Email marketing is one of the most essential initiatives for promoting a retail business, regardless of whether your store is online or brick and mortar. There’s no better way to regularly communicate upcoming sales, new products, and other promotions to your existing customer base.
Since the rise of social media, many businesses flock to Facebook or Instagram ads instead of traditional advertising mediums like TV and radio. No matter which advertising platforms you choose, you can gain a lot more traction by including a killer email marketing strategy.
Unless you want to spend hours manually typing and sending individual emails, you’ll need a decent software system to handle your email marketing for you.
There are a range of software options to choose from, from cheap and basic providers to those offering advanced technical services or flashy email templates. Keep these 3 tips in mind to choose the right system for your business.
What Type of Experience Do You Want to Create?
The first things to consider are which audience sector you want to target and which type of experience you want to create for them. These days technology is at an all-time high and new, more versatile email marketing systems are constantly being developed. It’s no longer a question of whether something is possible, but a question of what you want to achieve.
For example, email marketing to retired seniors may require large fronts and chunks of informative text to aid detailed decision making, while email marketing to teen girls will be more suited to catchy phrases and graphics with a little movement and sparkle.
Some software is designed to deliver a greater variety of style and make your emails fashionable, while others are meant to improve functionality and versatility. Others still are geared towards complex, multi-layered marketing campaigns.
Make sure you have defined your plan fully before even searching for your email marketing software.
Can You Trust the Delivery System?
Once you know what type of email marketing software you need, start doing some research on deliverability. This means find out which systems are best at actually sending emails without bugs or other technical problems.
This will significantly narrow down your search and make it simpler to find a reputable provider to meet your needs.
You’ll want to make sure the system you choose works well and is easy to use. The best systems can be adjusted to your liking, and allow you to set up alerts, feedback features, and special elements like the ability to work with dedicated IPs.
These last few details are very important, since you need to be notified if there’s a problem with delivery and be able to troubleshoot technical issues and resolve them as quickly as possible.
Weigh Up The Qualities of Different Systems
The next part has to do with figuring out the features of each remaining system on your short list and how they fit in with your plan and budget.
First, it’s good to realize the pricing plan for each software provider will differ, and that it’s not always easy to compare, because each has provider a different set of features, strengths and weaknesses.
Keep track of how different email marketing software providers tackle issues like offering preset and tailored email campaign options, leveraging the use of dynamic and real time content within the email body, or automating various features – preferably with the use of advanced AI.
The platform you choose should also have a practical and easy to read analytics panel that can help you get useful information from your past email campaigns, to correct any past mistakes and forge a better path for your future endeavors.
