What are the most important features for an email marketing platform?

There are numerous features in every email marketing platform. How can you find the most important features for your business?

It’s tempting to try out all the new shiny features of all email marketing platforms for your business. However, it can be time-consuming and you may soon realize that you don’t necessarily need all these features.

When it comes to picking the right tool, it’s important to focus on the most important features that will take your business to the next level.

No matter where you are with your business objectives, an email marketing platform can help you improve your success with your current and future customers.

Here are the key features to look for in your next email marketing tool.

Email editor and design

One of the main things you’re looking at a new email marketing platform is the option to create successful email campaigns.

If you’re still new to email marketing then you want to make sure that you have some email templates to get started with your campaign.

Moreover, it’s useful to have an easy to use editor to tweak your copy, your design, but also your campaign. Drag and drop can help you adjust any templates to ensure that you’re happy with the final result.

This way you can make small or bigger changes to your campaigns without the need for a designer’s help. It’s all about feeling confident to proceed to such changes so an editor tool (WYSIWYG) can make your daily work easier.

Reliability and support

As obvious as it may sound, reliability should be the first thing to research when picking a new email marketing platform. You don’t want to risk the success of your campaign due to a failed delivery.
A tool’s reputation can be critical so it’s good to look at the provider’s deliverability. You can also look at the options to send mass emails, the consistency in quality services and any downtime that might affect your future campaigns.

Support is also important when trusting a new tool. In fact, customer service can even make a mediocre tool a better choice than a full range platform with terrible support.

Check how each company values the customer support and whether onboarding and additional training is also in the plans to get your team ready as efficiently as possible.

Integration and data management

Email marketing technology can become even more powerful with the use of the right integrations. You’re probably using several tools in your marketing strategy and you want to make sure that most of them can work seamlessly together.

This shouldn’t be a problem with the use of the right tools. When you’re about to pick your next email marketing tool to write down all the interactions that you’d like to test. It can be a combination of social media, e-commerce, customer success and CRM.

A successful customer experience and the management of your contacts can be vital for your business. That’s why you want to use an email marketing platform that allows a good integration with the other tools that you’re using in your team.

For example, an integration with WordPress, Shopify, Woocommerce can help you link your email campaigns with the transactional side of your business.

Moreover, the integration with social media can help you bring together two different functions of your marketing strategy to build more complete marketing tactics.

CRM integrations can help you be more strategic in the alignment of your marketing and sales objectives. Your email campaigns can be directly linked to the relationship management tactics of your business to improve transparency and success.

No more guesses on the people who interacted with your business. The integration of your email marketing tool with your CRM platform can supercharge your campaigns while keeping your data and contacts up-to-date.

How about creating a new email campaign based on a set number of contacts with similar behaviors?

Automation

Marketing automation can be extremely helpful to improve efficiency while saving time. When it comes to email marketing, you can create more successful campaigns through targeted emails and optimized workflows to reach the right people at the right time.

Automation can be a great ally in your email marketing strategy especially when thinking of customer funnels, relevant content and triggers.

It’s useful to have the interface that will make any automation easier.

For example, you can use automation in:

a) user onboarding
b) abandoned cart
c) churn reduction

Drip emails, automated emails and personalized workflows can bring you closer to reaching your goals to keep your customers happy. The easier the automation, the higher the opportunities to make the most of it.

Personalization

Modern marketing campaigns rely on personalization to deliver an improved customer experience. The relevance and value of personalized campaigns make it easier to reach your objectives.

Personalized email campaigns can start from simple features such as the option to personally address every person or to segment a list based on the location, the job title or even the date that they’ve subscribed.

Segmentation can also make it easier to send autoresponder emails to improve engagement while you can even improve the click-through rates by focusing on the content’s relevance.

Analytics

The measurement of your campaign’s success can help you spot everything you can improve.

It’s not enough nowadays to rely on basic analytics and reporting that’s why you need to research on the best metrics for your email strategy. You don’t necessarily need to dive into way too advanced data but it’s still useful to look at the available options of the tools you want to try. The display and functionality of the available data are sometimes more important than the complexity of the metrics.

For example, the available metrics, the option to export data or the format that it’s presented can be good questions to ask when looking for the best email marketing tool.

What’s next?

The selection of the key features in your email marketing platform is ultimately yours. The decision should be based on your:

• Key objectives
• Budget
• Team resources
• Time constraints
• Functionality
• Training needs when trying a new tool

The focus on the features can still be a good starting point to find the best tool for your business. Trial periods can also be very helpful so don’t be afraid to spend more time in finding the best tool for your needs.

The post What are the most important features for an email marketing platform? appeared first on ClickZ.

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