Email marketing is a highly effective marketing channel, more so when backed by an email marketing platform, allowing companies to reach their customers and target audiences quickly, easily, and inexpensively.
Used by small and large businesses, email marketing lets them connect directly with their customers in their inboxes, keeping them updated with the latest news, products, and services.
With email marketing, a business can increase its sales, promote its brand, provide special offers, open new channels to improve customer support and recommendations, and so much more.
However, before you start emailing your customers, there are a few things you need to know about email marketing.
In this article, you will learn the basics of email marketing platforms, when you need one, and considerations when selecting one for your business.
What is an Email Marketing Platform?
An email marketing platform is a particular type of software enabling users to design, send, and manage large quantities of emails to many recipients.
The email marketing platform usually offers templates, contact lists, A/B testing tools, and reporting tools that help users create and track their email campaigns.
Additionally, many platforms offer integrations with other software, such as CRMs and e-commerce platforms, making it easy for users to manage their marketing efforts in one place.
When Do You Need an Email Marketing Platform?
You need an email marketing platform to send, track and manage bulk emails if you want to increase your engagement and goals. Email marketing services will allow you to easily create and send email campaigns to a large group of people and manage the results in one location while providing detailed reports and many other functions that CRMs may not have built-in.
Many email marketing platforms have “standard” features and dashboards, while some have unique proprietary feature sets built in.
When you want to build relationships with your customers, and target audiences, email marketing platforms are one of the many tools to consider, as they are highly effective. Marketing emails can help your business by growing your brand, driving new traffic to your website, promoting social engagement, and so much more.
Email marketing platforms will have the tools to manage new lists, edit existing lists, and use segmentation tools to help you hone your email messages to the right audiences.
You should consider utilizing an email marketing platform if you are sending the following types of emails:
- Newsletter
- Behavioral
- Transactional
- Promotional
- Customer Retention
Features of an Email Marketing Platform
When it comes to email marketing platforms, one size does not fit all. Businesses have different needs and require specific platform features to effectively manage and reach their target audiences and customers.
Many features set apart an email marketing platform from other types of email marketing software. Perhaps the most important is email marketing’s ability to handle large lists of recipients, as companies of all sizes can quickly hit scale regarding their email and CRM databases.
Most platforms can handle lists of up to 100,000 subscribers without any trouble. Additionally, many platforms offer automated list management features, which make it easy for businesses to add or remove subscribers from their lists as needed.
When looking at the field of email marketing platforms, you will find such features as:
- A/B Testing Tools
- Analytics and AI
- Automation Tools
- Autoresponders
- Campaign Managers
- Compatibility Testing
- CRM Integrations
- Customer Journeys
- Custom Email Templates
- Deliverability Analysis
- Drag-and-Drop Designers
- List Management Tools
- Merge Tags
- Custom Reporting
- Responsive Templates
- Segmentation Tools
- Social Media Integrations
- And more.
It can be easy to get lost in the sea of features available in many email marketing tools, but the basic functionality is present across the board.
How to Choose an Email Marketing Platform
There is no shortage to choose from when it comes to email marketing platforms. Deciding which is best for your business with a function as important as email marketing can be challenging.
Here are several questions to consider when choosing an email marketing platform:
- What is your budget?
- How many contacts do you have?
- How many emails do you expect to send out in a given month?
- What kind of content (written, products, etc.) will you send?
- Are CRM or other integrations vital?
- What features do you require?
- How easy is it to use?
- Are training and support available? At a cost?
- Do you want to manage the campaign yourself or use a service?
- What kind of delivery rate are you looking for?
- Are there any other kinds of factors that are important to you?
Price isn’t the only factor that you should consider. Each business’s requirements are unique, so think about how you intend to utilize email marketing in your day-to-day and what that boils down to when it comes to needs.
Email marketing platforms provide marketers using these tools the ability to test out their campaigns in many ways, along with optimizing emails for multiple devices. These two abilities alone save marketers a ton of time, let alone automated tools that help segment and manage users across a growing number of lists.
Final thoughts on email marketing platforms
In conclusion, using an email marketing platform is a great way to reach larger audiences of potential customers quickly, easily, and affordably. It can be used to boost your sales or promote your business in many creative ways.
An email marketing platform may be the answer if you’re looking for a way to consistently and effectively connect with more people and save significant time and resources.