Trends come and go, especially in business. One minute you got the hottest idea in the market and the next it’s cold as death. Is email marketing the same? Is it still worth investing in this 2020 or not? That’s been the popular query lately. Email has been around for decades but social media has been gaining popularity these past years. An estimate of 3.2 billion social media users are active daily — that’s 42% of the current world population. Facebook is leading (by a lot), followed by Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr & LinkedIn.
What about email? As of 2019, there’s an estimate of 3.9 billion active users. Which makes sense. In order to sign up for a social media account, users need to register using an email first.
So back to the question, is email marketing dead?
No need to write that obituary because email marketing isn’t dead. It’s like how people have been saying SEO’s dead, yet it’s still alive and kicking to the point that white label SEO programs are now highly in demand. It isn’t As search engine continues to become a daily part of people’s lives, businesses have come to prioritize investing in their online visibility.
But why do some people believe that email is dead? Well, there are two main reasons. First is because some marketers have taken advantage of the power of email marketing and have been making unnecessary noise through it. Spam emails started filling people’s inboxes, not only were they boring but quality of content was questionable. Plus, targeting users who simply didn’t care, didn’t need the product or simply had no idea about the services promoted in those emails made it more of a nuisance rather than a helping hand.
Second is due to the Data Privacy Protection Law raised by the GDPR. This was implemented as a solution to the first problem. GDPR is basically a series of EU laws around personal data protection. Personal data can range from your name, your photo to your IP address.
With GDPR and similar laws in place, marketers have to ask for the user’s permission first before they can send any promotional mail to them. This started the era of permission-based marketing worldwide. This means that as a user, merely entering an email and other personal information doesn’t automatically mean they agree to receive email promotions from the business. There needs to be a specific area where they can opt to agree or not on whether to allow you to send them emails.
In reality, GDPR shouldn’t be seen as an obstruction but as a filter when it comes to achieving quality user experience. It allows marketers to focus on subscribers who are truly interested in the messages you’re planning to send.
This only solidifies the fact that users need to trust you and your brand before giving their information details. This will also benefit marketers since it will allow for a more personalized email and offers not to mention, an organized mailing list.
Why email marketing works:
- 79% of B2B marketers credit email as the most effective distribution channel for demand generation efforts.
- 49% of consumers said that they would like to receive promotional emails from their favorite brands on a weekly basis.
- Sending abandoned cart emails results in 69% more orders than a single email.
- 93% of B2B marketers use email to distribute content.
- 99% of consumers check their email every day. 59% of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI.
Top 10 Tools to Boost Your Email Marketing Campaign this 2022
SendX is an easy to use and affordable email marketing software that allows you to send unlimited email campaigns. It helps you build your email lists, and automate advanced email sequences. There is 24×7 Live Support, a free migration service from any ESP, a bundle of responsive email templates, and half a million stock free images for your email campaigns.
It also offers 24×7 Live Support, a free migration service from any ESP, a bundle of responsive email templates, and half a million stock free images for your email campaigns.
SendX provides a bundle of professional-looking and well-optimized email templates to choose from, an agile drag-and-drop editor with a simple and easy navigation and edit, undo, and formatting, and the collaborative capabilities required, if multiple users need to work on different aspects of a project.
SendX also offers features such as Countdown timers, Modal popups, and Share buttons to improve conversions, and a Heatmap report that gives you a quick overview of which CTAs are working and which links people are clicking visually.
An email marketing tool that boasts its advanced email automation. ActiveCampaign has been in the industry for almost twenty years providing small-to-mid-sized businesses with advanced tools to enhance email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM.
It allows users to communicate with their clients as well as use your subscriber’s content choices to provide them with specific content that they need. Their tool also allows you to segment the audience into different categories allowing marketers to give them the right products and promotional offers specific to their needs.
ActiveCampaign also allows you to quickly access key information for each of your automation campaigns. Access contacts within an automation, how many campaigns are in active as well as all the goal actions contained and its completion rate. Also you can check out Brevo, Klaviyo, MailerLite, Omnisend, Saleshandy, etc . These all are ActiveCampaign competitors.
Moda is the go-to email marketing platform for data-driven DTC brands looking to build growth.
Based out of New York City, Moda serves as the ultimate link that connects omnichannel messaging with structured customer data. You can create super relevant emails to unlock repeat revenue, set up conversational marketing with automations and assess the impact using cross-channel attribution. Engage multiple profiles effortlessly by organising them into granular segments that update in real-time without any interruptions.
With its Intuitive features, plug and play templates, one-click integrations and flawless workflow automation, Moda counts as a perfect go-to platform for email marketing.
Get hands on with this feature-packed platform with their 30-day free trial.
Zoho is a company based in California and has been in business for 23 years. Its a feature-packed web-based office suite that offers an array of services from project management, invoicing, CRM, email marketing, task management, database, document storage, social media integration and more.
The best thing about it aside from ease-of-use is that it’s easy to collaborate within the office, making it a tool that can be used by companies of all sizes.
Mailchimp is famous for their creative and entertaining marketing campaigns on social media that instantly brighten up your mood. Don’t be fooled by their quirky side, they’re still one of the market leaders when it comes to email marketing tools today.
They boast an array of features from marketing CRM, audience dashboard, campaigns (ranging from newsletter, social media and more) and thorough reporting. If their services seem too good to be true, they also offer a free plan which allows you to send up to 10,000 emails a month to 2,000 subscribers which can really help up start-ups and SMB accounts.
Clearout serves as the definitive solution to enhance email marketing campaigns by collecting valid email addresses for new lists and maintaining the cleanliness of existing email lists. Clearout performs real-time email verification to authenticate new users while they enter their email address into the signup form. It verifies the email address at the point of capture and rejects submissions for invalid email addresses. This approach prevents spam form submissions and ensures a clean email list.
Clearout also supports email marketers in managing their existing email lists through its advanced email verification service. It conducts 20+ email validation checks to ensure the validity of email addresses and eliminate invalid email addresses from the list. Providing an accuracy of 98%+, Clearout effectively reduces bounce rates and ensures that emails reach the right audience. Email marketers can achieve higher engagement and increased ROI without risking their sender reputation thus reviving their email marketing strategy.
As the name suggests, Hunter.io is the go-to tool for Email Hunters. It’s incredibly helpful for email marketers looking to find the contact information associated with any domain. This is perfect if you’re looking to include cold-emailing in your strategy. An added feature is that it can do bulk tasks and verify emails. It’s the ideal lead generation tool considering its affordable price tag.
This email marketing software company was established in 2014 and has been helping small to medium online stores optimize their eCommerce strategy. Its powerful features include channel integration — allowing you to integrate several channels into the same workflow, marketing automation, segmentation of user-list and email marketing which includes newsletters, email blasts, drag-and-drop builder and more.
This Boston based company that was founded in 2012 boasts powerful marketing automation tools and an email platform that’s designed to drive revenues. It allows seamless integration with leading e-commerce platforms and tools like Shopify, Stripe, WooCommerce and more.
One of the newbies back in 2012, Sendinblue is now one of the leading software providers when it comes to transactional email services. You can use the tool for a range of services from email marketing, SMS marketing, CRM, Facebook Ads, retargeting and more.
They offer a free package that allows you to store unlimited contacts and send up to 300 emails per day. Upgrade only costs $25 per month allowing you to send up to 40,000 monthly emails. They have package-upgrades available for growing businesses, marketing professionals and enterprises.
Another powerful tool for email marketing that helps you structure your email marketing campaigns efficiently. Its a hit among marketers with its amazingly detailed reporting and statistics functions. They provide data that are easy to understand and an interface that’s easy to use.
One of the defining features that separate it from competitors is that it allows you to create workflows with ready-to-use templates. This is a huge help when you’re working mainly with auto-responder tools.
GetResponse has more services and features to offer. The little details they add in their tools make GetResponse a marketer’s favorite. For example, there’s an automatic time adjustment feature that’s helpful when you’re sending emails to people from different time zones. It allows you to pick a specific time you want them to receive your mail, and GetResponse will automatically convert it to everyone’s respective time zones.
If you want to test it out first before buying the upgraded version you can try it for free with their 30-day free yourself.
Sendlane is a great option if you’re just entering the email marketing scene. It’s easy to use and got all the essentials if you’re starting to revive your email marketing strategy. It has an intuitive and easy-to-use interface allowing the user to just get into doing the task at hand without being bombarded by unnecessary action buttons.
Its main services include autoresponders, automation, broadcasts, landing pages, third party integrations, visual email builder, migration services that helps you transfer all your workflow information and they offer one of the best support in the industry with their 24/7 customer support.
To help you make the decision on whether Sendlane is for you, try their 14-day free trial.
Another easy to use, fool-proof, feature-packed email marketing software designed to make the lives of business owners from start-ups, SMEs, agencies to enterprise, a whole lot easier. It has centralized data and organized information allowing you to customize and personalize messages.
Not only does it use real-time data for emails, but it also has a flawless ‘workflow’ feature that allows you to design the workflow for your automation.
This is your go-to email checker. It inspects your emails for possible parts that can get it landed in the spam folder. The great thing about it is that it’s free!
Mailify is one of the most complete and easy-to-use email marketing software on the market. An intuitive application for managing massive SMS campaigns and marketing automation needs. With it you can also create forms, landing pages, pop ups, etc. Mailify incorporates intelligent and exclusive functionalities such as Predictive sending, to send mailing campaigns at the best time for each recipient; Heatmap, to know which parts of your newsletter attract more attention and make increasingly effective campaigns, etc. Mailify adapts to your needs… Import, segment and personalize your contacts in an unlimited way.
Mailify has its own intuitive editor for designing newsletters, free downloadable responsive templates and a gallery with over 1,000 professional images in HD.
Mailify has APIs and plugins such as: Google Analytics, WordPress, Youtube, Zapier, Shopify, FaceBook Ads, etc.
Mailify offers a trial version with 500 emails and 10 SMS as a gift.
Runner-up:
Voila Norbert is an excellent platform for lead generation and email outreach. With its accurate and up-to-date database, you can get a success rate as high as 98%. That’s a rate you rarely find in email finders that claim to be the best but typically suffer from accuracy issues. You can also search in bulk by uploading .CSV files reaching millions of lines! If you do this, you will receive your leads–and in real time at that.
Apart from being a very powerful tool, Voila Norbert is easy to use. If you’re using Google Chrome, you can just install the Google Chrome extension, and voila. The dashboard is also user-friendly: all you need to do is enter a person’s name in one box, and the company domain in the next for Voila Norbert to do its job.
Voila Norbert offers 50 credits for free once you create an account. The good thing is, this email finder only charges you for successful emails found. Its basic paid plan, the Valet plan, gives you 1000 leads per month at an affordable price of $49 a month. You can also purchase prepaid credits if you prefer that.
More Tips to Boost Your Email Campaign this 2020
- Personalize
How do you stand out amongst thousands of emails in your contact’s inbox? Aside from providing quality content, one sure way would be to personalize. A study showed that our brains become excited when we hear our names being called. Dale Carnegie even said in his bestselling book How to Win Friends and Influence People that ‘Names are the sweetest and most important sound in any language.’Names humanize your way of doing business with your clients. With personalization, you’re letting them know that you’re talking to them as an individual and not as a collective group of clients you are only reaching out to for business.
Read more about personalization in this amazing article: How to get personal and make the most of your email marketing campaign.
- Segment your customer list
One way you can optimize your email strategy is by effectively segmenting your customers. You can do this by gathering the right information about them. Choose the right questions to ask when a visitor lands on your website.
For example, if you’re in the web design business, simply ask customers “What industry are you in?” when they visit your website or landing page. This simple addition will allow for more targeted emails.
- Make your email interactive
Make your message memorable amongst hundreds of emails by making your content more interactive. Aside from engaging users, interactive content makes for an effective lead magnet.
An example would be putting simple survey questionnaires inside your email. A great tool for this is SurveyMonkey or SurveyLegend.
- Send emails that are highly relevant
Don’t be the noise that gives email marketing a bad name. Spend an appropriate amount of time constructing your message. Put yourself in your clients’ shoes and make sure that whatever your content is that it appeals to you too.
- Video content integration in email
If you’re constantly active online, it’s increasingly noticeable that video continues to grow as one of the most effective elements in any digital marketing strategy. Including video content in your email can increase click rates by 300% and open-rates by 6%. Video is simply fun and engaging as proven by the fact that Youtube is the second most popular website following Google. With today’s technology, it’s becoming more and more accessible and easier to integrate into any platform.
Email marketing videos can take in the form of presentations, ads, explainers, short tutorials, interviews and customer testimonials. Let your creativity run wild with this one.
- Utilize user-generated content
The best proof that your products or services really deliver what you claim them to do is user-generated content. Seeing testimonials from real customers will not just boost your credibility, it creates hype– that what you have is worth talking about. It also adds to the image that you value your customers’ opinion.
Email Marketing Is Here to Stay Forever
With the growing number of email users every year, it makes sense that email will always be a part of our lives, now and in the future. Marketers need to constantly be updated with the evolving trends and adapt to them. Learning how to ride the wave and how to utilize the power of email alongside the evolution of technology will always keep you ahead of the game.
