Email Marketing & Automation
Email marketing is still one of the most common methods of marketing via the internet. Don't believe me? Go check your promotion tab in your email. If you're like me you have thousands of emails from companies sending you offers, and recent news about products. In this week's blog I will be focusing on Email Marketing and Automation, and why these tools are relevant to digital marketers today.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the acting of sending commercial messages using email. Email marketing involves using email to send adertisements, ask for business, or to make sales and or donations. It is a highly effective digital marketing strategy that helps convert prospects into customers and to convert one time purchasers into return customers. Email to this day remains the most effective way to nurture leads and converting them to customers. A big reason why email marketing is so effective is because of the usage of the communication channel. According to Hubspot, 99% of consumers check their email on a daily basis meaning that they are consitantly exposed to your advertising efforts. Another thing worthwhile to mention is that firms own their own email lists. Social media accounts can be suspended, deleted, or the website can go down. With an email list firms own their contacts, and those leads cannot be separated from them by a third party.
Firms often times use different email marketing softwares to improve their email marketing campaigns. These softwares are have many different features that will help aid any email marketing campaign. It can be used to design, optimize, and send beautiful looking emails.
Constant Contact vs Mail Chimp
Constant Contact and Mail Chimp are both high acclaimed email marketing softwares. They are both useful and cost effective services that will greatly improve a firms email marketing capabilities. Below I will compare and contrast some of the key elements of both programs to give you a better idea of the different uses of each software.
Ease of Use and Editor: Both softwares offer user friendly navigation with clear sections making them ideal for new users or people on a busy schedule. MailChimp's editor is more sleek and optimized slightly better than Constant Contact. But both of them offer great service in this department.
Design: Both softwares provide a good number of templates to use. Constant Contact offers more templates for use than MailChimp, however MailChimp offers catagorized templates for ease of access. MailChimp also offers more flexibility and options when editing the template.
Price: Below is a pricing table for MailChimp and Constant Contact. MailChimp is a little bit of a cheaper option than constant contact.
Reporting: Both softwares allow users to recieve data on the emails sent out, including who opened the email. The softwares also allow Google Analytics intergration for tracking conversation. However only MailChimp offers social media reports, geo-tracking, and click maps.
While both of these programs are great tools, and one might be better suited for specific businesses, it seems that MailChimp might be a better option. Especially if a firm is on a budget.
Marketing Automation
In general marketing automation refers to software that can automate certain aspects of a firms marketing. Software is designed to help firms prioritize and execute tasks in a streamlined manor. The main goal with automation is to help marketing efforts generate the most possible revenue for a firm. Firms need to to drive traffic, convert traffic, and create customers. Marketing automation can be very impactful in the conversin and closure stages of the consumer process. A few examples of marketing automation software is Hubspot Marketing Automation and Ontraport.
Best Practices in Automation
I have picked out some ways in which firms can use automation correctly to improve their marketing efforts.
Integrate Marketing Automation with Inbound Marketing: Inbound marketing is focused on providing valuable content that serves consumer needs. Marketing automation should enhance communication and help provide content when they need it.
Send Targeted Messages to Specific Audiences:
Quite simply its important to provide content that consumers are looking for. When consumers interact with these messages automation can be used to directy respond to consumers with relavent and useful information in a timely manor.
Don't Automate Without Revisiting Goals
Before using automation its important to understand your strategic goals. While automation is a very useful tool that makes marketing easier, firms need to be sure that the automation process is going to serve specific strategic goals. Firms need to be careful not to use automation to execute strategies that don't make sense for the firm and its consumers.
Wrap Up
Email Marketing and Marketing automation are two very useful tools that digital marketers can use to create leads, customers, and improve the effeciency of a company. I hope this weeks blog provided you with some helpful information on why you should consider spending some time working on Email Marketing and considering automation. Below are some more links with useful information relavent to these topics. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next edition of my digital marketing blog!
29 Reasons to Use Email Marketing
The Best Marketing Automation Software