Tips For Choosing An Email Marketing Tool
Management Summary
What does a professional email marketing tool have to offer?
Existing collections can be adapted just as easily. To do this, for example, click on “Edit Collection” in the “Life cycle” collection and you will be taken to the same editing menu. In the following screenshot, we have completely removed the monetization area for demonstration purposes and adjusted the order of the topics within the “Life cycle” collection.
Personalization:
Email marketing is one of themost effective instrumentsand at the same time THE most personal medium in online marketing. The ability to personalize the subject line and salutation in your tool is therefore a must. The insertion of dynamic text modules that refer to the interests or purchasing behavior of the recipient is forEmail personalizationindispensable.
At the same time, the automatic individualization and prioritization of individual articles is a big plus in order to address the recipient as directly as possible and tailor the respective email to their interests. The prerequisite for this advanced form of personalization is the ability to collect attributes such as interests, gender, etc.
On this basis, it should also be possible in an advanced email marketing tool to segment dynamically based on click behavior. In other words, users who click on certain links are automatically assigned to a target group in order to be able to address them in a more personalized manner.
Automated shipping and easy operation:
A time-controlled automated sending of emails is also a great relief. Who likes to log into the system in the evening or on the weekend to quickly press the send button?
It is also important to have an editor that is easy to use and generates valid HTML code for mobile display.
Mobile optimization
If your newsletter is not mobile-optimized, you are missing out on an important target group. The opening rate of emails via mobile devices is now almost 45%, for example from aMcKinsey studyemerges. Responsive design has therefore become an integral part of email marketing. A good email marketing tool must be able to display mobile-optimized templates.
Professional tool operators who rely on the implementation of responsive emails provide a template for all devices. The display depends on the device used by the user, although your email tool should automatically generate the different graphic formats for the mobile template.
Trigger emails
Simple welcome, birthday or reminder emails to more complex trigger emails based on a user’s interests and purchasing behavior are an important factor in strengthening customer loyalty. A trigger email only needs to be set up once and then automatically sent to the respective recipient. Incredibly cost and resource efficient and the impact is undisputed.
When creating trigger emails, it is fundamentally important that the event trigger is possible based on date, click and registration in your email marketing tool. The multi-stage implementation of trigger emails is also an advantage, for example, to be able to set up multiple reminder emails. An advanced feature is targeted trigger emails to shopping cart abandoners, which, if used well, have a positive effect on the conversion rate. There is an interesting graphic about itPinterestto read.
Optimization and testing
Every professional email marketing tool must offer the ability toA/B testing or split testingof subject line and content. If this cannot be implemented automatically in your current email tool, it is time to consider changing tools.
The automatic dispatch of the winning variant after a certain point in time and ideally also after significance is an advantage.
Tracking and analysis
In order to be able to analyze better, in addition to the standard tracking of opening, click and bounce rates and click evaluations per link, global Google Analytics tracking per article is essential. Ideally, Google Analytics tracking is implemented via an automatic link.
If you cannot actually implement a large part of these points in your current tool, it may be time to look for an alternative.
What do I have to consider when changing tools?
A tool change may seem formidable at first glance. Am I not missing any features? Which interfaces are necessary? Will the data migration work smoothly? But as with everything, with good planning and appropriate documentation, this process is not mission impossible.
We have summarized the necessary steps for you as a rough overview:
- Template creation (storyboard development, design and implementation)
- Development of an opt-in concept
- Creation of a data mapping migration concept
- Conception and setup of trigger mailings
- Tool configuration (forms, data fields)
- Definition of interfaces
- Data import
- Tool training
Yes, a tool change can be time-consuming, resource-intensive and cost-intensive if it is not handled professionally or the necessary know-how is not available in your company. In this case, it is worth getting experts on board, especially to evaluate the right tool for your company’s requirements.
In addition to the must-haves mentioned above, there are of course many should-haves for your ideal email marketing program. The exact requirements vary from company to company and also depend on your current email marketing strategy. To find the right tool, you should compare several solutions. For example, we have created a tool evaluation matrix with more than 300 criteria that covers the technical aspects, features, pricing questions and usability points in detail:
