A Guide to Email & Automated Marketing for Businesses

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a powerful marketing channel that uses email messages to promote your business’s products or services. It is used to educate your audience on the value of your brand and keep them engaged between purchasing and browsing.

While some may say that email is dead, it is actually the opposite. The amount of email users is still increasing, with currently 4.037 billion users that grows 3% each year. Email marketing stays as a relevant tool because it forces users to take some kind of action; an email will sit in the inbox until it’s opened, deleted, or archived.

Why should companies use email marketing software?

Like most marketing campaigns, email marketing can greatly benefit from implementing a digital software.

An email marketing software can help businesses manage their time strategically. By setting an outgoing schedule, frequency goals, and content designs ahead of time, companies can benefit from managing their email campaigns with a software to ensure a successful launch.

Constant Contact & MailChimp

Constant Contact and MailChimp are both strong options for email marketing software tools. With either of these companies, they make it easy to build an email list and send engaging campaigns to guide contacts down the marketing funnel and towards being long-lasting customers. While they work similarly towards the same goal, each company has its stand-out features to enhance their customer's email marketing campaigns.

Which company is best for your business?

Selecting which company to use depends on where each software exceeds in its features and matching that with your email marketing campaign goals.

Constant Contact vs. MailChimp:

Similarities:

Both companies are comparable in featuring user-friendly templates, analytic reports, automation features, high deliverability rates, and A/B testing experimentation with their software tools.

They both offer cost-effective and intuitive support for businesses to get their email campaigns started and running.

Differences:

• MailChimp offers a free plan for sending 12,000 emails to up to 2,000 contacts per month, while Constant Contact doesn't have a free plan but can be trialed free for 30 days.
• MailChimp offers a generous free plan, but increases in price as features and email lists grow, up to $189/mo. Constant Contact also offers upgrades in their plans that can turn into a total of $295/mo.
• MailChimp excels in offering blank layout templates that allow businesses to design an email with their own customization. In contrast to this, Constant Contact has 100 more pre-made templet options available.
• Constant Contact surpasses MailChimp in deliverability, and they consistently show results of a higher delivered rate.
• For A/B testing, MailChimp has three different variations to test, while Constant Contact can only run tests on subject lines.

Considering the contrast of each company, both options can help businesses reach their email marketing goals.

Businesses should choose Constant Contact if they're looking for top-level deliverability, more ready-made templates, and an easy-to-use platform.

Businesses should choose MailChimp if they prioritize more range of features for a lower price, more flexibility in templet designs, and better A/B testing abilities.

Email marketing and marketing automation - what's the difference?

As discussed above, email marketing is how businesses communicate with their audience through email messages to inform, engage, and drive sales for their products or services.

Complementary to email marketing is marketing automation. Marketing automation is a software that automates your marketing campaigns for you (MailChimp & Constant Contact offer an automated feature). This tool allows users to save time and money, measure and optimize marketing investments, and grow revenue faster.

Best practices regarding marketing automation:

• Inbound marketing strategies pair very well with marketing automation. Ensure your content includes valuable, relevant, and timely information.
• Send highly-targeted and specific messages to each user. Marketing automation allows you to send campaign messages based on what users have previously viewed, giving it a personal feel.
• Engage with established relationships by providing consistent content marketing and nurturing your connections.