10 Considerations When Choosing the Best Email Marketing Software

Are You Thinking of Buying New Email Marketing Software?

What considerations should you look at when it’s time to purchase email marketing software? Before you buy, it might behoove you to step back and ask a few critical questions.

Among key considerations, you’ll want to consider the type of software you need to achieve your overarching goals, the kinds of and extent of personalization you want to provide, and whether your investment will be worth it in the long haul.

10 Questions to Consider Before Adopting New Email Marketing Software

Here are ten questions you should think about before adopting new email marketing software or a more all-encompassing marketing solution (of which email is a core tenant). For even more details on each of these questions and guidance on how to answer them for your business, read the full article, 10 Considerations When Choosing the Best Email Marketing Software.

1. Do we need new email marketing software — or something more all-encompassing?

In today’s multi-touch retail environment, it’s never been more important to be channel-agnostic. How does your email strategy fit into your overall marketing strategy? And what do you really need? An email provider, or a solution that connects email with everything else?

2. Can I create the experiences I want to create? 

Forget about email… for just a second.

What experiences are you trying to create for your customers? This question is pivotal, and ties back to your strategy — requiring a thorough understanding of the customer journey, persona mapping, audience needs, and more.

THEN, bring email to the forefront when it makes sense, and integrate email marketing to provide the desired experience for your customers.

3. How will the system enable me to improve deliverability?

When it comes to email deliverability, it’s more about practices and less about the platform.

If deliverability is an overarching goal, you’ll still want to do due diligence and review tools, technology, and support available to help ensure high inbox placement. But it’s an illusion to think that a tool will transform deliverability… it’s truly about what you do with it — your approach and strategy.

4. Can I do different kinds of email campaigns with the system?

Once you’ve determined which experiences you want to create — and that email is the right channel to create them with — you’ll want to make sure your email partner or solution can actually do certain kinds of campaigns that you need. These include, but aren't limited to:

• e-Newsletter
• Welcome series
• Abandoned cart
• Other trigger- or event-based emails

5. …And will various campaigns pull from a unified customer profile so they all “work together” to reflect customer preferences?

Ask how all these various campaigns will work together so that customers aren’t getting redundant or unwanted communications, but instead, content that makes sense for them.

The customer’s lifecycle stage needs to be reflected across their entire journey. Call it a unified customer profile, holistic picture, 360-degree view — whatever. The key is that all campaigns need to access or pull from customer data so they work together.

6. What’s the personalization potential with my email campaigns?

In conjunction with different kinds of campaigns working together, personalizing content within emails can drastically set your brand apart from the majority whom are actually not fully personalizing emails.

7. Can I leverage dynamic or real-time content within the body of the email?

Dynamic content within emails is one element of personalization that shows your customers you care about when, where, and how they view an email.

Content blocks that load in real-time with up-to-date content — no matter when the recipient opens them — leverage a technology called Open Time Content. These emails go beyond static, stagnant emails and add an element of not only interactivity, but they can also immerse customers in differentiated, multimedia material.

8. Does this system hit on the three A’s — automation, AI, and analytics?

In order to really capitalize on all elements of personalization, you need to consider whether the email marketing software you’re looking at incorporates what I’m calling the three A’s:

? Automating email campaigns across your database. B2C marketers using automation experience conversion rates as high as 50%!

? Using artificial intelligence to improve content placement and Send Time Optimization

? Looking to analytics for performance results and constant improvement

9. How will this solution impact the efficiency and effectiveness of my team?

One of the most important considerations when adopting any new software (especially email marketing tools) is “how will it affect my team and impact our workload, process, and overall efficiency?” 

10. Will this system be technologically obsolete in a few years?

This is one of the most crucial questions to ask before spending thousands of dollars per month on email marketing software. How will it serve your needs over time? Is it flexible and agile enough to grow and improve with your needs and the evolution of email?

An investment in new email marketing software requires careful analysis of the pros and cons of systems in contention. For far more depth and how-tos in each of these areas, read the full article, 10 Considerations When Choosing the Best Email Marketing Software.