails) to drive campaigns on social media as well.

Pricing for Drip starts at $10/month for 100 people in your account and ranges up to $1,599/month for up to 140,000 people. Beyond that, you’ll need to get in touch with Drip for custom pricing. However, they do offer everyone a 14-day free trial, so you can take it for a spin without risk.

Overall, Drip is an extremely impressive e-commerce marketing platform that seems poised to become a mainstay in the industry. If you’re working in e-commerce, this is not one to miss out on.

10) AWeber

AWeber Highlights:
* Website
* Pricing: Starts at $0/month
* Standout Feature: AI-generated emails
* Automation: Advanced
* Best For: Small businesses

AWeber’s shtick is simplicity. On its homepage, it proudly states: “Run your business — leave the email marketing to us.” And with features like AI-generated emails, that really isn’t overselling what AWeber can do. In many ways, it seems that the service can almost run itself.

When you use AWeber, you’ll have access to other automation features like auto-newsletters that pull content from your site’s blog. Want to get your hands dirty instead of leaving everything up to the robots? AWeber also comes with a drag-and-drop email builder and a variety of templates.

Once you’ve crafted your email, you can use AWeber’s automation features to control the flow of your email sequences and automatically tag or segment your subscribers. You can also personalize your emails with dynamic content to get a better response.

But none of this matters if your emails end up in spam folders. To combat that, AWeber doesn’t outsource its email delivery, which gives you a better chance of having your email get where it’s supposed to be. After the email has reached the recipient, you can use AWeber’s analysis tools (including a mobile app for on-the-go analytics) to see how your campaign is stacking up.

AWeber also has a slew of integrations with platforms like PayPal, Shopify, Facebook, and more, which will be a welcome addition for any business that uses them.

So how much does it cost? AWeber now has a free version that offers many of its features but with a limit of 500 subscribers. Beyond that, pricing starts at $19/month for a list with up to 500 subscribers and reaches up to $149/month for a list with up to 25,000 subscribers. Discounts are available for long-term commitments.

Overall, AWeber is a fantastic service for anyone who wants a more hands-off approach to email marketing, and we highly recommend it.

Bonus: Moosend

Moosend Highlights:
* Website
* Pricing: Starts at $9/month (+ free trial)
* Standout Feature: Sophisticated automation options
* Automation: Advanced
* Best For: E-commerce Businesses, Agencies, Start-ups

Moosend is an all-in-one email marketing service provider with outstanding marketing automation and segmentation tools that can take you to the next level. It’s one of the most affordable email options available, and it’s also one of the easiest to use, even if you’re a beginner.

You can craft beautiful email campaigns to capture your audience’s attention using a wide library of email templates or a drag-and-drop editor. The platform also allows you to create landing pages and sign-up forms in a few simple clicks to improve your lead generation efforts.

One of Moosend’s best features is email list segmentation, which lets you send more tailored emails to your subscribers and quickly convert them. You may also build up automated processes, autoresponders, and transactional emails to deliver your messages at the right time.

To make data-driven decisions, you can use real-time analytics and statistics. You’ll be able to track which emails work best, ensuring higher open rates and click-throughs in the future.

Last, but not least, Moosend offers the option of A/B testing to determine which email variant would work better.

For up to 500 users, Moosend’s services start at $9 per month. Unlimited emails, automated processes, landing pages/subscription forms, and the SMTP server for setting up transactional emails are all included. If you can’t decide whether this tool is the right for you, Moosend offers a free trial to dive deeper into their email marketing capabilities.

You may also like:

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• How to Increase E-commerce Upsells with E-mail Marketing
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How to Evaluate Email Marketing Services on Your Own

This list is far from exhaustive, and there are many other email marketing solutions that you may want to take a look at. Here are some tips to keep in mind when doing so.

What are your priorities?

Every email marketing service will excel in one area and fall a bit short in another. There’s no unicorn that is great at everything — if there were, the choice would be a lot easier.

When evaluating services, take stock of what’s most important to you:

• Do you want to be able to customize your emails down to a T?
• Or is automation the most important feature set for you?
• Do you want a simple and intuitive interface?
• Or would you rather a more complex UI that allows for deeper customization?

Ideally, you should have an answer to these questions before you start your search.

How big is your list?

While most platforms can support large lists, some services cater more towards one side of the size spectrum than the other. For example, Mailchimp has great enterprise offerings, while some other services don’t even advertise plans for subscriber lists above 25,000. Although these platforms may still support higher subscriber counts, they’re clearly not built with those types of users in mind.

On the other hand, if you have a very small list, you’ll have an easier time getting away with a free version. Which brings us to our next point….

What’s your budget?

At the end of the day, even though you may want to get the highest-end and most expensive plan, if you can’t afford it, it’s not a good decision. Furthermore, if you’re leaning on a done-for-you email marketing service to help you set up campaigns, you’ll need to factor the cost of services into your decision, too.

Always keep your budget in mind and look at what features each service offers at different price points.

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The post The Top 10 Best Emailing Services in 2023 appeared first on Single Grain.